What If Every Dollar Told a Story?
Micha Fardy
Friends of Fundy
When we talk about building stronger communities, we often talk about the things we can see.
New businesses opening their doors.
Local events bringing people together.
Young families choosing to stay.
Visitors discovering our trails, shops, restaurants, and experiences.
But beneath all of those visible signs of a thriving place is something much harder to see:
Where does the money go?
When someone buys a meal, books a room, hires a contractor, purchases a product, or attends an event, that transaction sets off a ripple effect.
Some of that money stays close to home.
Some circulates through the province.
Some leaves the region altogether.
The challenge is that most of us have no way of knowing what those ripples look like.
That's where measuring Economic Nutrition becomes helpful.
Looking Beyond the Price Tag
Most of us are familiar with nutrition labels on food. They help us understand what's inside the products we buy so we can make informed choices.
Economic Nutrition applies the same idea to the economy.
The Economic Nutrition Certification Mark helps businesses show what happens after a purchase is made by revealing two simple but powerful pieces of information:
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Where the money goes: how spending is distributed locally, provincially, nationally, and internationally.
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What the money pays for: a breakdown of major expense categories such as wages, supplies, operations, and other costs.
In other words, it helps tell the story behind every dollar.
The goal is to make economic impact more visible so consumers, businesses, organizations, and communities can make informed decisions.
Why This Matters in the Fundy Region
In the Fundy Coastal and Foothills region, we spend a lot of time talking about place.
We believe that thriving communities are built when local businesses succeed, when entrepreneurs are supported, when residents have opportunities close to home, and when visitors understand the value of the places they visit.
Many businesses in our region work hard to source locally, hire locally, and support local organizations. Yet those efforts are often invisible. Customers may appreciate a business, but they rarely see the broader impact that business has on the local economy.
Economic Nutrition provides a way to tell that story.
Imagine being able to show:
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How much of your spending stays within the region.
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How much is invested in local wages and jobs.
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How your purchasing decisions support other local businesses.
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How your business contributes to the economic resilience of the community.
For customers, it creates transparency.
For businesses, it creates a powerful storytelling and marketing tool.
For communities, it creates data that can help identify opportunities to strengthen local supply chains and keep more economic activity circulating close to home.
More Than a Label
One of the things we appreciate most about Economic Nutrition is that it is not simply another logo to place on a website. The certification process helps organizations better understand their own economic footprint and provides tangible data that can be used to improve decision-making and strengthen local economic relationships.
Businesses that have already participated describe it as both an economic snapshot and a communications tool.
One of those businesses is Sussex Ale Works, one of the first New Brunswick businesses to participate in the Economic Nutrition program.
When we spoke with co-founder Alaina Lockhart, one thing became clear: the value wasn't just in creating the label. It was in discovering a new way to communicate the impact they were already having.
The process confirmed something that they had always believed: that a significant portion of every dollar spent at Sussex Ale Works flows back into people through wages and into the local economy through their purchasing decisions.
Instead of simply saying they support their community, they now have meaningful, third-party-verified data that shows it.
"We've always talked about our values. Economic Nutrition helped quantify those values in a meaningful way and gave us a better way to tell that story." - Alaina
Those are powerful endorsements, particularly from businesses that are already deeply connected to their communities.
Why Fundy Footsteps & Flavours Is Getting Involved
The Fundy Partnership's role as a Regional Cohort Partner with this Shorefast trade marked program, is to help bring this opportunity to businesses, non-profits, and organizations across the Fundy Coast and Foothills region. Through our partnership with Shorefast, we are helping recruit local businesses to participate in the certification program and ensuring that the process reflects our local context and priorities.
We see Economic Nutrition as another tool in the broader work of place-based economic development.
It complements many of the conversations already happening across our region about:
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Supporting local businesses
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Strengthening our local economies
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Building resilient communities
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Retaining talent
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Encouraging local procurement
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Creating stronger connections between businesses and residents
Most importantly, it gives us a common language to talk about economic impact.
Building a Better Story Together
One of the things we hear often from local business owners is:
"We know we're making a difference, but we don't always know how to show it."
Economic Nutrition helps answer that challenge.
It turns economic impact into something visible.
It helps businesses tell their story with confidence and credibility.
It gives consumers more information about the places and businesses they support.
And it helps communities better understand how their local economy works.
For us, that's what this is really about.
Not just collecting data.
Not just earning a certification.
But helping tell the story of the people, businesses, and organizations that make this region such a special place to live, work, visit, and invest in.
Because every dollar has a story. And we think it's time those stories were told.
Join the Fundy Coast & Foothills Cohort
Interested?
We're currently speaking with businesses and organizations interested in joining the Fall 2026 cohort.
Whether you're ready to participate or simply curious about the program, we'd be happy to answer your questions.