Rowan brings up many good points. The only one I would pick on would be the gas. From what I have read only about 10% of the cost of a gallon of gasoline stays in the local community. So you have someone buy $40usd worth of gas only $4 of that stays, they might buy another $6 worth of junk food, and if the store is one of the big chain stores only about 1/3 of that will stay in the local community. I honestly believe that if a town is on a major cycling route and they go out of their way to welcome cyclists it can pay off especially for the locally owned businesses. The big chain stores live on high volume and low profits, the small independently owned not so much.

I travel extensively for work, when I get somewhere I always try to search out and shop the locally owned businesses in hopes of helping keeping them around. I don't like the proliferation of big box stores and don't want to only have one choice of a place to shop.

Aaron