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The Dollar Store Backlash Has Begun (citylab.com)
The U.S. has added 10,000 of these budget retail outlets since 2001. But some towns and cities are trying to push back. From a report: A recent research brief [PDF] by the Institute of Local Self Reliance (ILSR), a nonprofit supporting local economies, sheds light on the massive growth of this budget enterprise. Since 2001, outlets of Dollar General and Dollar Tree (which bought Family Dollar in 2015) have grown from 20,000 to 30,000 in number. Though these "small-box" retailers carry only a limited stock of prepared foods, they're now feeding more people than grocery chains like Whole Foods, which has around 400-plus outlets in the country. In fact, the number of dollar-store outlets nationwide exceeds that of Walmart and McDonalds put together -- and they're still growing at a breakneck pace. That, ILSR says, is bad news. "While dollar stores sometimes fill a need in cash-strapped communities, growing evidence suggests these stores are not merely a byproduct of economic distress," the authors of the brief write. "They're a cause of it."
Dollar stores have succeeded in part by capitalizing on a series of powerful economic and social forces -- white flight, the recent recession, the so-called "retail apocalypse" -- all of which have opened up gaping holes in food access. But while dollar store might not be causing these inequalities per se, they appear to be perpetuating them. The savings they claim to offer shoppers in the communities they move to makes them, in some ways, a little poorer. Using code made public by Jerry Shannon, a geographer at University of Georgia, CityLab made a map showing the spread of dollar stores since the recession.
Dollar stores have succeeded in part by capitalizing on a series of powerful economic and social forces -- white flight, the recent recession, the so-called "retail apocalypse" -- all of which have opened up gaping holes in food access. But while dollar store might not be causing these inequalities per se, they appear to be perpetuating them. The savings they claim to offer shoppers in the communities they move to makes them, in some ways, a little poorer. Using code made public by Jerry Shannon, a geographer at University of Georgia, CityLab made a map showing the spread of dollar stores since the recession.
I've never been to a dollar store. I went to a Big Lots a couple of times and that was enough. My motto is: "if it's not at Farm & Fleet you probably don't need it."
Comparing dollar stores to Whole Foods is a joke, not only because they have nearly 2 orders of magnitude less stores but Whole Foods has ridiculous prices in comparison. The notion that they're making communities worse off is mostly absurd. The small part that it's not is that other grocery stores with more reasonable prices do exist and provide an even better value, even if they often require more effort to access. The problem is, that truth is pretty much wholly true only so long as people spend their money wisely in those other grocery stores or any potential savings will be lost.
But, yes, please continue this rant against dollar stores.
We have one near us - it’s not a grocery store. It is a great place to buy greeting cards, gift wrap (or gift bags), stuff like that. The kind of stuff which is priced unreasonably high elsewhere.
Seriously - why should a paper birthday card cost seven or eight bucks? Why should a gift bag cost ten dollars or more?
#DeleteChrome
isn't really that good. Family Dollar is a good example of this. Their canned beans are pretty cheap (unless you buy bulk dried beans) The Dollar smaller packages, or charges more for items than local stores.
If you look (in season) most people live close to a local farmers market. Their prices are usually much lower than local stores. Dollar stores in general don't have anything fresh that I've ever seen.
As far as things like meat, I don't think I've seen anything except hot dogs or canned chicken in the dollar stores.
Finally if you're financially constrained (receiving social services support), you don't get much "fresh" food from food banks, more government cheese. maybe some honey or rice.
I do some shopping at wal-mart, mostly buying their loss leaders, like their giant jars of pickles, never anything in the Meat Department because their prices and quality are not up to par with other local stores.
We have one near us - it’s not a grocery store. It is a great place to buy greeting cards, gift wrap (or gift bags), stuff like that. The kind of stuff which is priced unreasonably high elsewhere.
Your Dollar Tree store might be smaller than the one that's about 1.5 miles from my home. It has a party supplies aisle (as you mentioned), a food aisle (mostly snacks), a health and beauty aisle, a toy aisle, and a few others I'm not remembering. I used to hit their snack aisle once every couple weeks for boxes of raisins and "fruit and grain" bars to take to work (until I learned about ALDI, that is).
Seriously - why should a paper birthday card cost seven or eight bucks?
Much of that goes into licensing the famous cartoon character that appears on an expensive Hallmark greeting card but not on the cheaper cards that Dollar Tree sells for $1.00 and Walmart sells for $0.98.
The end of the article has a statement from one of the researchers bemoaning the fact that the Kroger's in her neighborhood, which is primarily fixed income and suffered a 50% foreclosure rate during the last housing crises doesn't stock more expensive foods, "The one in a whiter, more affluent neighborhood regularly advertises grains, nuts, seafood, olives, and wine." Uh, the Kroger's in your neighborhood doesn't advertise it because they won't sell and, surprisingly, stores tend not to stock things that don't sell. That's not The Dollar Stores fault, that's caused by a raft of other issues (racism, predatory payday loan stores, the list is lengthy) but denying access to low cost goods in the hopes that the Kroger's that 15 minutes closer to you will start stocking things that the neighborhood can't afford is asinine.
Grocery stores closed in a lot of poor neighborhoods during the recession, bringing down property values even further, and Dollar Stores moved in to fill the gaps. The presence of the Dollar Stores in those neighborhoods are now keeping out the traditional grocery stores, preventing those neighborhoods from recovering fully. The Dollar Stores are are nutritional deserts, and not really cheaper than grocery stores, so this is a losing situation all around.
(Posting this because I was curious, and annoyed that I was forced to skim the actual article. Skim! Outrage.)
I live in a rural area, and in places like this the dollar stores are built to fill in the gaps between the Walmarts. They are geographically dispersed roughly every 10-15 miles where there is any kind of "populated area". Here, at least, where it is rural, they are providing a needed service.
Walmarts and the big gas stations along the interstates have killed off most of the independent gas stations and country stores that used to serve the small (1000 people) populated areas. You used to go to these stores for the basic stuff - bread, milk, candy bars, snack stuff. Most also had a small variety of hardware, fishing and hunting related stuff, and sometimes a small deli or grill. These are pretty much all gone. They used to be along state routes every several miles, and they enjoyed enough traffic to do well. The interstates took a great deal of volume (especially through traffic) off those roads and condensed them into major arteries. Those arteries have extremely limited points of access, and the land at each exit is so incredibly expensive that only huge chains can afford to have a business presence there.
So, most of these small stores have gone out of business. Now if you needed to run to the store because your propane lighter ran out of fuel and you couldn't light your grill, or the kids were pestering for batteries for their game controller, you had to travel 25-30 minutes to the regional Walmart. Dollar stores are filling those empty holes. They didn't cause them (well, certainly they have run some mom and pop places out of business, but the majority of the damage was already done a decade or more ago). Around here in the boonies, it's a welcome sight having a store like this within a few minutes of home.
In this area, they have popped up in the very rural country areas in the last 2-3 years. The local stores went out of business well before that.
Better known as 318230.
I live in remote rural Appalachia. The last couple of years have seen an influx of Dollar General stores al over the region. They have opened in isolated communities that had NOTHING. Not even a place to buy a coke or a pack of gum. At Dollar General you can buy household supplies, clothes, food, all sorts of things that make life easier, far easier than driving 50 miles to a Walmart.
This article is myopic and is only concerned with ghetto people who might live 5 miles from a decent grocery store. Try living 50 miles from one and see if Dollar General is a problem. To folks around here it is welcome and improves quality of life.
Listen - cheap goods aren't a magic bullet cause of economic stress.
If I made a farming robot that grew a variety of high quality food for $0.05 a kilogram, and sold it to people for $0.07 a kilogram, it would mean that a lot of folks would be spending less money - and I might even put some types of business out of a market niche - but that does NOT have to cause mass poverty.
Rather, it causes a limited market failure. Market failures are where the ideals of 'free markets' break down - because they tend to happen when there isn't any room for incentives left.
I'd say this is ideally where the basic role of government lies. Government in this case meaning a group of people that decides common shared action for their mutual shared benefit.
When goods are too cheap for markets to pay people a living wage to have them on market - that makes it a perfect role for a government to play, to literally share the burden of, for instance, making sure that no one starves from neglect, or is unable to live productive lives for not benefiting a company enough.
Those flaws are 'externalities' to a corporate mindset, but the whole reason we work together as human beings outside that mindset.
Being able to produce practically endless amounts of good quality cheap food is a legitimate cause for real celebration - I don't find the argument that because it can also cause limited market failure to be a flaw.
Back in time, corporations were things that often existed for a limited time to serve a common community need, which were then dissolved when that need was met - it's why we still have corporate charters on them.. I think that may have been a healthier way to view that balance.
I mean, we've been taxing folks to keep farms alive for generations now - it's a legitimate logical problem letting market forces eliminate our agricultural infrastructure. Basically every part of society still has some aspects of it that supersede some market ideal - no matter how capitalist we idealize ourselves to be.
Ryan Fenton
Like the subject says, you can't beat the prices of these stores for brand name items. I buy tons of stuff like cleaning products and simple food ingredients. They sell Spleda for like half the price of what grocery stores charge.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
...and say "eww ban it now."
Maw! Fire up the karma burner!
A couple wicking beds and two hydroponic ponds out in the yard provides me with enough fresh lettuce, peas, carrots, zucchini, and broccoli that I don't bother going to the grocery store for months. At first, it doesn't seem economical to grow your own veggies when looking at the prices of stuff at the store, but if you can grow enough to reduce the number of trips to the grocery store, the time and fuel savings really stack up.
Dollar stores don't provide union jobs. If they did nobody would have a problem with the goods they are selling but when union grocery stores go out of business due to high labor costs their political friends jump into action to stop the competition.
These stores are thriving because they are offering the products that people want to buy at prices that they can afford. Most sane people would not have a problem with that.
I mean, we've been taxing folks to keep farms alive for generations now - it's a legitimate logical problem letting market forces eliminate our agricultural infrastructure.
Well, especially with food there’s a legitimate argument to make that a country needs to be at least marginally self-sufficient for purposes of self-defense. In the US, for example, it’s probably true that without any subsidies the vast majority of our food production would migrate to outside our borders (a fair bit of it is there already) - which could be problematic in wartime.
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Dollar stores causes economic distress? They don't provide union jobs, true, but in our town they exist alongside Kroger and Walmart. Whole Foods certainly would never survive in their neighborhoods (I live in one). These ILSR people are pissed at dollar stores for a reason, but I can't figure out what it is.
The author is trying to make this a race thing about food. Sorry, there is no great conspiracy, they are just dollar stores. If an area has a market for "fresh food", then usually it will be filled. The reality is that either people in certain areas don't want "fresh food" or won't pay for it, so the stores that would sell it either don't offer it or they close down. This is what the market does- it fills demands in order to survive and make profit.
Dollar stores aren't trying to be grocery stores, they are supplying a limited number of long shelf-life products that *sell* to people who want it, as a convenience, in an otherwise very much non-food store. At least the ones I have been in, 80% of the store are things like housewares, cards, gifts, personal hygiene supplies, plastic goods, balloons, decor, books, games, toys, office supplies, etc.
Dollar stores are great for finding some inexpensive supplies and gifts. I go there frequently. But you have to watch their SIZES of things- the pricing is not always good for what you get and can be had cheaper at Walmart or even a grocery store. But lots of things are much cheaper than can be had anywhere else, and some things not available at all anywhere else (locally).
If the goal is for people to eat better, that requires education, which creates desire and demand, which then stimulates supply creation. Supply will not create demand. The process is not perfect, but that is generally how it works (and no other process works better in the long run).
I live in a small town that was absent a real grocery store for years. We had both a Family Dollar and a Dollar General though.
Guess what? Grocery stores weren't deciding not to come here because those dollar stores were too difficult to compete with!
It was simply a matter of analyzing the economics. Our population is only around 6,000 -- and you don't add more than a few thousand others if you add the next town over from us, along with people on the other side of the river, who live in another small town, in another state.
We finally DID get a full size grocery store here, but only because it was part of a long-term plan for a planned community of new homes that have been getting built on the outer edge of town for 5 years or so. They waited out the economic depression before constructing it, but decided it was feasible to do now.
Both dollar stores are doing about as much business as ever, BTW. They're simply the cheaper places to go for your toiletries and household items. Plus, they're more flexible in adjusting their inventory to the local community's needs. Family Dollar, out here, turns into a pretty respectable toy store around Christmastime, and then scales that back afterwards. They'll turn into a one-stop shop for your basic gardening and outdoor BBQ needs when the weather gets nicer. They NEVER claimed to be a place to buy your fresh foods though. They're just convenient for the non-perishables like you might grab to put in your kid's school lunch, or when you need something in a pinch.
I've seen these rants before about "food deserts" and the usual insinuation that racism and "white privilege" has something to do with it. Sorry, but no.... This stuff happens when either A) you live in a more rural or smaller town and the total population isn't enough for the grocery chains to cost-justify coming in, or B) you live in a high crime neighborhood that runs out the large grocers because of all the extra burdens it places on them. (I used to live in one of those areas too, and things like the requirement to hire armed security guards to patrol the parking lot and entrance, plus the fact the crime scared a lot of people off from trying to shop there in the first place, made it unsustainable for them.)
This is what sociologists call a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Years ago I worked in public health, and there was an analogous process that occurred with illegal tire dumps. Someone would be driving to the dump and decide to save the tipping fee by tossing their tire by the side of the road. Then a second person would come along with an old tire, and figuring that two tires really aren't any worse than one, he'd dump his there too. The process would snowball at an extraordinary rate, and soon you'd have hundreds, thousands, or even millions of tires. The largest were called "tire mountains", weighed tens of thousands of tons, and were too expensive to move for reprocessing. It's cheaper to build a tire reprocessing plant on site.
Here's my point: there isn't anything inherently special about that spot along the side of the road. Destiny didn't mark single it out as the future site of a tire mountain. Some random person decided to treat it as a place to dump his crap, and because people are herd animals that triggered a crap tidal wave.
There's nothing inherently special or irredeemable about shithole neighborhoods either. But once the world decides they're places to shit on, there's nothing the people living there can do about it.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
We have a "Dollar general" about four blocks from me, and yes it is not a place to buy food, but for things like you noticed your running low on Soap or deodorant or Someone in the house needs some Pepto. or aluminum foil for the BBQ grill. the ability to hop on the bike run over and get these things is great. As far as food even the poor know better, about 8 years back after a bad accident i was on disability for a stretch of three years and had to stretch a fixed income and food stamps while i recovered. in most poor areas of a city you will find two supermarket chains Aldi and Sav-a-lot both are similar and you may have to visit both to find all the ingredients to make one meal. but the Produce is usually of a good quality the meat is somewhat questionable and the store branded caned goods are in general better than the name brand stuff (i still go to aldi's for the soup) being poor is not about being stupid, its being wise with limited resources. but i m guessing this aurther knows absolutely nothing about the poor.
In rural Arizona, dollar stores spring up in those places that don't quite have the population density for a full-service grocery, where they offer local service in in competition with a big-box store that might be a 20-minute drive away. I even see them tucked into strip malls that already have supermarkets. In such places, they offer more selection in such things as school supplies. Think of them as the next step up from convenience stores.
Everyone can make the same choices. We all have the same free will. Most of us simply choose unwisely. It's not even a rich versus poor thing. Even the "rich" make many of the same stupid choices the "poor" do.
Everyone is encouraged by the same liberal media to make the same wasteful and counterproductive choices.
Vegan communists will be the first to defend nonsense like "Avocado toast".
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Even if you want to "eat healthy", there are better ways of going about it than buying into over hyped and over priced nonsense.
Simple frugal choices like cabbage versus kale.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
As others have noted true dollar stores (as opposed to stores like Dollar General which are not fixed price) are great deals for the right things. Party supplies, household goods, holiday decorations, greeting cards, etc. They're not so great on other things but you also have to figure in the cost of shopping.
Am I willing to pay 20 cents more for that can of evaporated milk I need? Sure. I'm there. The eggs are fresh but medium size for the same price as large at the grocery store? I can deal with that. And hey! This soup is less than the grocery store!
The store near me has started carrying more fresh foods such as dairy and bread. So it's not all junk food. There's aisles of decent foods as well as frozen vegetables and fruit. They know their shopping target audience.
There's no real socioeconomic boundaries to the stores around me. They're in strip malls next to upper middle class subdivisions as well as low income apartments. And they're always busy.
I'd never be able to do true grocery shopping at a dollar store. They simply don't have the inventory. But when I need picture frames, pens, paper plates, and such there's no better deal out there.