COLUMBUS (WCMH) — What would Columbus be like without local businesses?

That’s the question a new campaign is asking consumers to consider as businesses look to start their recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic.

As more people get vaccinated, local businesses say more customers are coming out and coming back.

Customers like Max Kleinmann, an Ohio State freshman from Illinois who is just now exploring what the city has to offer.

“Places like North Market, they have excellent food, good service, and you’re helping local businesses that need to help,” he said. “Otherwise they won’t be able to stay open.”

That’s the message a new campaign is hoping to send.

‘What’s Columbus Without Us?’ is both the name of the campaign and the question local businesses have joined forces to ask.

“You know, small businesses, we put 67 cents of every dollar back into the economy versus 33 cents for large companies,” said Bob Szuter, co-owner of Wolf’s Ridge Brewery. “We live in these communities. We are your neighbors and our employees are your neighbors. We wanted to kind of show the community that it matters what you do.”

Szuter said he had the idea for the campaign late last year after a local business partner shut their doors, causing a ripple effect on business.

Szuter partnered with Geben Communication for the campaign, inviting other local businesses to join in getting the message out.

“Your dollars staying local is really important to your neighbors, your friends, to the people who are here to make this a real community,” said Anne Boninsegna, co-owner of The Kitchen. “I think without the local businesses, we could be any other city, but the local businesses are what bring the vibrancy to the fabric of our community.”

Being part of the community, business owners said they fought hard last year to save jobs and keep their friends and neighbors employed.

“We had a really terrific team of people whose life work was to help these people have the best day of their lives when they came into our venue,” Boninsegna said. “We’ve had to see a lot of them move on or we had to let go of a few people, so it’s been a rough go.”

“Right here, we have 60 some Columbus residents that we get to employ and we get to be a meaningful part of this community and really, for me and my parents, that’s extremely important to us,” Szuter said.

Despite some help from federal programs like the Paycheck Protection Program, business owners said getting back to their pre-pandemic level of business will certainly help but hasn’t happened yet, and still might not be enough.

“We put our life’s savings into building this business,” Boninsegna said. “It’ll be 8 years for us this summer. I never dreamt that we would do anything less than 10 for sure, so it’s been scary.”

“Things have been slowly ramping up, but we’re still at half capacity here,” Szuter said. “We do not have the space to do nearly as much as we did in 2019 and we won’t until the restrictions come off, everyone’s vaccinated and it’s safe to do that. We still had to borrow $500,000 to get through this and it’s a big hole for a lot of us to climb out of and I think that’s as optimistic as I want to be. I’m still not ready to kind of ring that bell quite yet because there’s still a bit to go.”