It might be windy but that didn’t stop the sun today.
Mother Nature treated Traverse City to an almost spring-like day.
It’s a bit unusual, being able to spend a day at the beach in early March.
Shops and diners are reaping the benefits, some getting a real spring spike in customers.
Fox 32’s Cody Boyer and photojournalist Derrick Larr went to downtown Traverse City to check in with businesses soaking up the sun.
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“The sun, bargains and warm temperatures…it’s been busy downtown,” says Lauren Perez, manager at the Peppercorn.
Blue skies…
Golden beaches…
Not a flake of snow in sight…in March?
“It’s a lot of fun,” Perez says. “We still have a lot of people here that are just visiting and are tourists."
Shops like the Peppercorn in Traverse City rely on it to get by, just normally a little bit later in the year on Front Street.
“People who aren’t too familiar with the area say and ask me if there are things to do and I’m like what?” Perez says. “Considering how early it is in the season and I don’t really think that much is going on but people find things to do."
“We’ve had some days where we would close because the weather is really bad and there’s no people,” says Stacy Crawford, supervising manager at Momentum. “But we haven’t had to do that."
Stacy is talking about the last four years while managing Momentum.
Not this year…
“We like to kind of motivate ourselves, as a team, to try to beat whatever we did that was either the highest sale ever for that day or month and we broke all records,” Crawford says. “Good start to this month, as well."
So as things might get chilly again, stores are starting off with a foot ahead.
With more feet in the sand already.
“If the weather is nice, if it’s sunny, why not sit on the beach and just kind of enjoy the view,” Perez says. “Don’t have to go in the water. I would not recommend that.”
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