Mary Ellen Sorci, who opened Foggy Mountain in 1975, was raised on music. She moved to Grass Valley after her mother retired and relocated there from the Bay Area.

In 2016, during the early days of Birdies Slippers, the two-person company based in San Francisco worked with a small public-relations firm to identify their ideal brand ambassador for what they hoped would become the go-to slippers for women seeking comfort and fashion. Their selection: Meghan Markle.

Kurt Spataro has shopped at the Sacramento Natural Foods Co-Op in three different locations since the 1980s, but he sees “a lot of new things to discover” at the co-op’s bigger and brighter new home at 2820 R St.

For most people, William Glen was an enduring symbol of simpler times, a homegrown survivor of bad economies and big department chains. For Mark Snyder, the store was a family treasure. His father, Bill Snyder, co-founded the original store more than 50 years ago. But in 2010, the William Glen story became a tragedy, closing down after Bill passed away from lung cancer. 

In the past 10 years, Alzada Knickerbocker of independent bookseller The Avid Reader has seen her revenue cut in half. To help businesses like hers that suffered during the e-commerce boom, earlier this year lawmakers introduced the Assembly Bill X1 28, the so-called Amazon tax law.

There’s a married couple in Elk Grove who would be happy to give you the time of day. They’d be even happier to sell it to you.

While small specialty businesses in the Sacramento area are closing their doors in droves these days, Jon Holloway’s family-operated travel store is still sailing along, albeit in choppier waters.