The Moneris Merchant Scoop: City of Brantford

The Moneris^® Merchant Scoop Series is dedicated to highlighting Canadian businesses thriving amidst an ever-changing landscape. Featuring exclusive interviews, learn more about the entrepreneurs behind the scenes, their stories of how they got their businesses off the ground, what it really takes to achieve success, and what the next steps could look like for a resilient future.

The City of Brantford is a municipality in Southern Ontario west of Hamilton. Brantford is famously known to be the “Telephone City” where legendary inventor Alexander Graham Bell made the world's first successful one-way long distance call. It is also home to several post-secondary campuses including Wilfrid Laurier University, Conestoga College, and Six Nations Polytechnic. Whether it is arts and culture, sports and recreation, or supporting local businesses, the City works each day to help the local economy succeed.

“With the onset of COVID-19, the City of Brantford saw that businesses faced unprecedented circumstances. The conditions, limitations and radical changes severely affected businesses. Leaders, residents and politicians came together to help local businesses navigate these uncharted waters,” says Kevin Dekok, the Business Development Officer at the City of Brantford.

The City was seeking consumer location and spending data to help them gain greater insights surrounding the impact of the pandemic and reached out to Moneris^® to help fill the gap.

While working with Moneris, the City looked at multiple data points to help assess the impact. The data helped with the following:

• Re-confirming the City’s prediction of a significant jump in spending from closing to opening throughout the pandemic
• Showing available business opportunities and markets for tourism and promotions
• Helping the City understand opportunities for businesses within Brantford
• Revealing geographic sources of spending outside the community with levels lower than anticipated
• Pointing to consumer spending changes in different business sectors
• Identifying unexpected trends in spending and origin

The City continues to review the data based on different spending sources within Brantford and across the country. In addition, the data is used to target their marketing based on areas that are thriving and areas that have not matched what was originally predicted. As the Brantford economy continues to reopen in steps with the Province of Ontario, this data will help the City anticipate the impacts of future disruptions and support response plans and efforts.

To learn more about The City of Brantford and their experience with Moneris, click here.