The last time I talked about cannibalization in a business sense was as a corporate lawyer. It's basically when, as a business, you introduce a new product that competes with an existing product and causes customers to abandon the original product for the new one. This isn't an upgraded version of the same product, but a different one. It's something they are careful to avoid since the goal is to grow overall customers, not shift them.
Business continuity looks at what happens "if __" to survive. But what about afterwards? Choices that are being made in Asheville by small business owners are about continued survivability after surviving.
Last week I read about how the restaurant I had been waiting to go to (I was even waiting to use a gift certificate I had to celebrate 3yrs of EaaS being in business...on September 29th [Hurricane Helene hit on September 27th) decided not to reopen. I was crushed personally by the decision but it made sense. The chef-owner has another restaurant literally around the block/part of the same building. It is her flagship restaurant of her "food group". That location reopened as soon as it could after the storm. It has existed longer, has a more recognizable name, and would be a bigger draw for the scant tourists who visited after the storm. If the place that I wanted to go to re-opened, it would make those still scant tourists have to choose. It would cannibalize her own business where it didn't before because of the post-disaster landscape.
The owner isn't fully closing the location I preferred (closing to my needs and wants, yes). It will be turned into an event space to rent and host pop-up food events. Some of their menu items will be incorporated into the menu of the other location. This is something to consider: if you start building an empire of affiliated businesses, even if they all do well before a disaster, which one would you pick to end? Could this be a different story if the location I preferred weren't so close (like in South Asheville) as to not actually compete with the original? Probably. They'd likely both thrive since one area draws tourists and not really locals, the other only locals go to.
Consider what is a marker of strength and success. Would re-opening both up a sign of strength? If it winds up hurting your overall bottom line, threatening to take down both, that would be appealing to outside interests but not your bank account.
If you think about these things in advance, the "what if ___" would be less of a stressful gut-punch later. You can imagine the possibilities which promote growth and resilience.
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