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Why Some US Cities are Fighting 'Dollar Stores' (eastbaytimes.com)
The Washington Post reports on why some U.S. cities are restricting the spread of discount "dollar stores":
Residents fear the stores deter other business, especially in neighborhoods without grocers or options for healthy food. Dollar stores rarely sell fresh produce or meats, but they undercut grocery stores on prices of everyday items, often pushing them out of business...Grocery stores run on thin profit margins -- usually between 1 and 3 percent. And they employ more workers than dollar stores to keep perishable food stocked.
"It's no longer the big-box grocery store" that threatens local businesses, said David Procter, a Kansas State University professor who studies rural grocery stores. "But it's the discount retailer that's coming to town and setting up shop right across the street."
"As the stores cluster in low-income neighborhoods," the Post writes, "their critics worry they are not just a response to poverty -- but a cause."
"It's no longer the big-box grocery store" that threatens local businesses, said David Procter, a Kansas State University professor who studies rural grocery stores. "But it's the discount retailer that's coming to town and setting up shop right across the street."
"As the stores cluster in low-income neighborhoods," the Post writes, "their critics worry they are not just a response to poverty -- but a cause."
I thought this was America, where people have choice and freedom to choose what they want to eat. If they are choosing unhealthy shit, that's their choice. There will still be some supermarket if there is a demand.
The /. related links suggested the dupe to me. Seriously?
https://news.slashdot.org/stor....
You can't be ahead of the curve, if you're stuck in a loop.
Article is just wonderful. Stores are the reason why they are poor.... right. No no, these stores are bad because they sell stuff too cheap! Undercut prices for toilet paper, soap, coca cola and doritos! Have they considered that America is a free country and if it was profitable to sell fresh food, somebody would be selling. Further, a quick google MAP search uncovers a plenty of grocery shops all over Tulsa, OK, including northern part. The hero in the article, the politician, is clear about her background: never lived outside of town.....
If produce stores can't be profitable without also selling sundries, then I guess people don't want produce bad enough.
Near where I live, there's a produce store that is always jam-packed full of people. It's like Black Friday at Walmart, all day every day. So the "produce stores can't compete" argument is BS, they just need to make prices reasonable and aim for volume. Produce sections at other grocery stores I go to don't get much traffic, though, probably because the prices are ridiculous and apparently targeted at middle-class shoppers, even the non-organic stuff.
Corruption is convincing someone that the selfless ideal is the same as their selfish ideal.
Dollar stores sell the very cheapest version of a very limited selection of products.
The cheapest cheap shit made in china crap. The cheapest version of foods.
If that runs ANY OTHER BUSINESS OUT OF THE AREA.
That business sucked donkey dick and didn't deserve to survive.
I like the dollar stores. They've my new stop for a whole 3 different items every week.
They have better prices! They have better access!
In and out. 5 minutes. no rewards cards. no coupons. no checkout lanes. no scan it yourself lanes. just one cashier to give money to.
Don't like that? Compete! or fuck off.
And if we WANTED fruits and vegetables and fresh. we'd get them.... WE DON'T.
Signed USA.
Land of mcdonalds.
I mean, Ikea sells pizza. I don't know why anyone would expect a furniture store to sell pizza but... here we are.
Looks like the dollar stores sell various kinds of canned goods. Nutrionally, there's not much difference between canned and fresh.
Lets ban all forms of sales. Farmers markets are fresh and generally cheaper than the stores.
The chains they are trying to save will demand it or regulate them out of their cheap business. Use regulations to crush these guys.
I mean, Ikea sells pizza. I don't know why anyone would expect a furniture store to sell pizza but... here we are.
The problem with IKEA’s pizza is the damn instructions for making it. By the time you figure out how to attach the cheese, the special pepperoni connectors, etc., you’ll have starved to death.
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
Dollar stores sell so many things. A specialty store never gets negative attention. Dollar stores are low quality and if people need to cut costs dollar stores fill a role. Specialty stores can also fill the same role but more because they provide quality in one area cheaply.
The real problem is not paying people enough to live off of. These problems are being laid bare over and over again. The shutdown was a big deal because workers couldn't cover a lost paycheck. They had no savings. Same for the wells Fargo fiasco with direct deposits not going in on time. Food has never been cheaper or easier to obtain as adjusted for inflation. And yet people are still food insecure or have trouble affording nutritious food. We as a nation have been fucked five ways past Friday by the big corporations. Sure, they helped make food cheap. They also drove out the local farmer who can't leverage the economy of scale to compete with the cheap food, closing opportunities for families and small local operations to build their wealth. So much of my local farmland has been sold to developers who crap out cheap mcmansion after cheap mcmansion (sold at absurd prices of course). It's the last way the farming family can make a buck but it is also the end of their career.
So no, the problem isn't dollar stores or poor people leveraging their limited money to get the most calories. It's a systemic problem that has been going on for years.
The canned food aisles in regular supermarkets are the least profitable part of the store.
Supermarkets make up for it by selling meat, vegetables and fruit and other fresh items at a healthy markup.
I buy some things at dollar stores because I can walk to the closest one, the closest supermarket is 3-4 miles away which is too much work in the winter.
I usually make a planned trip every few months to the three local supermarkets each of which has different things I buy, with vastly differing prices. In the winter months I'll stock up on frozen and canned vegetables.
During the growing season, I go to two local farm stores, prices there are usually a fraction of what produce is priced at local supermarkets. They don't have tropical fruit like oranges or bananas or kiwis, blackberries blueberries are available when they are ready.
Instacart finally came to our area, so I can use them on occasion like when the snow is too deep to walk anywhere.
I wish there was a local butcher store though.
"They may have one isle with some canned food"
That's a pretty big store. Where do you find decent parking near an isle?
Here in Canada, our stores are not nearly as large as in the States apparently.
Our stores simply use aisles.
Mostly random stuff.
What a dumb article, it is like saying "Red Spots on your skin is the cause of measles, so do not get red spots"
There are many causes of poverty, Dollar Stores are a symptom. No money is the cause of Poverty. Without a living wage how can one afford to shop elsewhere
There are some people who believe they have a right to profit. That doing what they did yesterday is going to work forever, and that they never need change anything at all. Those people don't deserve to stay in business.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
This is your system. How many times have I heard that businesses deserve to profit no matter what? Gee a person has to travel for 30 minutes to get healthy food or they can walk out their front door and get junk, I wonder what's going to happen? Suck it up buttercup, or change the system that preys on people.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
>"Now if we want a start in fixing things simply disallow all export of produce and meats from US businesses and that would push down grocery prices quite a bit."
The economy is more complicated than that. If you cut all exports, there will be oversupply and prices will drop greatly. This is true. But THEN the free market will react and many agricultural businesses will not be able to survive on those lower prices. They will do a combination of shutting down production, raising prices, laying off workers, lowering quality, seek cheap replacement imports, etc... or go out of business. If you subsidize production more, then taxes go up and people have less money and their purchasing power goes down, which is similar to higher prices.
How is this News for Nerds?
Is it because dollar stores sell electronic parts?
Or they have a wide selection of computer games?
They sell the latest laptops?
Or they have really advanced IT?
They compute bitcoin hashes with your body heat when you walk through the door?
Maybe it's me, but there doesn't seem to be any relevance whatsoever.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
Directions unclear: have leftover pegs, screws and washers. Also, it sags to one side in the oven. (Just imagine if Ikea sold flat-pack ovens.)
What is it with controlling people and their food?
People want a nice safe, clean employee cafeteria and the big gov says no.
People have the freedom to shop for food they can afford and big gov says no.
To protect a system that has more expensive food people can afford?
People have a sent income, let them find the food they can afford, enjoy and want to eat.
Freedom to buy products and services that are near them and at a price they can use everyday.
Should big gov tell a person how to shop, where to shop and that they have to support more expensive "grocery stores"?
Will the gov say what can be sold? What the lowest cost fresh produce, meats, fruit will be in a community?
Food shopping is now gov tracked, gov approved and with gov set prices for set food quality?
Who sets the price, food quality and what an approved grocery stores is?
Will the cost of all that gov approval be passed on with a new fresh produce, meats and fruit tax?
Let the free market set food prices, store locations and what to sell.
No gov regulation needed.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
The problem with IKEA's pizza is the damn instructions for making it. By the time you figure out how to attach the cheese, the special pepperoni connectors, etc., you'll have starved to death.
Or do what everyone else does, the cheese goes on the bottom. The tomato is kind of spread around the edge and the toppings are carefully stacked in a pile in the middle.
Techincally it's edible and you'll be so fed you that you'll eat it.
SJW n. One who posts facts.
These businesses are just capturing what the market wants or can carry. What has really failed, especially in inner cities are both economic and social policies. When it's better for tax reasons to have a single parent family, you're going to drive the poor to single families which long-term causes both economic and social instability of all sorts. When you give people thousands of dollars per month in overvalued coupons every month to buy 'food' (typically sponsored by or limited to Nestle, Kellogg's, Dole products etc) you're going to create a black market which corner shops and dollar stores are really good at fulfilling the demand for. When we were on food stamps a few years ago, the total value of the 'checks' was $2500/month but at the regular grocery stores, the products were about half the price of the value of the stamp.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
Haven't you been paying attention?
The problem with IKEA’s pizza is the damn instructions for making it. By the time you figure out how to attach the cheese, the special pepperoni connectors, etc., you’ll have starved to death.
You can buy one pre-assembled ("Kommerkräkas"), but those all have lingonberry and pickled herring as the only toppings.
Sixty years ago - when I was in high school - it seemed like fresh fruits and produce were plentiful and at very reasonable prices.
Things have changed, but Dollar Stores are NOT the cause.
The overwhelming change has resulted from the distribution of wealth.
The root of the problem is income inequality.
I also remember paying my way through college with part time jobs.
Today you need to live on ramen noodles and go $30,000 into debt.
The middle class ain't what it used to be.
Where did all that wealth end up?
Over here they sell wine and beer too. For some families, going to Ikea is a bit of an outing: you shop for furniture, have a decent and inexpensive lunch there, so why not pop in their deli and buy some interesting and unusual food to take home as well? Their deli always seems busy enough. I'm in an Ikea on a regular basis (the curse of letting furnished appts) and I often grab some food if we're short on anything at home. They have some pretty good bread.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
So...
Are they selling the same products as the big stores, but at a cheaper price?
Or are they selling something that big stores aren't selling?
Because, either way, simple business analysis tells you that you have a problem if that's the case and it's hardly "their" fault that they are undercutting you and giving people things they want.
I feel so sad for those multi-million dollar store chains that can't over-charge people for basic goods and services because of a dollar-store (or pound shop in my country) down the road.
Compete, or get the fuck out of the market. Trying to shut down the opposition that's filling the niches you aren't - without even trying to fill those same niches - is just being arseholes.
Safeway grocery stores here are expensive. I doubt they are making only 3 percent.
We go to WinCo
Dollar Tree often has good items. Certainly it would not be healthy to buy a lot of food at Dollar Tree, however; food is often expensive at Dollar Tree. One dollar for 4 ounces is $4 per pound.
Sigh. This is so obviously the bigger stores hiring lobbyists and bribing the government to get rid of their competition. Poor people do not have a choice. They can only buy what they can afford and they (we) can afford almost nothing at all. For those who don't understand go try to live on $20 for a whole week. Just one $20 bill. Then see how often you shop at Whole Foods and notice what you do buy if you are there. Hint, it won't be the salmon or the Manchego cheese. Rich people who lecture poor people about how their diet isn't healthy should be lined up against a wall and shot. End of problem. Or just kill all the poor. I think many of these corporations would be in favor of that.
Quite an experience to live in fear, isn't it? That's what it is to be a slave.
...give $1 Million worth of tax breaks and incentives to a big box store.
On the other hand... Give $1 Million worth of tax breaks and incentives to ten smaller local stores.
Now that I think about it, that won't work. Because all the local cash will go to businesses with city hall connections that don't need it.
You know, the same ones that don't want the dollar stores in their area either.
Care killed the cat, but satisfaction brought it back.
Special interests in cities do. The motivations are right there in TFS: Margins are razor thin for grocery stores. That's who's fighting.
Apparently, food is not coveted as much as the grocers assert. If food made money, there would be stores that sold food and no beer and cigarettes and sodas.
"Yes, we have no toilet paper today -- just food."
Poor people can't afford upscale food. Eliminating the Dollar Stores isn't going to raise their food budget.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
If I may point out, cutting off all exports will also imperil imports of many critical imports, especially foreign produce during winter months and petroleum for fuel and fertilizer.
Like I always say, show me the evidence.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
9 years ago, my local grocery chain implemented "loyalty cards". I was always forgetting my card. But it used a Bar code, so I made a photocopy backup. One day my grocery store decided they would no longer accept photocopies. They sent me out, into a winter snowstorm, sick as a dog, I had stopped to buy cold medicine, into an unplowed parking lot, walking through 3+ inches of unplowed snow on the parking lot, with all 3 of my kids, the oldest had just started kindergarten a few months earlier, I was trying to get back in time to get him off to school on time, all for the original loyalty card from my glovebox.
That's the American grocery store experience for you right there.
I said FUCK THIS SHIT! Even with a loyalty card discount, Grocery store prices on a pack of chicken hot dogs was over $5. The same product at Walmart was under $2. So I started running the numbers on everything else. Everything was cheaper. How much grief do I want to suffer to pay over twice as much? And we're talking about the largest section of my budget! Beating out the Mortgage/Rent!
Now folks knock Walmart. This is cannibalizing our other businesses. And the grocery store chain, they donate to all these wonderful charities. They have a nursery room for kids to play in while their parents shop. All these wonderful extras.
On the other hand, by my calculations, by shopping at Walmart, I saved enough money to BUY A NEW CAR in a lot less than 9 years.
It's your money. Where do you want it to go?
As for Dollar Stores. Well driving to the grocery chain, that's how many miles? What's your gas mileage? How about insurance & maintenance? What's the IRS mileage rate these days? $0.545/mile? It doesn't take a lot of distance before the Dollar store becomes the better price. Don't both places sell foods like StarKist?
And it's not just Dollar Stores. Drug stores, corner shops, everybody sells basic foodstuffs.
This is the Grocery stores crying sour grapes because their extremely lucrative monopoly with enormous profit margins is going down the tubes. The Free Market Principle working as intended.
You joke, but IKEA sells beer, with a pop cap on the the top. Instructions indicate that you need to use a bottle opener but do you think you get one when get the bottle? noooooo.
any other store. One, I pass in weekly travels, is 15 miles from anything that would have any "grocery" items. In that 15 miles, there must be 40-50 homes. It's a perfect location, so people don't have to travel 20-30 miles to get things they need. Maybe the "super stores" are overpriced?
The issue is that those highly profitable items are subsidizing loss leaders like fresh produce. You take away the miscellaneous loss leading profits and food becomes more expensive until the grocery store can no longer compete and disappears, leaving you with cheap toothpaste and shitty food supplies.
equating higher price with higher quality is also a fallacy. Some brands purposely charge more to create the impression of high quality. E.g. the entire perfume industry. The economics of quality goods are not so simple.
So change your business model. There, problem solved.
You are missing one key detail there, chief. Food deserts tend to occur in areas of high crime, which is different than poor. There are poor areas with low crime, and they have grocery stores. It turns out if treat others like shit, they don't open stores. weird.
"Liberalism is a very noble idea, currently controlled by some very bad people. Be sure you do not get the two confused.
The whole issue is classist. No one wants to see the steady stream of dollar store poor streaming in and out. You actually have to see poverty then. We can have it all distributed around and in our faces when it was nicely contained under the expensive facade of Wal mart before.
Residents fear the stores deter other business, especially in neighborhoods without grocers or options for healthy food
...
they undercut grocery stores on prices of everyday items, often pushing them out of business.
Make up your mind. They drive grocery stores away, or they're especially bad because they're in neighborhoods that don't have grocery stores anyway? You can't drive away something that's already not there even without you.
Dollar stores pay less taxes than big grocery stores.
Cities want big grocery stores instead of dollar stores.
Hmmmmm..
That's where I got my first six string. Played it till my fingers bled :)
It's absolutely true. 'dollar' stores are always a sign that the neighborhood is either IN decline or has ALREADY declined.
There are a very few exceptions, like dropping a Dollar Tree into an upscale shopping center, but those are done to cater to the complaints that regular people can't afford to shop in such places. Yes they can, here's a fucking Dollar Tree for you! Happy now?
But usually, these stores come in and take over whatever cheap space they can. It's cheap because there is no demand, because the area won't support better stores of ANY kind.
Family Dollar built a brand-new store two blocks from my house. The lot had been a working furniture shop for decades. They cleared the land and dropped in a new building. What happened? Well it was certainly popular because it was convenient. But it was also burglarized immediately and then again and again and again, literally every few days. The brand-new store sported plywood over shattered windows for months at a time. And still does every time somebody breaks in. The police were powerless.
The store also brought a lot of trash. People don't care about using overflowing trash cans, which are overflowing because the store workers were too busy to keep up with it. But people are pigs and just throw everything anywhere. It wasn't just AT the store but trash dropped here and there along sidewalks in every direction, due to customers consuming stuff while they walked home.
Sig for hire.
Nope.
For the past two decades, everyone has watched distribution models change dramatically. Dry/canned goods and no meat/produce/dairy means that this portion of sales can be done differently. The dry goods makers want market expansion just like other businesses, so not having any loyalty to grocers, they help fund the dollar stores with credit and not-as-fresh stock that the grocers demand (long shelf life).
The grocers, wanting to become like Walmart (believing their shoppers want convenience, one-stop-shops, etc) become like Walmart, and put their strength in groceries behind, becoming behemoths like Sams, Costco, etc.
At the bottom of the food chain, mom&pops get crushed by low-volume buys, inconvenient distribution, lack of credit/purchasing strength (remember A&P?) and go bust. The dollar stores need cheap overhead, and move in.
Cities used to have C-stores, bodegas, delis, and lots of small operations, who suffer in the same ways as the mom&pops. Add in farmer's and "local-source" markets, rural co-op markets, and the common grocery model is all but dead. The BigStore and Amazon models have disrupted distribution infrastructure. Add in foreign foods, but then tariffs, NAFTA-reorganizations, and the dust hasn't settled yet. Urban delivery models don't work in the burbs or in rural locales.
It's a massive re-org, and this is just one symptom that things are changing, and you haven't seen the finish of it; it may continue to evolve for decades and decades.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
If so-called 'big box supermarkets' are being threatened and undercut by 'dollar stores' on enough items to make them unprofitable when in the same neighborhood, then maybe the big-box supermarket chains should buy out the dollar stores, run them side-by-side, and not carry duplicate items of the dollar store in the big-box supermarket down the street. After all aren't they really two different sets of customers?
It would be far from the first time some corporation had at least two different 'brands' they owned.
Additionally, how many people do you really think do all of their regular shopping at only one grocery store? There are at least three I use: a 'discount' supermarket for the most common food items and things like bathroom-related items, an 'upscale' market for meat and produce (higher quality), and a specialty market for the one or two things I can't get at the other two and can't live without. Occasionally I'll go to some 'dollar store' for one or two things I know they'll have in abundance that'll be a fraction of the cost at any of the others. I suspect that if some family is in the 'working poor' category they'd use a version of the above combination but shifted down a notch to include the dollar-store category. It would make sense for a national discount market to buy up a dollar store chain and run them side-by-side.
Of course there are potential 'monopoly' concerns to consider with an approach like this; would it further limit competition, resulting in giving in to the temptation to raise prices across the board, knowing people have no choice anymore?
You're ignoring a critical fact here: if it's at IKEA then it's not even called 'pizza', it's some Nordic word with an umlaut and too many consonants that no one can pronounce.
Remember, these are the same cocksuckers who fought tooth and nail (and failed) to prevent National Guard and Reserve personnel from getting full Commissary access instead of 12 visits per year. Fuck, if I remember right, they fought the increase from 12 to 24 visits even.
I have no sympathy for these fuckers.
This space unintentionally left blank.
The result of decades of spiraling down.
What did people expect when they just let corporation run roughshod of people and not pay reasonable taxes?
What did people think the inevitable result in destroying unions would be?
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It echoes an AC post, but I live in Tucson, and in the neighborhoods where you find dollar stores, you will almost certainly have a "carniceria" nearby for cheap perishables. Market forces already settle this. Plus, wanting to feed a large family efficiently with bulk goods, and wanting to purchase unprocessed healthier foods are not really disjoint pursuits.
You actually think you're Christian, huh?
because lack of imagination. same as nazis, there are super few, but still you see them as all the bad guys in all the movies. Lack of imagination.
Lazy? That is honestly the claim that is thrown around, but I have no idea of the logistics of going "Green Acres".
I wasn't raised a farm hand. Those who need me don't live out in the fields.
I can't figure out how to support 20 people as a farm hand. Most rural communities have strong religious communities, and the Christian bible says in 1 Timothy 5:8, a man must provide for his own. These seem to be the same people against baking cakes for gays, so to live in a religious community with its insane rules, I have to make enough to feed, clothe, and shelter 20 people. Farm hand work just don't pay enough to do that.
You figure out the logistics of moving to a lower wage area, competing with robotic automation, illegal immigrants, and seasoned farm hands, and not get ostracized and demonized for "falling short of the glory of God", and failing to provide for 20 odd family members.
In the mean time I will play the hand I was dealt and do my best to fulfill the role I have been assigned on the team I am on.
Dollar stores rarely sell fresh produce or meats, but they undercut grocery stores on prices of everyday items, often pushing them out of business...
So Safeway, Acme, Wegmans, Kroger, etc can't compete with the dollar store? Of course they can, they choose not to.
I've noticed Aldi opening grocery stores in lower-income areas, reduced selections, lots of house brand over name brand goods, and fresh friuit and vegetables - all at lower prices. Back in the day we called them 'grocery stores', as opposed to 'supermarkets' that carry every blessed food item imaginable.
The reality is that if the vast majority of low income families really wanted the fresh fruits and vegetables these people claim, why doesn't someone take out an SBA loan and open up a produce stand? The rent is low, wages are low, and apparently the demand is great - according to people that live outside the community and shop at Whole Foods.
Ken
And this or some situation very much like it is why I never go to Ikea without at least a Swiss army knife.
How is the Riemann zeta function like Trump rallies? Both have an endless number of trivial zeros.
A fair point, but at the point you change your model, you have become a dollar store. And they’ve been doing it for longer than you have.
The fundamental problem is “food deserts” isn’t that fresh food is especially hard to get, or overpriced compared to what you would pay elsewhere. It’s that the cultural knowledge of “how to cook” has been lost. Beans and rice is a pretty boring diet, but it is a staple of poor cultures all over the world for a reason: the ingredients are cheap and provide almost complete nutrition by themselves. But when you don’t cook, and your parent didn’t cook, and the same is true of all your friends, that processed junk is a lot quicker, and probably tastes better, and sure does keep a long time.
Cities get their money from...taxes.
Dollar stores charge low prices, reducing tax income for cities.
Pricier stores don't like competition, so they remind politicians of the tax implications, sometimes reinforced with kickbacks.
Of course cities don't like dollar stores! They actually help poorer people more than they help city governments!
That's the free market for you. As so many Americans on this site are fond of pointing out, if you touch that at all then it's communism. Like, it's literally the USSR.
It's OK Bender, there's no such thing as 2.
IF you find yourself in such a situation, the recovery from it is to lower your standard of living, retire your debt and stop paying interest.
I know that emergencies happen and debt is sometimes hard to avoid. BUT if you don't DO something different in your financial life when you are on a bad road that leads to bankruptcy, how do you expect to not end up where the road leads?
I know it's not popular, nor does it sound very understanding to say, but YOU are responsible for your finances and only you can fix it when things are going the wrong direction. So if you need a cheaper place to live, spend less on food and clothes, drive a cheaper car or otherwise spend less than you do now that's what you got to do. Maybe a 2nd or 3rd job? Maybe not having any more kids?
Credit isn't the answer, it's just a tool. Credit though for a lot of folks is the killer and the interest being paid is only lowering their standard of living. Sometimes credit is a useful tool, but a dangerous tool that must be used wisely and with caution.
"File to fit, pound to insert, paint to match" - Aircraft Maintenance 101
I mean, Ikea sells pizza. I don't know why anyone would expect a furniture store to sell pizza but... here we are.
The problem with IKEA’s pizza is the damn instructions for making it. By the time you figure out how to attach the cheese, the special pepperoni connectors, etc., you’ll have starved to death.
Also the naming... Imagine telling your coworkers you're having a Stefan for dinner tonight.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
My house has an IKEA factor of over 90%. I sometimes genuinely wonder if people know that IKEA ships all their furniture with pozidrive screws and wonder why their philips head screwdriver never really properly works.
No. If the "residents" feared the Dollar Stores taking over, the Dollar Stores would not have customers. What we most likely have is local merchants who can't compete making a lot of noise and looking for a little crony capitalism to help them out.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
In my area there are some small stores that sell pretty much nothing but fresh fruit and vegetables. And some larger stores that include packaged (jar, can, frozen, refrigerated) foods and bread in addition. They don't sell toothpaste or household goods or electronics. Yet they seem to be doing OK.