I don't know about other areas, but here in the middle of Oklahoma the Dollar Generals have been a real positive. There's a lot of rural areas where a Walmart came in, then folded later. It left a 1-2 hour drive to get buy any kind of "real" food. The DG stores here have been expanding to include an actual grocery section, including fresh produce and (limited) fresh meat. More is available frozen. They have excellent prices on canned goods. Are they as good as a full grocery store? No, but they're a _lot_ better than the gas station/convenience store and its endless supply of deep-fried burritos...and also the only alternative.
You are absolutely correct. I do long distance bicycle rides through rural areas. When you've been riding for hours without signs of civilization (other than the road itself), a Dollar General that pops up in the middle of nowhere is a godsend. You CAN get fresh food and healthy groceries there at good prices. Whole Foods it ain't, but I wouldn't expect that due to the different income levels of the shoppers of the respective stores. I give Dollar General and related stores a lot of credit- they have found a way to thrive in underserved markets.
The author has apparently never shopped at a Dollar General or a Family Dollar, because she thinks that these are dollar stores, and she doesn't seem to know that these stores sell many types of products other than food. It gives her article the tone of uninformed snobbery- "I don't even know what these stores sell or for how much, but I know what is best for poor communities".
I was actually driving through rural Wyoming when on a roadtrip and could not find any store when i needed to pick up some essentials. Luckily we came across a Dollar general store in a desolate mining town where the only other establishments included a few gas stations, not even typical fast food joints.
Here in rural Iowa, Dollar General also has claimed the niche of "less stuff, but also nearby". You can either drive 5 minutes into town and go to the Dollar General for most of your basic needs, or you can drive a half hour to the nearest city with a Walmart / Target / etc.
I really quite like stopping by to grab a quick thing or two. Around here, there tends to be a local grocery chain in the same vicinity, so generally I'd pick there for more traditional grocery foods. But ran out of toothpaste or need a pack of diapers? Dollar General is the place to go.
> You can either drive 5 minutes into town and go to the Dollar General for most of your basic needs, or you can drive a half hour to the nearest city with a Walmart / Target / etc.
I'm intrigued by these time estimates. Living in a suburb of Santa Cruz (just south of the Bay Area), the choices are similar. Completely inadequate corner store (much worse than DG) locally, or drive to a location with real stores. That drive is a minimum of 15 minutes depending on the store you want.
But I feel like people in beach communities around the Bay Area would struggle with the idea that they're just as remote as hicks in rural Iowa.
Suburban Texas must be an odd phenomenon then. Kroger has found the key to dominating a vicinity away from Walmart. They build giant grocery stores about 3 miles away from each other where the Walmarts are more like 8 miles apart from each other. Then are various other competing stores in the mix as well.
A side note to this crowding is that unless you live within quick access to a freeway on-ramp it often takes about 30 minutes to get to that store 3 miles away.
There's a location in the town where I grew up with two Jewel (Albertson's) locations less than a mile apart on the same road. One is a much older store (early 80s), the other is much newer and was acquired when Dominick's (Safeway) shut down in the Chicago area.
By keeping both stores they have all the good grocery locations at that end of town tied up. There's a Mariano's (Kroger) on the opposite side of town and a Walmart with some groceries a couple miles in another direction, but most people go to what's right there.
This is a funny, I totally agree that getting just out of Santa Cruz's densest part you'll run into people as redneck as anywhere in Iowa. I'm not so sure about anywhere in Santa Cruz County being like a food desert though...
But inside of Santa Cruz, there's an abundance of corner and grocery stores. Anywhere you live you'll have 1-3 amazing grocery stores within 1-2 miles. My favorite being Shopper's Corner, which has selection on par with stores being 5-10 it's size in physical area, but being quick to walk through and grab exactly what you need. And a butcher that will but 95% of the US's supermarkets to shame. So good and fast...
Interestingly, living in San Jose is the first time I've regularly walked to the grocery store. Why not when I lived elsewhere, equally close or closer to perfectly good Kroger, Harris Teeter, Food Lion, Publix or Winn-Dixie? Hills. Walking 4 blocks carrying groceries up and down hills in heat & humidity (or snow & ice) isn't remotely the same as on flatland in a mild climate.
Yep. Visited a girlfriend's rural relatives in Missouri. One of them asked if we wanted to swimming. As I got in the car, I asked how far it was. "Oh, about 40 miles", he said. (Or what is more than that?!) We drove 85MPH or more on not-so-paved roads the whole way.
Which would be funny, because driving through the nearby Santa Cruz mountains can be reminiscent of the part of Appalachia where I grew up. Complete with trashed cars in the front yard and trash strewn about.
Santa cruzian here: I don’t, the views and the weather are too nice to rush and put yourself in danger.
Besides you’d probably just be rushing into traffic most days.
This also covers a case that I don't see discussed much, the cost of going shopping. Even ignoring wear and tear, if you have a truck or an older car that gets maybe 20 mpg, a 10 mile 20 mile round trip costs you a gallon of gas or $2-4 right now and sometimes more. That's not much as part of a weekly shopping trip, but if you just need a gallon of milk it's a low-visibility jacking up of the price.
It’s safe to assume any travel by personal vehicle costs $0.50 cents per mile (or minute in urban areas since stop and go causes more wear and tear), including fuel and maintenance/saving for new vehicle. Driving 5 miles or minutes to get one item from the grocery list can cost an additional $5.
I live in what would be considered more urban Iowa. I work in the ISU Research Park [1] for a company doing software development. My brother lives in our hometown and works as an industrial engineer at a plant that makes bio fertilizer and pesticide products [2]. We also have a sock factory in town, which I think is pretty neat [3]. Iowa really has a pretty diverse and thriving economy. It's a good place.
That research park has really grown in the last 5 years! I'm finishing up my masters degree online, but it was always interesting to see how it grew while I was on campus. I networked with people from Workiva, Vermeer, and Proplanner over the years. John Deere is in the mix too now (which was natural with how much research they fund on campus).
Also potentially of interest to the HN crowd, my hometown has municipal broadband [1]. Where I live, I actually have municipal broadband as well, though it looks like perhaps OMU beats us on speed [2]. My mom lives out in the country and gets her internet from an antenna pointed at the water tower, which seems to work pretty well [3].
You’re not the only one. My girlfriend worked for half a year at the local dollar general. She had great coworkers and it paid the bills. She could do all her shopping there and I was surprised how well the DG covered just about everything you wouldn’t want to wait for a weekend trip into a bigger urban area to take care of anyway.
This is why I prefer being homeless in the Bay Area to going anywhere else to live for cheap, as people invite me. I spent like 4 days in a nice place in GA, in a downtown without baguettes, and came right back. I can shop at organic markets and coops everywhere. The high rent is a better cost than gas when housed.
You're homeless and chose to leave a nice place because it had a downtown without baguettes? I mean we've all got our priorities but that sounds like perhaps you should examine your "needs" column more strongly.
* He is homeless by choice in the Bay Area
* He lives off the generosity of others
* He prefers this life style opposed to not have baguettes
* A Nice place in Georgia is shit compared to shit in San Fransisco
Not my opinions, just restating the original points
I spent a few years in Texas and often travel by road cross country. I do have to say, finding a dollar store chain of local is a blessing in the big empty in-between.
Good point, reliability is key. Selection is narrow, limited by space, but they have a little of everything.
Healthy food is easy to find at these stores. I can put together a perfectly good home cooked meal from Dollar General no problem. Baking goods, dry goods, dairy, produce... again the selection is smaller than a larger grocer, but it's all there.
Dollar General has a much larger selection than an Asian 7-Eleven. It has "real groceries" (albeit a small selection) and many non-food goods like detergent, toys, shampoo, even cell phones and a small variety of clothing. It's kind of like they got a list of the top 10% best-selling items at Wal-Mart and made a store out of it.
Dollar Tree (and Family Dollar IIRC) are a bit different because unlike Dollar General each item is actually a dollar. They're a bit more akin to Daiso, if you visited any of those in Thailand, though again with a bit more food (though less than Dollar General, and in smaller packages).
> Dollar General has a much larger selection than an Asian 7-Eleven.
That is surely because a 7-11 in say Japan, Korea, or China are part of vertical, dense infrastructure. You don't have miles of space in between things.
And I would be curious if Dollar General has that much more of a selection compared to some of the big 7-11 I've visited in Seoul.
Maybe I haven't visited the right ones, but none of the 7-Eleven (or FamilyMart, Lawson, OKmart, or CU) stores I visited in South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan had selections that close to those of the Dollar General stores I've patronized. In my subjective judgement, the difference is pretty big. This is not a knock on them, of course, just difference in business model, and as you say, regional/market context.
I have a lot of family in rural Arkansas and Dollar General has been a life changer for them. It's only about 30minutes to Walmart or a grocery store, but that can huge hassle for small things or late night medicine.
Lived in NYC for a few years - I had everything (bank, pharmacy, multiple starbucks, multiple restaurants, gyms, swimming pools ....) within half mile radius. I can't even imagine driving 30 mins to get groceries. Totally different world!
I agree - I live in a suburb outside of Philly, King of Prussia, where I get EVERYTHING I need, and more, within a 5-10 minute drive. In fact per capita there's an excess of options.
I happens on a smaller scale, too. I’m also in rural Arkansas, and about 15 minutes from Walmart. I’m 5 minutes from Harp’s, and with basically no traffic in that direction. I tend to go to Harp’s.
Aren't there any local (small) stores? I can't believe everything has to be a big "chain".
Here in Europe, there are a lot of SMB's that fill in the gap of "fresh food". Although they are a little bit more expensive, they are always good enough to fill this requirement.
There were. The problem is that Walmart moved in and drove them all out of business, then realized that the market wasn't big enough and closed the stores leaving nothing.
Small stores in rural areas are overpriced, understocked, regularly have expired products, and often close around 6pm. I've literally ran into store owners in Walmart who buy things there and just mark them up 2-3x. But to be fair, they really have no other options unless they drive a couple hundred miles.
DG pops up in extremely rural areas that no real store wants to go, not even gas stations. I know several in towns of 100-200 people that are 40-50 miles from anything resembling a town.
It seems that grocery stores are consolidating into the big chains. We had a couple of IGA[1] grocery stores in the town I grew up in - locally owned and operated grocery stores that were much more responsive to customer demands. Now there are none.
Stories like this are a great read. I live in a country were everyone has at least three supermarkets in a 5 kilometre radius. Its easy to take fresh food for granted.
You really have to differentiate between the food that's offered at a dollar store and everything else. I shop at the dollar store for things like shampoo, deodrant, toothpaste and it's superb deal, not in any way making me poorer. on the contrary it saves me money. for groceries, you should shop somewhere else, unless your looking for dog food.
the reason there aren't more grocery stores selling good food is because no one wants that. Consumers are in charge and they've spoken loud and clear: consumers prefer processed foods, sodas, chips, things placed in boxes and plastic. I've even seen parent who boycott schools trying to remove cookies from the lunch menu. At a certain point, people need to start making good decisions about what they buy. and yes, you can buy healthy AND cheap. Rolled oats (aka oatmeal is available for 50c to 1$ per lb, even here in the CA!) . and that's 22 times cheaper than a meal at McDonalds. Compare => 3 meals at mcDonalds => 22$ vs Oatmeal 1 lb = 1600 calories which makes it about 1$ per day. And oatmeal is high in fiber, protein and countless minerals, super low in saturated fat, extremely low in sodium and sugar. Sure, you'd want to add a couple of fruits to your basket: there's bananas for 55c per pound!, etc.
I ate oatmeal almost everyday for lunch for a year and it lowered my LDL cholesterol by 60 points! it's a real cholesterol fighter. And, if you do the math on everything, you can find great deals in veggies to: potatoes, onions, Beans, Corn (super highly subsidized), and the occassional costco spinach.
Once we start choosing good foods, stores will have no choice but to start selling more of that. Let the backlash begin!
Yep. Minneapolis recently experimented with requiring all stores selling food in the city to stock some "fresh/healthy" foods. It's been a disaster; it turns out that the reason these products weren't being stocked is because people don't want to buy them. Force stores to devote some of their limited shelf space to expensive, perishable items, and people still won't buy them, but now the prices on all other items has to go up to make up for the wasted expired food that gets thrown out.
These sorts of policies hurt the poor, and to a lesser extent, small businesses, while helping no one. And yelling about Dollar General is going to have the same result (if it has any impact at all).
> Once we start choosing good foods, stores will have no choice but to start selling more of that. Let the backlash begin!
> These sorts of policies hurt the poor, and to a lesser extent, small businesses, while helping no one.
Public choice theory tells us that they help politicians who would like to campaign on the back of "I signed a bill ensuring access to healthy food for poor people".
I love oatmeal and eat loads of it, but we really need to avoid telling poorly-informed people that the path to cheap nutrition is to eat bland goo. You might think about it as a rhetorical example, but you need to remember that people won't remember what you say, only how you make them feel. The salient imagery in your post is living on unflavored oatmeal, and that's not appealing to anyone.
that's a good point. I didn't realize people thought of oatmeal like that. I really enjoy oatmeal. I put some bananas on it or some pumpkin seeds, or strawberries or a little bit of honey and the whole thing tastes absolutely delicious.
I put peanut butter, raisins, and walnuts in it. But before that, it was one of the few foods so bland I couldn't eat it, and I like unsalted vegetables and beets.
Tell somebody who’s staring down a box of fruity loops its not bland goo. I 100% agree with your analogy, though, I used to eat oatmeal every morning cause it’s so easy, cheap, and filling. Nowadays it’s a blueberry muffin instead, making bad life choices over here.
I put it uncooked into the blender and use it as a flour replacement. Works well as a 1:1 replacement. You need to reduce fluids about 20%. It makes great pancakes -- it does stick more and is less binding, so be prepared if you put it in a waffle iron. Probably need to use PAM to avoid a "bad time".
"consumers prefer processed foods, sodas, chips, things placed in boxes and plastic"
These things also last on the shelves for a very long time. Grains can store well, but other products like meat, fruits, vegetables, quality baked goods, etc. don't.
One would be wrong. Common food born pathogens are abundant in farm soil, generally from human or animal waste. Lettuce is much more likely to have picked up harmful pathogens at the farm than it is from customers touching it.
Other customers touching your produce should rank very, very low on your list of concerns.
meat is carcinogenic. as for fruits and vegetables, i'm hoping that someday the local food production revolution will start picking up steam and help make these more cost effective, perhaps with some automation or vertical farming. for now, focus on things you can get for less than 1$/lb like bananas, apples, bell peppers, onions, cauliflower/broccoli (when it's on sale). Cabbage 50c/lb even here in CA.
I think OP is referring to carcinogenic effects linked to red meat - in some ways it‘s healthier because its iron is the easiest to absorb, in some ways it‘s not by giving you 20% or so higher risk of intestinal cancer if you consume more than a certain amount - don’t remember the details. My stance is, duh, everything at the right dose (like 30-50g per day on average would be my bet for red meat and red fish). Plenty of animal protein sources are AFAIK not linked to adverse effects as long as you‘re not overstressing your kidneys, i.e. eggs, white meat/fish, cheese.
There's also some evidence that high levels of iron are linked to intestinal cancer.[0] So maybe the meat is just a proxy of iron. My takeaway is that the links between X food and Y disease are still largely a mystery. The correlation may be there, but the cause is not understood.
There is some evidence suggesting an association between red meat consumption and colorectal cancers. I don't think the link is well-enough understood to suggest it's a causal one, but I also don't think it's any longer supported to flatly dismiss any possible links out of hand like that.
Actually Turkish food generally of good quality. OTOH, lots of the food items sold in "normal" supermarkets all over the country is made in China. For example, it is like 90% of all apple juice sold in the US made from Chinese concentrate,
Interesting! May I ask what tipped you off? I admit to wondering about the difference in ingredients, whether the chalk (do they still use that?) supplier is different, etc.
An oatmeal recipe that I also consume for years: oatmeal, chocolate pillows (less than 5g sugar in total; that means around 10 of them (with the brand I use at least)), nuts, chia seeds, flax seeds, and some milk - not a lot of milk, though.
To me, it tastes perfectly and has high content of fiber, protein and carbs, keeps you full for quite some time.
> You really have to differentiate between the food that's offered at a dollar store and everything else.
Wouldn't you also need to differentiate between your ability to get to everything else vs getting to the dollar store compared to the population around you?
Very refreshing to see people posting this plain simple reality. Not only is there plenty of cheap healthy food, if people wanted more of it—BAM—capitalism would be there in two shakes of a lamb’s tail to sell them whatever they want.
I think something people are missing here, though is that when you’re poor you work multiple jobs and commute into the city you work in but can’t afford to live in. You don’t have time to cook many nights so while you may want good healthy cheap food, you settle for the faster meal.
My family was on welfare growing up. Most literally. We found time to make food that was cheap and nutritious (dry beans, dry lentils, cheap chicken parts). That’s how we got out of poverty. It’s the only way out of poverty. Saying something is difficult isn’t constructive, productive or particularly interesting.
Congratulation on getting out of poverty. That truly is something to be proud of. Do not, however, assume that your story is the story of thousands of others. Doing so isn't constructive or productive and could be harmful.
So, ban all advertising of processed foods. Run dense campaigns of public health adverts for fresh fruit and veg. Promote organic farming and tax poor quality foods savagely.
Is this capitalism? Maybe not, but pretty quickly there'll be lots of folks looking to eat healthy.
It's fairly obvious that grocery stores would not want to be in poor neighborhoods. This article paints it all as segregation / race issue which is inaccurate where it is really an issue of purchasing power of the community. While many poor neighborhoods are communities of color - dollar stores have their origin and largest footprint in rural America which is predominantly white.
I am currently in the rural south and have to say you have a VERY valid point. You have to go many miles for an actual grocery store, but can find various discount small box stores as easy as a gas station.
Although, I do remember when I was young [in the last century], visiting for holidays, there were general stores and country markets at an even larger scale.
An odd example of the loss of 'small town business' by replacing it with branded chains.
> This article paints it all as segregation / race issue which is inaccurate where it is really an issue of purchasing power of the community
The purchasing power of the community, especially in the US, does reflect that it very well indeed could be a segregation / race issue still lingering.
You have to remember that especially in the South, segregation was not that long ago for the tail end of baby boomers (1960-70's in Louisiana and 1980-90's in Mississippi). Coming from a small town in the South you can see many local and state policies still are evolving from housing & hiring policies, geographical issues, and educational issues before the civil right era.
> dollar stores have their origin and largest footprint in rural America which is predominantly white.
Based on the maps shown in the article were Dollar General has a higher density of stores [1] vs a racial map of the US [2] that does not seem to be true. It seems that Dollar General has a higher ratio (in terms of their presence) where black people live.
The big dollar store chains are mostly real estate schemes.
Inner city urban areas are served by bodegas and dollar stores. It’s not about consumer buying power — the margins are actually higher for these stores. The issue is that the grocery store model doesn’t work in the traditional 20,000-30,000 urban footprint anymore, as nobody can compete with WalMart for the stuff in the aisles.
Instead of enhancing margins with fancy cheese and overpriced pre-prepared fresh food, bodegas cash in on convenience faire, lotto, tobacco, etc. The rural equivalent is the super size gas station.
Why are products more expensive in poor neighborhoods? If there were real profits to be reaped, certainly stores would be moving in and enjoying high profit margins rather than leaving.
The answer should lie elsewhere and it does. Cost of doing business in those neighborhoods is very high. Vandalism and robbery jack up insurance rates. Companies don't want to deliver there because they don't want the risk, so they charge more. Shoplifting expenses must be spread across all product actually sold. If the place offers loans, they must deal with very high rates of defaults. You can't squeeze blood from a turnip. If someone doesn't pay for that car, you have to repo it, but there's a decent chance it can't be found or that you now own an unsellable car or that it was messed up, but there's no way of actually getting any money out of the responsible parties.
Finally, let's say I put a store in a nicer part of town only 15 minutes away. I get less vandalism and basically zero robbery. I get less shoplifting and lower insurance rates. I can keep the same profit margins as the guy in the poor neighborhood and still offer significantly lower prices. Because it's reasonably close to the poor neighborhood, I even get their business without all the extra risk. In the loan market, less risky clients means I can charge less interest and still make the same amount of money and have far less overhead tracking down people and things.
The real tragedy here is police. Poor neighborhoods and police don't get along. Police view everyone suspiciously (why wouldn't they when most dead and injured police show up in those same neighborhoods?). Likewise, the people living there don't trust the police because the police treat them as criminals (and like it or not, someone somewhere is always going to make a mistake that starts this downward spiral). This isn't even a race issue. Police and the poor have had this relationship going back as far as you can search no matter the race (or races) involved.
This problem could be fixed with education, but the average criminal and average police officer both have below average IQs (with it being ruled in the US that it is perfectly legal to reject police officers who have an IQ that is "too high"). If everyone in a poor neighborhood were properly educated, it would cease to be a poor neighborhood in a very short amount of time, but our education system is only interested in lip service (another problem in itself).
“Cost of doing business in those neighborhoods is very high. Vandalism and robbery jack up insurance rates.“
Oof. I was with you til this. For a large grocery store chain, the occasional vandalism/shoplifting incident is nothing. Built into the price, as they say.
The real reason they don’t operate in these areas is because a poor community spends less money than a rich community. If you have to stretch your floor space buck, you want to operate 1) in the market gap you work best in and 2) the area of best fit for that market. A Kroger, if you will, serves middle class America. Their stock, their prices, their marketing and everything else they do operates at that market. However you might see a Kroger operating in an area a bit beneath their target. You won’t ever, however, see a Whole Foods or Trader Joe’s anywhere near a poorer community.
So Dollar General and the like are filling a previously neglected niche that used to be filled by small bodegas and mercados.
Compare prices between a Dollar General in a poor neighborhood and a walmart. One of those is going to be 30% higher (even more on some things). Supermarkets have a net profit of 1-2%. If walmart could charge 30% more for the same thing, they'd build in poor neighborhoods every time. They don't because the risk is too high when a store a couple minutes away offers lower overhead, lower prices and lower risk. Walmart tried this with walmart express then killed most of them off (keeping some larger neighborhood markets in better neighborhoods) because they weren't turning a profit.
Companies like Whole Foods are not typical of grocery chains. They will go wherever their niche is located. That would be like complaining there aren't Swiss watch stores on every corner. There is something to be said for branding and location, but even Walmart with their "
You're making a lot of different claims here. You may be right about insurance etc, although the rent will be lower too... but I think there are much simpler explanations for why some things are more expensive in the shops in poorer neighbourhoods.
Staff are a big expense anywhere, and if they spend their time on $10 purchases instead of $100 purchases, then the margins have to be higher. That's basically why Costco is cheaper than 7/11. Isn't this just the same thing?
But that doesn't mean that a company with the resources of Kroger couldn't also manage a brand that aimed significantly lower.
In Arizona, there's a local grocery chain (Bashas') that's been around since before WWII. They have three very distinct brands-- the mainstream brand, a decidedly lower-class brand with a string Hispanic focus, and a deluxe brand which seems to target a more foodie, but similarly affluent audience to Whole Foods.
It's the low purchasing power of the customer base, and a higher proportion of theft, shrinkage and vandalism in poorer neighbourhoods eroding profits further. Profit margin on grocery items isn't high to begin with.
> “It advertises hard-to-beat low prices but it offers little in terms of fresh produce and nutritious items—further trapping residents in a cycle of poverty and ill-health.”
The elitism here is sickening. Why shouldn’t the author just come out and say “We know what’s best and have to control the stores around poor people or they might buy junk food.”
I hope people who think this way never end up in a position to influence actual laws or policies.
It's not elitism to talk about the very real link between an abundance of unhealthy foods and an unhealthy lifestyle, and the secondary link between areas of increased poverty and a lack of access to healthy foods.
America is freaking fat, man. Like really, really fat. Over 35% of people are obese! I'd say the proof of people knowing best what to eat is in the pudding, so let's stop crying about illuminati control of our lunch options and start looking at how we can encourage healthier eating.
I live in a rural area and I go to "my" Dollar General so much I know all the people who work there.
I'm not going to the Dolla G to do grocery shopping. I'm going there to get stuff like glue sticks, tooth paste, paper, tape, etc I need in a pinch. The only groceries I'm buying at the DG are eggs in an emergency and beer. Every once in a while I'll get a frozen pizza if I'm exhausted and don't feel like cooking because the closest fast food is 15 more minutes away. I'm sure it's the same for most people who shop for groceries weekly.
This whole argument doesn't make any sense to me and completely misunderstands the role DGs play in rural communities: saving you an hour round trip to Walmart if you just need a fucking bottle of shampoo.
They do...they're called Democrats. Haha in all seriousness... people who write things like this have no idea what it's like to live poor in general. Or to live in an area where Dollar General is the closest thing for 30 miles. They're not the cause of poverty, they're one of the few stores that will open a business in unserved communities.
I must have missed something in the article. the main cons I gleaned are
- some items are not as cheap as walmat/costco like Fluor
- they dont create as much jobs as traditional grocery stoes ( 9 vs 14)
I assume the folks who are struggling are not stupid .. and have looked at every conceivable way of stretching their dollar and judging by the demand it (Dollar store) is providing a valuable service.
I take another exception to the approach this article takes .. instead of complaining about dollar stores moving into poor/urban areas why are they giving a pass to the established grocery chains for moving out ? it seems like providing 9 employment positions is better than the 0 being offered by the other stores.
> I assume the folks who are struggling are not stupid .. and have looked at every conceivable way of stretching their dollar
One might assume. Possibly the biggest trouble of dollar stores is that a lot of the "deals" are the result of simply selling things in smaller quantities. The next time you visit a Dollar Tree, compare the actual amount that you get for something like flour, oatmeal, detergent... really anything, to the sizes sold at normal stores. Things are often cheaper at Dollar Tree and Family Dollar because the containers are smaller, often 2/3 size, and sometimes the price for goods at dollar is more than elsewhere when adjusted for quantity. There are some deals to be found at Dollar Stores, but it's not as if similar deals can't be found at normal stores. Dollar Stores compete because of perception.
I occasionally stroll into a 99 Cents Only store and there was a time when they had big juicy mangoes for 1/3 of the price of the mangos at the local Ralphs or Vons. I bought some on the spot and they were delicious. But that's one of the ways that dollar stores get new believers; they will have a few really good deals on things that aren't really essential, like mangos, to get people to think "wow!" and assume that all the other low prices around them are just as good of a deal.
> The next time you visit a Dollar Tree, compare the actual amount that you get for something like flour, oatmeal, detergent... really anything, to the sizes sold at normal stores.
Many financially constrained people have a cash flow problem - they often end up spending more as you said.
However, buying larger quantities is still not an option because the money is simply not there. Being able to plan out a month is a luxury in some ways.
Exactly. It's one of the biggest issues in trying to help people out of poverty. As Sam Vimes's "Boot Theory" sums it up:
>The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money.
>Take boots, for example. He earned thirty-eight dollars a month plus allowances. A really good pair of leather boots cost fifty dollars. But an affordable pair of boots, which were sort of OK for a season or two and then leaked like hell when the cardboard gave out, cost about ten dollars. Those were the kind of boots Vimes always bought, and wore until the soles were so thin that he could tell where he was in Ankh-Morpork on a foggy night by the feel of the cobbles.
>But the thing was that good boots lasted for years and years. A man who could afford fifty dollars had a pair of boots that'd still be keeping his feet dry in ten years' time, while the poor man who could only afford cheap boots would have spent a hundred dollars on boots in the same time and would still have wet feet.
>This was the Captain Samuel Vimes 'Boots' theory of socioeconomic unfairness.
It's essentially true. Poorer people have to buy the smaller quantities/cheaper materials because it's all they can afford. And because of that, they end up having to buy it more often, often spending more in the long run. I'm actively trying to change my wardrobe now that I've realized that, and buy clothes that will last longer as opposed to cheaper ones that I have to replace more often. Thankfully, I have the money to do so, but many do not.
I like the boot story as much as the next guy, but is this actually true in the real world? By which I mean something like this: In what categories of products do rich people actually spend less than poor people? Are there any?
It's certainly true that top-end clothing lasts longer than cheap stuff. But the people who buy it like nice things, and variety. Maybe car repairs? But probably a trick of counting the new-car service plan as part of the purchase price.
Rich people can afford to buy white goods. They can buy online using a credit card (and pay off the balance before they're charged interest).
Poor people have to buy on hire purchase or using payday loans, which end up being significantly more expensive.
Wealthy people in the UK can buy their utilities using direct debit, which is normally cheaper than paying the bill as it comes in. Poor people may be on a pre-payment token meter. These used to be more expensive than a normal bill.
These are all true, but they are weaker examples than the boots, where the rich guy bought a higher quality version of something which both needed, and still saved money.
A cheap used car will get you where you want to go, but will cost more in maintenance and fuel to get that job done. It will need to be replaced more frequently than the car purchased by someone who will buy new or who will purchase a 'new-ish' used car, and when the time comes for replacement the rich guy will probably have some residual value in the car while the cheap car is probably being replaced because it is no longer operable.
I agree that this could in principle happen, for some values of cars. It could also literally happen with shoes, you can walk a lot more miles in $200 hiking boots than in four pairs of $50 sneakers. And in GGP's example, someone with time to shop around, and a credit card could buy the exact same crappy microwave for $40 online, instead of $50 downtown right now.
What I'm disputing is that this is anything like the pattern, and that this is useful for thinking about poverty. People with more money spend more money on their cars, their clothes, their kitchens. They aren't staying rich by their ability to save 5% on their (larger) electricity bills by paying on time.
The thing is that it all adds up, and poor people are constantly being forced to repurchase simple things. Yes, well off people might spend more on cars, clothes, etc., but they don't have to do it as often. Overtime, the fact that poorer people have to buy more often adds up to them spending more money. Plus, it means they don't have any time to save up the money, since they always have to worry about replacing something frequently as opposed to 10 years from now.
I've seen it with people buying jeans for work. Buying the cheapest quality jeans possible from a Rural King, and then having to buy another pair again in a few months. Same with tennis shoes from Payless Shoes, for instance, versus buying Nike.
In my case, saving money by buying nuts in bulk is like a frat house saving money by ordering kegs.
More seriously I've also saved money by having a prepaid phone plan which was a lot more expensive per minute. And by buying super-cheap ice skates which I'm sure would have worn out after 10 times... and throwing them out when I moved soon after. In other words, sometimes the simple calculation by which a more durable item is cheaper, leaves out important things.
For cars, you have to look no further than the type of car a person can buy to see this in action. Poorer people can't afford as nice cars, which means their cars are likely to be older and more likely to need repairs and break. Which costs them more money. And they'll need to buy a new car sooner, which costs even more money. Even look at buying in bulk versus buying singly. It's more expensive right away, but often lasts longer and comes with more, meaning you have to buy less often and save money in the long run. It's pretty much all the same concept.
Many people say this. I'm sure you can invent examples where a cheap car is indeed a false economy. But I'm pretty sure that, on average, total money spend on car per annum will be strictly increasing with income.
It would be interesting to have some actual data. An easy thing would be to look across countries, are there any cases where a poorer country has a larger (in absolute terms!) motor sector than a richer one? I would be surprised, this is certainly not the pattern.
There's two problems with this. (1) It does no good to look at just pure money spent. You need to look at it in terms of percentage spent per year. And I'd say it does easily favor the rich, especially since they can often get loans and get a better deal on interest rates that poor people often can't.
(2) It does no good to compare across countries either. The necessity of a car is a distinctly American thing. In many countries you can get by without one thanks to public transportation or walking. America's poorest often don't have either of those luxuries, thus it'd be impossible to compare to poorer countries.
That said, I do know it effects clothes pretty heavily. I've bought two pairs of cheap tennis shoes this year. Now, I knew they were cheap and that they likely wouldn't last long and I didn't need them to, which is why I went ahead and got them. But for some that's all they can afford. If they go through three pairs, they've spent around $60-70, which is enough for one good pair that would last over a year. But they often don't have that money to drop on one good pair, and thus have to keep buying cheap ones. It's even more prevelant with boots, because they're more expensive.
And it happens with clothes too, especially when people have to wear the same thing to work regularly, and thus often wear the same two or three pairs of jeans. They wear out quicker, and if they're buying cheaper material, it happens faster too.
Do you hold that people earning (say) 30k actually spend more dollars on clothing than people earning 50k, per annum? (In similar job types, similar area, etc.) This is the claim of the boot story, and I don't buy it.
Although it would be nice to have data. I guess the technical term is something like "inferior good", and I thought such things were rare beasts, not such broad categories as clothing. (Perhaps things like fake-leather belts would qualify).
Do they spend a larger proportion of their income on clothing? This could go either way, I think, rent hurts. But that's a different question to the boot one: If they spend more only in proportion, not in dollars, then they spend the same or less!
That, I am not disputing. It doesn't change the fact that people probably aren't finding many bargains at such places. Dollar stores basically make being poor viable, but there's little if any dollar-stretching going on. Having been poor myself at times, I do understand that smaller quantities are often the better choice, but they should not be mistaken as bargains.
Having known other poor people, a lot of them(as in not all) indeed think that they are finding bargains at dollar stores. Nobody wants to hear this, but a significant portion of the lower-income segment are in their situation because of their mindset.
“I assume the folks who are struggling are not stupid .. and have looked at every conceivable way of stretching their dollar and judging by the demand it (Dollar store) is providing a valuable service.”
I don’t believe this assumption is correct, but I also don’t think the individuals are stupid. It’s still true, however, that one can act against their long term interests when they are too poor to consider the long term over the short term. It’s not stupid; it’s just surviving. They may only be shopping at these stores because they’re the only ones close by and they simply don’t have the luxury of time to suss out alternatives.
Cash flow problems compound extremely quickly and a lot of “everyday” stuff ends up hitting this quickly.
If you’re scraping by in normal circumstances and then have any car trouble, you’ll probably end up buying the 6 pack of eggs instead of 12 pack, simply because you can’t afford 12
> On average, a person preoccupied with money problems exhibited a drop in cognitive function similar to a 13-point dip in IQ, or the loss of an entire night’s sleep.
This article is maddening on many levels. All they manage to prove is that dollar stores, like many other types of stores, go where they perceive their customers to be. They aren’t a causative factor behind poverty or racial segregation, though they managed to inject that deeply into the storyline.
I dislike dollar stores, but not for any of the reasons listed here. The folks pushing back in Vermont aren’t angry about dollar stores for the reasons being dissected in this piece - instead, they seem to dislike massive, soulless retail chains showing up and profiting off their community.
How about instead writing about the fact that Whole Foods doesn’t open retail stores in communities of color? That probably doesn’t play as well to their affluent white audience who probably has disdain for dollar stores but shops at Whole Foods on the regular.
Every year for Christmas my wife continues a small family tradition: every year we go there and buy stocking stuffers for our small family.
It's definitely a different experience than going to a grocery store for sure. It's almost like you have a department store or modern pharmacies like CVS with the food capabilities of a gas station or 7-Eleven.
I can see why it would appeal to lower-income families. If you assume they are short on time you can probably get all your shopping done in one place. It's definitely smaller than a grocery store and there are fewer options. I think this helps because if you're short on time and trying to get in and out of there you have to spend less time in the store and there's less cognitive overload trying to figure out what to get.
Most grocery stores I've been to have unit prices somewhere on the shelf. They're noticeably absent and I have to do the math sometimes.
I can understand residents being upset about these stores being subsidized by local government. It makes me wonder what the alternate solutions are. I assume they're getting subsidized since stores are fleeing or they don't want to open up shop. If that's true I don't think those stores are coming back unless they're even more heavily subsidized.
Is the solution more Aldi's or Lidl's? I've found that there's a "feel bad" for me going in those stores compared to a normal grocery store.
Yes! And more and more they have organic or no pesticides food. Aldi is the store I miss most since leaving the Midwest :/ such good fresh food for relatively little money
I normally like CityLab, but the tone of this article really grates on me. Calling dollar stores parasites? The article casually notes that without these stores many poor or minority communities would be true retail deserts, but it offers no workable alternatives. Only invective.
Every Dollar General I've ever been in has dairy, eggs, a competent selection of canned and dry goods (pasta, beans, etc), baking goods, and a good (if basic) selection of fresh fruits and vegetables.
It's not the dollar store's fault if the surrounding community insists on frozen pizzas and soda.
Yeah, this does kind of feel like condemning people for having the gall to not shop at Trader Joe's.
Realistically, what's the difference between Dollar General and Woolworth's 5¢ & 10¢ stores? What's the difference between Amazon and the Sears Roebuck Mail Order Catalog? The names have changed, but merchandise really hasn't.
There was a Bloomberg article from not too long ago where one real estate analyst described the dollar store companies as betting on the existence of a permanent underclass in America. That might be the subtext this article is driving at.
I make really good money for my area (I'm not in the US), but I still prefer to buy some things at dollar stores or the cheap store brands at regular stores. Some things it's just not worth paying twice as much for name brand things.
There's a brand of microfiber cloths I buy to clean my truck and car and it's the same exact brand in the dollar store and the supermarket that are next door to each other but it's literally twice as much in the supermarket.
It's pieces of fabric that will end up covered in grime and grease, why should I pay twice as much?
> It's pieces of fabric that will end up covered in grime and grease, why should I pay twice as much?
I know you said it's the same product so this doesn't apply directly, but I was reminded of something that happened to me.
I was buying sponges, and the store-brand knockoffs were about half as much as the name brand sponges. They had the same yellow/green design, and they're just sponges... why not get the cheaper ones?
When I got home and used the sponges, I noticed that they were leeching green dye onto everything I used the sponges on, even for at least a few days after using a new sponge. I never noticed significant staining from the sponge runoff, but it's also not worth $3 every few months to not have to wonder if my sponges are going to dye my food/dishes/whatever I'm cleaning green.
Anyways, I don't really have a point here, it's just really annoying that I think of these sponges every time I'm buying the cheaper knockoff products.
> It's pieces of fabric that will end up covered in grime and grease, why should I pay twice as much?
Because someone might think you're poor and omygodwecanthavethatwhatwillpeoplethink!?
But honestly social signaling is a huge part of why people buy brand-name stuff. Sometimes it's actually better, often it's just better marketing. Many times the higher price creates the psychological effect of enjo9ying the item more.
There are some food deserts in expensive urban areas, too, and drug stores serve the role there, not really that different from dollar stores. It's not a uniquely poor phenomenon.
This doesn't really make sense to me on several levels - including the fact it is possible to eat perfectly healthy frozen and canned fruits and vegetables - a bit more additives in the case of canned but frozen if anything is likely better nutritionally due to being frozen at peak freshness. They just might taste a bit worse.
I wonder how much of the issue is cultural and institutional knowledge as opposed to economic. Poverty alone doesn't ensure lack of healthy cooking, the skills involve and time aren't free or universally possessed. One can't just handwave away the labor costs of auto repair for everyone because they know how to fix their own car.
Cynically the 'backlash' it seems more like a 'keep the poor out' move than anything else.
While these communities are snubbing Dollar General and Family Dollar -- most of rural America welcomes them with open arms, because they stock roughly the same sorts of things as a CVS or Walgreens, but actually build out in a county of a few thousand, and the one next over.
A few decades prior, Walmart built up a retail empire through its willingness to build on the outskirts of rural, far-from-everything-else towns that only had gas stations, ailing downtowns, and maybe a small grocery store, but definitely not a supermarket. But even Walmart's best-in-class coverage leaves large tracts out, and these gaps are filled in by the sorts of Dollar General, for when you don't need to go to the Walmart another twenty, or forty minutes away.
In more populated, more urban areas, grocery stores have shed locations in neighborhoods that were faltering, further contributing to these locales' decline. These are interrelated. It's easy to claim that variety stores don't do enough about food deserts or that they even contribute to the problem (by not stocking enough fresh, perishable foods), but at least they're trying, while other national chain stores have pursued a pragmatic strategy that has largely removed them from this issue.
I once expressed, in a comment on a Strong Towns post [1], that when you consider settlement patterns, urban form, structural poverty, and food insecurity, perhaps you'll find that it's more sensible to subsidize fresh food delivery to people who could least afford it, but such a solution might find itself at odds with the solutions that (new) urbanists would prefer. It might not alter the structural status quo, but it could improve real outcomes in real people's lives.
And as for nonperishables and non-food, bulk packaging is a discount accessible to those with access (e.g. warehouse club), transportation, storage, and able to cover a higher upfront cost for a lower per-unit cost. These are all harder on low or unpredictable incomes, which is one of the many ways poverty is quite expensive. But is this the fault of variety stores? Of course not. The real fix is much harder.
“What if we went to these neighborhoods and didn't assume that poor people or communities of color do not want to eat healthy?”
You can lead a horse to water. You cannot make it drink.
I don't know how to fix this. I grew up in a home where food was very important. There was a garden out back and my mother cooked from scratch, etc. In recent years, I've been quite poor, including spending some of that time homeless.
My firsthand observation of other poor people is that most of them seem to cut the food budget first. Anecdotally, when I finally got off the street by moving into a cheap rental, many other residents clearly smoked cigarettes and/or marijuana. They tended to stay up all night. I wasn't disturbed by their behavior because I couldn't hear them in my room, but I could hear them anytime I went down the hall to the bathroom.
The character of the residents has changed in the time I have been here. I think the presence of my family is a factor in that. People behave better. Most people seem to sleep at night. We smell less cigarette smoke and less marijuana smoke.
We smell more food cooking in the building. I think people are smoking less because they are eating better and they probably somehow learned that from us (at least to some degree).
Do note that one reason a lot of homeless people smoke is because it is an appetite suppressant. I think people were smoking so much because they weren't eating enough. Now, people are eating better and smoking less and their sleep schedules, behavior, etc all appear to be improved in the aggregate.
I know from talking with people and reading articles, etc, that a lot of poor Americans have this idea that eating well is some luxury they cannot afford rather than a basic necessity upon which everything else is based. They try to get cheap, convenient food. They often lack good cooking skills.
To my mind, poverty and health problems grow out of this broken mental model. I don't know how we fix it, but I don't think just making sure there are stores selling fresh produce fixes it. When I was homeless, bananas and oranges were frequently given for free to homeless people and I sometimes saw other homeless folks just leave it on a sidewalk somewhere.
I really think we need to figure out how to promote healthier eating in the US. I don't think that actually starts with stores per se. I don't know where it starts. But we have this bizarre idea that "health care" happens at a doctor's office instead of seeing diet and lifestyle as the foundations of health that they actually are. Americans tend to have lousy diets and then high medical bills.
I lived on $2 a day for a couple of years[0], that was left after rent, bills and tobacco. Tobacco is taxed out the wazoo here in Australia, $30+ a bag. I didn't think about stopping.. As long as you can afford a luxury like that, you have your human dignity. Or something like that. Maybe if a bag of oranges was $35 and tobacco $3, fruit would be the essential luxury..
"The only thing that can console one for being poor is extravagance. The only thing that can console one for being rich is economy." - Oscar Wilde, A Few Maxims for the Instruction of the Over-Educated
[0] I survived on pasta, home-made cereal (e.g. wheat germ + shredded coconut) and friends taking me out to lunch.
Exactly. People consume tobacco/alcohol/marijuana because, well, so do normal people. If you have never been poor, then you can't possibly understand the stress that goes into it that is often relieved only by these types of goods for many people, and the shame that already goes into giving up so much.
These articles definitely make me think the average leftist/Democrat in the United States has no idea what it's like to be poor and reliant on many public services. They'd understand not only why Dollar Stores exist, but why they are primary choices for many impoverished Americans.
Source: Been destitute and on public assistance with a child and limited access to a car.
I mean these articles in general. They aren't written by Republicans; they're written by leftists who feel they should do better and this and that. Most of the time they've never experienced poverty and why poor people make the decisions that they do, like shop at Dollar General, for example.
> I mean these articles in general. They aren't written by Republicans
Sorry to pile on here, but also: don't think you'll find any shortage of articles from the Right that also completely misunderstand what it's like to be broke.
I think you’ve taken the right-wing bait a little too to heart here. In the US, most young people, most women, and most ethnic minorities are Democratic-Learning, and I’m speculating those are also the groups most affected by poverty.
He's talking about how the rich young twitteratti of the knowledge class have no idea what poverty is, and yes, most of them are politically leftist. The people affected by poverty aren't writing articles bewailing dollar stores, it's the rich people in the process of gentrifying small towns who hate them.
I would agree that most young people are leftist, and most people in the knowledge class are leftist. I'm not going to agree that most rich people are leftist or most people on Twitter are leftist. I am willing to go along with most people matching all of {rich, young, knowledge class, on Twitter} are leftist, although I've no idea if it's true.
However, extrapolating that to the OP's point of:
> the average leftist/Democrat in the United States has no idea what it's like to be poor and reliant on many public services
really doesn't follow at all. The numbers are clear that really poor people heavily skew Democrat. In summary:
Less than $30k: 20%R to 43%D
$30-50k: Equal split
$75-150k: 33%R to 30%D
$150+: Equal split
It feels impossible to go from these numbers to the Op's conclusion, although I would accept the modification of it to "the average person in the United States, of either party affiliation, has no idea what it's like to be poor and reliant on many public services". Suggesting that's more true of Democrats is simply not factual, the numbers suggest though.
Articles like this (and this approach is extremely common) push ideological propaganda instead of actual understanding about what is dessicating the middle and lower classes.
The term “white flight” is a nonsense, ideological term only used by a very fringe group.
Real economists and analysts talk about globalization, inflation, trade, shift from manufacturing to service economy etc. the things that are most harming African Americans and Hispanics are not Dollar General stores.
At least in my city (Chicago), the term "white flight" refers to a specific time period with quantifiable demographic shifts (that occurred due to the "Great Migration" out of Mississippi). My Japanese grandparents also fled to the North Side during this period.
This person has unilaterally made a judgement from afar about what people “should be eating” and wants to ban them from getting what is affordable and attainable.
I looked hard to find anything resembling a problem with Dollar stores. What exactly can be pinned on them? Providing cost-effective food to neglected neighborhoods? That's painted as some sort of tragedy, but it seems to stem from a privileged point of view. "No fresh olives; no nine-grain bread" is not a tragedy.
The reason that there are places where the only grocery stores are dollar stores is because the people who live in those places are overwhelmingly poor. If you want these people to buy fresh produce and live like middle class people, you need to figure out a way to bring them out of poverty.
I agree. To me, this seems like a software patch I put in place to resolve some symptoms, but I did not go back and figure out my design was the real problem, and now the patch has created other issues I have to address. And pretty soon I have reached the "hard to remember the original chore was draining the swap" situation...
Fruit and vegetables are ludicrously cheap where I live at Farmer's Markets and such that are open normal hours, year-round. People still love buying boxed and processed food for many, many reasons. If the fruit and veggies got 20% cheaper I am positive it would only help the people already buying the very cheap produce and attract basically no new business.
This has been an ongoing issue near me @ Joshua Tree, CA [1] [2].
I don't know all the details, just what I've heard some people involved share about it on various local podcasts like Desert Lady Diaries [3]. It sounds like a major objection is the presence of a Dollar General casts an area as impoverished, making it less attractive to potential transplants/investors/tourists. Joshua Tree residents and business owners are trying like hell to distinguish the area from its surroundings as a classy enclave full of artists, and want to do their best to attract the preferred kind of investment and residents, raising the bar - not lowering it.
It is quite visible when driving through the surrounding towns. The Dollar General stores, definitely leave a crappy impression. I visited one once just to see what they sold, and the sliced bread loaves on the shelves were moldy, some had insects visible inside. NOPE.
I hadn't noticed until this year but many dollar stores in the suburbs near me carry less groceries than other stores in the - uhm - rougher parts of town. I found out that their lease often limits them to selling "snacks only" if there is another grocery store in the same plaza, which in one case includes just a Target. Go visit one that's more stand-alone and you'll see more grocery selection.
I don't see a lot of evidence to support the thesis.
"When a dollar store opened up in Haven, Kansas—subsidized through tax breaks by the local government—sales at the the nearby Foodliner grocery store dropped by 30 percent, "
This seems to be a case of a specific kind of competition, and the Dollar Store is good at that.
The corporation is 'extra evil' for selling stuff cheaper than the 'normally evil corporation' down the street? These arguments are really hard.
As long as produce is available - and by all reasoning it is ... then remaining conclusions are a stretch.
Cheaper prices are generally good for consumers, especially the most vulnerable.
Also should note that it is 'fresh produce' that tends to be the cheapest food. 'Processing' is where the cost is, ergo, and maybe thankfully, processed foods will be more expensive.
There were riots in Baltimore a few years ago. The street gangs used it as an excuse to knock over every pharmacy, shoe store, and liquor store.
This destroyed years of work trying to get stores to build there. Among many others, Target decided it was no longer worth the risk and moved out. They also ended up cancelling projects in other cities, such as DC.
When a city is not competent at providing for basic things like safety and security, it becomes a high risk area, and many businesses will limit their exposure. Small dollar stores are a form of that. Vacant store fronts are another.
I think there's enough clearanace stuff there that it might be helping to cut down on waste. It's surprising how much junk there is there, and much of it looks like it wasn't intended to wind up at a dollar store. If not for a dollar store would it wind up at a landfill?
We hardly have grocery stores anymore even here in affluent north-central New Jersey. Walmart, Sams, and Target came in, and quite a few of the old line stores closed, helped along by the A&P debacle. Then they closed the Sam's near us, so the nearest market that sells fresh food is around 10 miles away. I'm no expert on the economics of selling food, but the current situation seems like a lot to lay on the dollar stores.
I never buy food at these stores but dollar tree is shit for random household stuff! Sponges, dish soap, batteries, baby wipes, light bulbs, you name it just a dollar. Don’t carry everything you need but if they do it’s usually about 1/2 the price at Walmart and 1/4 what it costs at Walgreens.
What might be the essential elements of such a campaign? In other words, if you believe in “white flight”, I assume you think they did so for a reason or set of reasons.
Have those reasons changed? Have the conditions changed? Other than relatively inexpensive land, what’s the motivation for a group who decided to move out to move back?
I've actually wanted to do a documentary on dollar stores, and their proliferation as wages became more stagnant or fell. This idea came to me maybe 8 or 10 years ago. The punch line of the film (although different than this article) would be that they wouldn't be truly helpful until cars and houses became a dollar.
When I was living in Berkeley as a poor student, dollar tree was the only thing I could afford. I must say I never missed them, their products were the lowest of the lowest quality and now every morning and thank God that I make enough money to not worry about groceries.
