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."

Comments

Why fight them?

[Anonymous Coward]

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.

Re:Why fight them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently communities and groups of individuals have zero rights according to you. Just the single individual.

So the communities of people who fight for municipal broadband are all wrong. Because it comes between the right for an individual to choose Comcast. (Because that's his only choice.)

I'm libertarian myself and these 3rd grade libertarian fantasies regularly spouted embarass the fuck out of me.

Re:Why fight them?

[jonwil]

The problem is that the unhealthy crap sold by fast food joints and convenience stores and dollar stores and the like is cheaper (thanks to farm subsidies and other factors that distort the market) than the good healthy stuff.

So the retailers who sell the healthy stuff can't complete with the retailers selling the crap which leads to "food deserts" in these lower-class areas where there just aren't healthy options.

Re:Why fight them?

[Registered Coward v2]

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.

There’s another dynamic at play as well. For some people, buying at the dollar store is a budget issue. They cannot afford to buy things like detergent at a grocery store because, even if it is cheaper on a per unit basis, the $5 spent on it means not enough left over for gas or even food. The dollar store is a better match to their cash flow than a grocery store, even if it a worse long run choice. In other cases, the dollar store is near where they live and the nearest grocery store is miles away, making the dollar store the store of choice.

Re:Why fight them?

[gtall]

Yah! If the people want to choose unhealthy shit, then they have also chosen increased health costs. Of course, those costs don't show up until later years, and then they have the rest of us to pay for them. MAGA.

Re:Why fight them?

[colfer]

And on the other end of the volume scale, Costco skims off the profitable customers who can and want to buy bulk. Costco also skims off any profitable sector it can simplify and remove from the traditional shop accoutrements around it, like tires. The Costco tire shop only does two things: sell tires and maintain tires. No other repair of any type.

Prices are not actually that great at Costco, but quality is assured. The quality at the dollar store is typically suspect. I remember some outrageous price for a cell phone charger at a Radio Shack. The clerk told me to go next door to the dollar store. It was a hope-for-the-best situation there. The Radio Shack is out of business though.

Both dollar stores and Costco are highly capitalized and can big-foot into new markets. They have that in common against locally owned retail. It's the scale of it that makes people nervous, not anti-capitalist ideology. No one doubts these entities give people what they want at the price/quality they more or less want, given the choices (which the companies help create).

Re:Why fight them?

[OzPeter]

There are no barriers to better budgeting.

You need to read Boots theory of socio-economic unfairness to understand why I think you are mistaken in your point of view.

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.

Re:Why fight them?

[religionofpeas]

Even though the story about the boots is fictional, there's a way out of that trap. You have to realize that you only need to buy a single pair of the good leather boots, to solve that particular problem for the rest of your life. After you get your first pair, you slowly save up the $50 for the next pair over the next 10 years. And then with the net money saved, you can get out of other traps.

The reason why people fail is because they cannot hold savings long enough to buy the expensive but durable goods. Instead, they'll spend their savings on something they don't need (as much).

Re: Why fight them?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dollar store, deli+seafood+butcher, and produce market or permanent farmers market. No supermarket required. The. End.

Re:Why fight them?

[OzPeter]

Pratchett wrote comedic fantasy, not economic research. He made things up, including Sam Vimes, the relative costs of boots, and especially their durability.

So Captain Pedantic, never in your life have you experienced cheaply made goods not lasting as long as more expensive goods?

And yes Sam Vines is a work of fiction, but it is a work of fiction used to illustrate a genuine point - That having money increases your options for saving money. For example at some point up the socio-economic tree it becomes financially viable for a person to establish a presence in a tax haven in order to reduce/eliminate a tax burden. (Double Irish with a Dutch sandwich anyone?) Such options are out of the reach of people with lesser means.

Re:Why fight them?

[bobbied]

Even though the story about the boots is fictional, there's a way out of that trap. You have to realize that you only need to buy a single pair of the good leather boots, to solve that particular problem for the rest of your life. After you get your first pair, you slowly save up the $50 for the next pair over the next 10 years. And then with the net money saved, you can get out of other traps.

The reason why people fail is because they cannot hold savings long enough to buy the expensive but durable goods. Instead, they'll spend their savings on something they don't need (as much).

It's even worse today with credit. Now you can buy what you want now, and pay over time for it. What ends up happening for the undisciplined is they buy frivolous stuff on credit, then end up struggling to make the payments WITH INTEREST and that drives their eventual standard of living down. You have less to live on if you have to service that interest on your debt because that big TV you purchased on "sale" now costs you 30 months of interest too, making it cost more than the bigger TV outright. Or that new car costs you more than you can afford for 80 months and when it's 5 years old and you want to trade, you still have 20 months of payments.. But don't worry, they will roll that onto your next car's payment... It's a slippery slope and it take discipline to get off of it, lots of discipline.

But that's really what makes the difference here, discipline and hard work. I've meet very few folks who where poor because they didn't have the ability or opportunity to not be poor. And I've meet some desperately poor people growing up in the back woods of North Carolina. Many where living this way by choice, they didn't want more, or couldn't be bothered to make it happen. It was a social thing for them. One young man who graduated high school with me, 4th in the class, had a dream of moving out of his mother's house so he could get his own address and start collecting his own welfare checks. He was a bright guy, could have gone to college for nearly free and easily pulled himself, and his family out of poverty, but that's not what he chose to do.

Not all poor are there by choice, but unless they are unable to work though no fault of their own, they need not stay in poverty.

Re:Why fight them?

[Mr D from 63]

Apparently communities and groups of individuals have zero rights according to you. Just the single individual.

So the communities of people who fight for municipal broadband are all wrong. Because it comes between the right for an individual to choose Comcast. (Because that's his only choice.)

I'm libertarian myself and these 3rd grade libertarian fantasies regularly spouted embarass the fuck out of me.

Your are mixing a discussion about 'rights' with market principles, hence your confusion. If you are open to allowing market principles, communities are free to get together and decide not to buy from dollar stores which in the end results in their shutdown or lack of desire to expand in those communities. If enough individuals still shop there, the market will know. However, using legislation to determine who can sell in a community would not be market driven result.

As to who has 'rights', that is defined constitutionally, and communities do have the 'right' to create such legislation, even if it does not follow market principles.

Should communities have the 'right' to limit shopping choices for individuals in the community, some or many of who may want to shop at dollar stores?

Striking the right balance between both can be a challenge, different people will have different opinions on to where that balance line should be.

Re:Why fight them?

[religionofpeas]

$40, and the much more robust boots, especially waterproof boots, as at least $130. A 4 to 1 ratio of their durability is not unexpected

It's also not impossible for cheap stuff to outlast expensive things. I carry around a $25 Nokia cellphone that has lasted me longer than most iPhones last. In general, it's hard to make good things cheap, but it's easy to make shitty things expensive.

Re:Why fight them?

[Entrope]

Probably everyone has experienced cheaply made goods not lasting as long as more expensive goods, but the ratio in durability is less than the ratio in price. You can find cheap jeans for $10 to $20 at a big-box, low-end store. They will seldom last as long as $220 (or much more) jeans from a high-end store, but they will last a lot more than 1/11th as long at 1/11th the price. That is why the Sam Vimes argument is bunkum.

Re:Why fight them?

[Dixie_Flatline]

First, I think you should consider that your sample space is pretty skewed. I don't think that you live in poverty, so your exposure to that population is quite low.

Second, the working poor is a surpassingly large segment of the population. Real wages haven’t increased with inflation for years, and while things like TVs and electronics have gone down in price relative to inflation, essential goods haven't.

There's some location dependency as well. Consider a worker in San Francisco that drives a bus or works at contracted janitorial staff. Many of them have to live far outside the city and spend enormous amounts of time commuting. It leaves very little time to do anything that might get them into a better job, and they’re spending every penny they have on rent and survival; many have low or non-existent credit (though that may be a blessing in disguise, because you're not wrong about the dangers of credit or how businesses extending credit are predatory nightmares).

Poverty isn't just a matter of how hard you work. There are a lot of circumstances that go into how it plays out, and once you're poor, the options for getting out become more and more limited. Social mobility is getting lower by the year.

Lastly, there are "frivolous" purchases that poor people make that bring them just a bit of joy or relief, and while it's easy to say that they shouldn't be smoking or eating a bag of chips, life is hard enough without letting yourself just have something small for yourself.

The working poor are just that, and it can be nearly impossible for them to break out of the cycles of poverty once they're in them. Plenty of them are perfectly willing to work to get out of the mess they're in but circumstances don't always allow for it.

Re:Why fight them?

[emaname]

Well said, Mr D.

There's are three more components in this issue; social connections, revenue, and jobs.

Re social connections... Locally owned businesses can have a more positive impact on a local community. There is a stronger sense of community or of a social connection. I experienced this myself while working at a small grocery store when I was in high school.

Re revenue... There have been studies that support the idea that locally owned businesses keep more of the money earned by that business within the community. Corporate owned businesses (like Dollar Store) remove from the local community a large portion of the money earned by that operation.

Re jobs... Here again, the impact is more localized. Since the owner of the store is most likely from within the community, the positions are more likely to be filled from within the same community. The owner has a vested interest in the community in order for the business to be a success.

You can see the trend in the country today. More and more communities are sourcing their produce locally instead of from some remote mega-corp. Some communities have garden plots set up right within their neighborhoods by using empty lots. Others are seeing more farmers' markets appearing. Still others are seeing cooperatives developing.

In our town we have several big-box stores standing empty; some for over 10 years. We've lost Sears, K-Mart, Penny's, Boston Store, and soon we'll lose Shopko. These all represent lost tax revenues and job opportunities. When communities depend on corporate operations they leave themselves vulnerable to the market performance of those corporations. Just this one detail alone is justification for that Tulsa community to respond the way they are responding. But they need to include with it a strategy to encourage and develop locally-owned businesses to fill the void. It's certainly not an easy challenge, but they will find they are better off when they do.

Re:Why fight them?

[mad7777]

In what sense are you a Libertarian? Please, enlighten us. You seem to believe that the government's proper role is to dictate what can and cannot be sold to consumers, and at what price, and yet you call yourself Libertarian? No sir, it is you who are the embarrassment here. Please, go change your party affiliation to one of those two well known ones that never miss an opportunity to insert their politics between buyer and seller.

Re:Why fight them?

[eth1]

Even though the story about the boots is fictional, there's a way out of that trap. You have to realize that you only need to buy a single pair of the good leather boots, to solve that particular problem for the rest of your life. After you get your first pair, you slowly save up the $50 for the next pair over the next 10 years. And then with the net money saved, you can get out of other traps.

The reason why people fail is because they cannot hold savings long enough to buy the expensive but durable goods. Instead, they'll spend their savings on something they don't need (as much).

The problem with this is that it only really works for non-essentials. Most people MUST have housing, transportation, clothes, etc.
Someone that can afford to put 20% down on a house can get a better interest rate, not pay PMI, and build equity, vs. someone who has to rent or pay more in interest to buy the same house (potentially tens of thousands over the life of the mortgage).
Someone that can afford a car payment AND to still save for the next car can put themselves in a better position for the next purchase, but you can't if you can just barely pay for transportation to get to your job.

Re:Why fight them?

[dasunt]

The reason why people fail is because they cannot hold savings long enough to buy the expensive but durable goods. Instead, they'll spend their savings on something they don't need (as much).

Grew up poor, am doing well right now.

My success is due to a few things. Hard work helps. Being in the right field helps. Having a partner helps.

But so does luck. Luck in my gender, my height, even my name all have been shown to increase the chance of financial success in life. Luck in where I was born, and in what state, gave my poor family the ability to have state programs that were pretty good, and a local school that was also pretty damn good. Luck in my family, especially my mother, who didn't sabotage my life or my siblings. Luck I didn't make any irreversible mistakes in my teens and young adult hood that would have nailed me with a felony, huge debt, or a kid to support. Luck in my health, which is pretty good.

When we criticize the poor for being poor, we do two things:

The first is to feel better about ourselves - by believing that poverty is within our control, it shields us from it - we won't become poor because we won't make the wrong mistakes.

The second is that we hold the poor up to a standard that we don't require of the middle class. The middle class makes a slew of financial mistakes to screw over their lives, and we don't hold them accountable for it. Why is it that we require the poor to be saints with their meager incomes, while we don't hold the middle class to the same standard. The middle class is burdened with avoidable debt, consuming a ton of crap, underfunding their retirements, and often without an emergency fund. Yet we don't criticize them for buying things they don't need, even if they are making bad financial decisions. We'll even empathize with the middle class for not having enough money to go around.

But buy something nice for yourself as a poor person, and everyone will judge. Even own something nice as a poor person, and people will make assumptions.

It's a double standard, and an unfair one at that.

Re:Why fight them?

[denzacar]

Spoken like a man who never had problems affording or purchasing a good pair of boots.
If you can't grasp a metaphor, maybe an anecdote (or two) will help?

I'm a kinda guy who destroys footwear. High instep plus an old ankle injury... I have a funny step.
I've worn out three pairs of army boots during less than a year of service - and I was in personnel.
And you can bet your ass I was maintaining those boots, being a lowly conscript surrounded by officers and NCOs all day.

Important caveat - I'm a Bosnian. But rules of the market still apply.
Anyway... for years I would buy a pair of boots around November... wear them until the spring... then start wearing them in September-October while looking for a new pair.
Tried out civilian versions of army boots (no worse or better than the actual thing issued to recruits), various hiking shoes/boots, supposedly fancier (2-3 times the price of the army kind) boots... all the same crap.
One pair of hiking shoes literally fell apart as I was cleaning them for the next season - soles fell off.

Granted... none of those boots were ever more than maybe $75 (the fancy kind). But they were all crap, regardless of price.
Now... I could maybe shell out much more than that for a fancy pair of hiking boots... those look robust...
But who's to say those won't fall apart in a year? They are sold in the same boutique.

Then... I discovered work boots. Not "work boots" sold at boutiques - the real deal. Steel toecaps, heavy, hard and ugly.
And actually cheaper than most boots cause they tend to be "ugly" and a single boot will weigh as much as a pair of fancy boots. A decent pair would be $20-30.
Then I found the REALLY good ones.
Italian manufacturer, high shaft, laces and zippers, all the regular trimmings, ten-year warranty...
Sure... at around $60 a bit pricier, for that kind of footwear, but still cheaper than what I used to pay shopping for "civilian" boots.
And I even got to test that warranty - cause thanks to my "magic feet" the leather started tearing.
Yes, you can technically use that quick-access zipper to put them on quickly... but that may not be such a great idea.
But hey... they were under warranty, so I replaced them, wore those for 3 seasons... and as they were starting to show quite a bit of wear and tear (still not leaking though) - I went to the same shop to buy another pair.
They are no more.

Thing is, those were some REALLY good boots.
So good in fact that the manufacturer stopped making them. Thought of ordering some directly from the manufacturer - they don't make them anymore.
You want all those features (it's the quick-release zipper) on a pair of work boots? Competition sells that for twice as much and in a wider color range.
Clearly, not because it costs twice as much to make them or cause the manufacturer would be losing money.
It's cause that's what "the market will bear" and the manufacturer would be losing "potential earnings".
And to add insult to injury, I'm clearly so far out of "the market" that even should those other boots (with the same features) be worth the price, I'd have to take a 5-hour ride just to try them on.
Ended up buying a pair of "similar but clearly not the same quality" Romanian-made boots for around $50.

Similarly... We went shopping for a freezer a few months back.
After digging around online, driving around local malls and shops, checking and comparing features, sizes, quality, price...
Turns out you can either buy cheap crap, cheap crap that is too big, cheap crap which spends twice as much electricity as it should in that price-feature range - or you can buy large freezer-fridge combos, which are more expensive and for which we don't have room. And they might be crap too... didn't check.
Buuuuut... if I check the manufacturer's website - they DO produce and sell better freezers.
More isolation, use less electricity...
They just don't sell them here.
Cause they sell for about $60 more.
Market won't bear such a high

Re:Why fight them?

[bobbied]

First, I think you should consider that your sample space is pretty skewed. I don't think that you live in poverty, so your exposure to that population is quite low.

During my formative years, we where quite poor as a family so I knew a lot of very poor people. I will admit that my family wasn't destitute, we worked for a living and although we where poor we owned a small farm where we raised cattle, had a huge vegetable garden and even though the work was hard and long and we didn't have money for things like TVs and toys, we where not starving, cold or without housing.

But I disagree. I've seen poverty, up close and far away. The kids I went to high school with where from the 2nd poorest county in the State of North Carolina. The schools where so bad that only the poorest of the poor when to the public schools. IF you had ANY money, you went to private schools. As a result, I was in a class of 250 and only about 7 of us where white and ALL of us where poor. My experiences may be unique to the county I grew up in, but I seriously doubt the attitudes I saw where that unique.

You see, I was raised very differently from many of my peers. I was raised that hard work was how you got more. That you had to watch what you spent your money on. Many of my peers where raised to think money was what the government gave you, that it always comes like clock work and life was about maximizing that check. I swear, some of the brightest kids I knew, kids smarter than I was, kids that could have gone way beyond their poverty had they even tried, just didn't want to try. Out of my class of 250, only 4 of us when to college. Out of that 4 only 2 graduated with a 4 year degree (that I know of). But the most remembered kid from our class was a bright young man who played basketball for Duke, on a scholarship (one of the 4 of us who went to college) but flunked out of school. Does the school recognize me? HALF of the college graduates from that class who holds an BSEE from a very respected school, one of the educational success stories? Yea, right.

But it's about the culture there. The culture I grew up in. They had many of the same opportunities i had, if not more at times, but many where not successful because of their choices, their attitudes, their wrong thinking about what working for a living was and their goals. Sure they started out at a disadvantage, but opportunity was there, still is for many of my classmates who come to the realization they can do better with effort.

related links == dupe?

[SpzToid]

The /. related links suggested the dupe to me. Seriously? https://news.slashdot.org/stor....

Re:related links == dupe?

[thegarbz]

Just because we're talking about the same topic does not make it a dupe. They are discussing different aspects of the same situation.

Why stop at dollar stores?

[SPopulisQR]

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.....

Re:Why stop at dollar stores?

[hjf]

Did your analysis include historical "grocery store location", and compare the number of grocery stores over the last decade vs the number of dollar stores last decade?. Oh yeah, it didn't.

McDonald's sells cheap food. This is the reason why, in America, "fresh food" is expensive. A "free country" where the "free market" has decided it has to be cheaper for a person to drive several miles to a mcdonald's every day and get their food is cheaper than having stuff in the pantry and cooking at home.

Are you sure there are no "government subsidies" somewhere, skewing your "free market" theories? Because I'm all for free market, but the USA doesn't play fair with free trade. They offer you a "free trade agreement" with zero tariffs for your country. Except after the tariffs they have another layer of regulations that keep your product from being sold in the USA. For example, Argentina has been trying to sell lemons in the US. We can produce them cheaply. But we have quotas on how many we can sell and they need to be a certain size and color... I thought it was a free market and the market would solve it? Why so many regulations? Try selling corn to the USA and let me know how it goes. Ah yes, We have to subsidize these farmers, or they'll lose their jobs.

Re:Why stop at dollar stores?

[religionofpeas]

McDonald's sells cheap food. This is the reason why, in America, "fresh food" is expensive.

I'm quite sure that people can cook a home meal for less than a McDonalds meal, especially if you have to drive there. Going to McDonalds is just less effort, and very tasty.

Re:Why stop at dollar stores?

[Anonymous Coward]

McD is no longer cheap.
$8 is not my definition of a cheap meal.
I can get a whole frozen pizza for about $5.
I can also get a buffet for $8.50.

Cities are overpriced because they have to pay for expensive land as well as higher salaries. As a restaurant owner, would you rather pay for a $500,000 building on a $20,000 lot with 50 staff at $8/hr or a $750,000 building on a $1,500,000 lot, with 75 staff at $12/hour? The salary difference exceeds $1 million per year. 50 staff is about what it takes to run 3 shifts at a fast food restaurant and open from 6am-11pm. I've ran one in the distant past.

Re:Why stop at dollar stores?

[RalphSlate]

I can understand the sentiment a little bit. The one thing missing from the article's analysis is that when people "size up" a neighborhood, they look for certain visual cues. One of them is the type of retail present. When you drive through a neighborhood and see a dollar store, you classify that neighborhood as "poor". You dismiss it. And while that is most likely a realistic indicator, it harms the neighborhood's chance of becoming less poor, because it's like a scarlet letter on its chest.

However, I would also point out that many of the people opposing dollar stores are the same people who reminisce about going to the "five and dime" when they were younger.

Re:Why stop at dollar stores?

[Kjella]

I'm quite sure that people can cook a home meal for less than a McDonalds meal, especially if you have to drive there. Going to McDonalds is just less effort, and very tasty.

I'm pretty sure the difference is less than in Europe though, there's a lot of good things to say about our social democracy but it's anything but free. Here in Norway if I go to the store the staff cost is relatively small per unit sold and I pay only 15% VAT. If I go to McDonald's to eat it's a service and I pay 25% VAT, though takeaway is just 15%. But the store also have to pay employee taxes (normally 14.1%) + various employee rights, the worker has to pay social security taxes (normally 8.2%), general income tax (22%) and bracketed income tax (0-16.1%).

The end result is that more than half my money disappears in taxes before the guy/girl on the other side of the counter gets a paycheck. For specialized services you don't really have a choice, but for something like cooking food we usually do it ourselves. Housecleaning is the same or on the black market, I have it done legit and it's near twice the price. We also bring way more packed lunches than what's normal in the rest of the world. Basically the tax burden is not very conductive to the exchange of services, it skews the market towards solving the things we can on our own.

Re:Why stop at dollar stores?

[narf0708]

McDonald's sells cheap food. This is the reason why, in America, "fresh food" is expensive.

Okay, as a poor person myself, I am incredibly tired of this argument. After my other expenses, I have less than $40 a month left over for food, and so I have to pay very close attention to the price and nutritional content of my food. And the thing is, buying a mixture of raw ingredients(mostly flour, sugar, and eggs) and fresh seasonal produce(produce, meaning fruits and veggies. Any meat is expensive, and is well outside of my price range most of the time) is far cheaper than getting that non-nutritional garbage from fast food joints(believe me, I have looked, and if fast food was cheaper per nutrient, that's the only thing I would be eating because every dollar I can save really does matter in my situation).

Of course raw ingredients and fresh produce do come with their own particular downside; it takes time and effort to prepare it, and it also takes time and effort to learn how to cook. Some poor people work multiple jobs or long hours, and when they come home at the end of the day, they're too tired to put in the required effort, or they don't have enough time left in the day to cook a proper meal. It's faster and easier to either buy some fast food, or to just heat up a frozen microwave dinner, despite it costing more. Maybe they value their free time more than they value the monetary savings. Or maybe they can't do math. Or maybe they're just lazy. Most likely, it's a combination of all of the above. But I don't know about other people, all I know is that when I come home after working for 10 or 12 hours, I'm really tired and don't want to put in the time and effort to cook a meal despite being quite hungry, but I cook anyway, because that's the sound financial decision.

Basic Capitalism

[mentil]

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.

Re:Basic Capitalism

[JcMorin]

Agree, lets stop whimper and start competing properly.

Re:Basic Capitalism

[thegarbz]

Near where I live, there's a produce store that is always jam-packed full of people.

Sounds like there's not enough produce stores in your area. I wonder if TFA is related to this.

Re:Basic Capitalism

[scamper_22]

I'm in Canada, so maybe the situation really is that dire in the US. But here in Canada, we have people talking about food deserts and all this.

I was talking to someone lately and they said there's food deserts in Toronto, like in our 'ghetto' at Jane and Finch. It puzzled the crap out of me, because i grew up around there. There were plenty of grocery stores. I thought maybe things changed, so I google mapped the area. Plenty of grocery stores, just like I remember.

I'm really suspect of all these claims about food deserts and lack of grocery stores being the reason people eat McDonalds or what have you.

I remember being poor and in Jane and Finch. I can definitely see reasons why the poor might choose not so healthy options. The main one being time. My parents worked crazy jobs at odd hours, and I could see how some families might fall into the trap of not cooking. We were Indian immigrants, at least in my experience, many of us were dirt poor... yet it is just in our culture, that we ate home food.

It is just cheaper to eat from the grocery store. Do you know how cheap rice is? Seriously, you can get a 20kg bag of rice that will last you months for like 20 bucks. I've lived poor. I've cooked poor. It is not cheaper to eat out; even at mcdonalds. Rice people. You can't compete with that. Vegetables? A 1kg bag of frozen veggies (pretty healthy) is like 5-10 bucks. It will last you at least a week. Lentils, beans, paneer... dirt cheap for protein.

Grocery stores are just there. We even had more problems as we were Muslim and we had to go to the 'halal' stores for meat. So even travelled further than a few blocks to get meat.

Yes, grocery stores might not be closer than Mcdonalds, but again... a culture of home cookign and you shop once a week. You can take transit there. I'd be hardpressed to think you can't get to a grocery store in reasonable time once a week.

Now again, there's parts of the US I don't know about. The real ghettos, that maybe it is an issue there. But I've been to some pretty shady parts of Detroit and Chicago and I've always seen grocery stores. Again, not down the road, but close enough for that once a week trip.

Now do some people not have a culture of home cooking? Probably. Are some people too busy to shop and cook? Probably. And I'm not minimizing those issues. They're huge issues.

I also don't think the focus on 'fresh' food is particularly interesting. Fresh fruits and veggies are definitely hard to keep, but frozen fruits and veggies are adequately nutritious. Heck, I have the money now and I mainly eat frozen veggies. There's no need for poorer people to act like whole food shoppers here.

The problem is not McDonalds or fresh food prices. It is just isn't.

I've seen other comments here in terms of high quality goods lasting longer and being more economic. Maybe, but I've shopped at what was then Biway and walmart. The stuff is not bad quality by any stretch of the imagination. I grew in Canada and we didn't get new boots every year. I used my brothers hand me down boots and what not. That stuff lasts for years taken care of. Clothing... same thing. Leather boots are nice. But that I don't nylon plastic crap is pretty tough man.

Life as a poor person is hard. I know. Believe me. Time is probably the biggest problem. But the stuff companies offer... just not the problem.

Re:Dollar store isn't a grocery store

[hjf]

I mean, Ikea sells pizza. I don't know why anyone would expect a furniture store to sell pizza but... here we are.

canned goods

[religionofpeas]

Looks like the dollar stores sell various kinds of canned goods. Nutrionally, there's not much difference between canned and fresh.

Re:canned goods

[drinkypoo]

That's only vaguely true if you've been conned into believing that what the grocery store has is ripe, fresh food. Leafy greens aside, that isn't the case. Produce has to be picked under-ripe to even be shipped successfully, as supermarkets do it anyway. It's often gassed to force ripening (depending on product) and much of it lies around in cold storage for long periods before hitting store shelves. Most of this is a side effect of consumers demanding the same produce be on shelves all year, although some of it results from sourcing produce internationally.

Then, as a sibling comment points out, there's the issue of toxic can liners. Cans are lined with either plastic or epoxy. Plastic liners are more resistant to breaking when cans are dented, but more likely to leach toxics into their contents. And the likelihood increases if the food involved is acidic, which it often is - even if it isn't naturally so like tomatoes, it's often made so in order to further increase shelf life.

However, much of what they sell isn't canned at all, but it is preserved. And preserved foods are typically pounded full of sugar in order to extend their shelf life. The proliferation of HFCS isn't all involved in its use as a sweetener; processed food manufacturers use it to replace vegetable oil! It has a similar effect on food texture, but doesn't go rancid like oils do. They then cram it full of citric acid in order to cancel out the sweetness. Citric acid has health benefits in small quantities, but in large ones it threatens gut biota, both challenging digestion and also potentially contributing to a host of problems associated with poor digestive system function.

There's plenty to object to in the limited selection of foodstuffs supplied by Dollar general and their ilk. If they successfully displace real markets, they can do real harm. And we're only talking about the food so far, and not the cheap plastic disposable bullshit that they sell, which only increases landfilling since it's such garbage.

Re:Dollar store isn't a grocery store

[Registered Coward v2]

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.

Re:Dollar store isn't a grocery store

[50000BTU_barbecue]

"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.

Red Spots

[jmccue]

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

Re:Blooming Nuts

[markdavis]

>"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.

News for Nerds?

[pz]

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.

Re:News for Nerds?

[thegarbz]

Maybe it's me, but there doesn't seem to be any relevance whatsoever.

It's you. You're just not the same nerd as those of us interested in socio-economic patterns, especially those that affect my ability to be a food nerd.

Re:Another capitalism most

[fluffernutter]

I want to nip this one in the bud this time. Yes it was tried before, people got corrupt and it failed. I think the challenge of the human race is to develop a system that prevents people from becoming corrupt. It can't happen if we shut the conversation down with "it always fails".

A ban on ban employee cafeterias and now?

[AHuxley]

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.

Re:A ban on ban employee cafeterias and now?

[thegarbz]

People have the freedom to shop for food they can afford and big gov says no. ...snip...
Will the gov say what can be sold?

You don't understand the government at all do you? Big gov (not at all big gov) is preserving your choice in what you eat, not reducing it. All the while somehow it seems to have passed you that the government very much already says what can and can't be sold.

Will the cost of all that gov approval be passed on with a new fresh produce, meats and fruit tax?

That super expensive (not really) banana in your store already has that cost applied to it. Guess what, it wasn't significant.

Re:A ban on ban employee cafeterias and now?

[jtara]

People have the freedom to shop for food they can afford and big gov says no.

This isn't about "big government", thought. It's about LOCAL government having some say about the merchants in their community. It is about "small gov".

Not that far removed from Long Island City's recent successful rejection of Amazon.

You go, L.I. City! They did it without even having to have useless community "listening sessions" where nobody listens, and they just allow residents to vent, and then the developer gets their way.

We've had some battles in some smaller San Diego Communities (notably Ocean Beach) trying to prevent e.g. Target and other large chains from coming in and changing the small-town local merchant ecosystem. In the case of OB, though, the people lost. Developers control San Diego real estate and land use, not the city. The city just kow-tows to them.

I know that L.I. City/Amazon and Ocean Beach/big chain stores aren't quite the same issue but it is the same principal. Local governments have the right on behalf of the people to control land use and types of commerce.

I do hope they are careful to NOT exclude real do-gooders in adjoining sectors, such as Grocery Outlet. I love GO! They do something similar to the original Trader Joe's concept - they buy overstock, changed packaging, discontinued, (and sometimes) expiring but not expired goods directly from the manufacturer. (NOT from other stores, like the Dollars).

My nearly GO in downtown San Diego is shopped by downtown residents of all income groups, millennials shopping for a deal, and the homeless. It is one of the few stores that doesn't shoo them away (but they aren't allowed to loiter, either). It's nearly all high-quality merchandise. They are famous for their wine deals. The frozen section has amazing bargains - same upscale brands as Whole Foods at typically 1/3 to 1/2 the price. (Sadly, I see the lower-income patrons often making poor choices - Banquet over Amy's when Amy's might actually CHEAPER at their prices, and certainly healthier... They have been entrained.)

Re:Entitled businessmen

[markdavis]

>"So how come no one starts a new ISP and undercuts Comcast?"

Because of government intervention. Almost all ISP's operate in a monopoly granted or created by local or state governments. That is certainly the case here. Nobody can compete with Cox, because the local government gave one and only one company the "keys to the kingdom: way-back-when and then allowed them to provide any services they want on that physical line. Even if the market is supposedly free in that sector, no other company was given the incentives that X got on the onset... so nobody else can afford to enter the market.

Now, the motive might have been good at the time, and Cox does cover 100% of the houses in all the cities involved, but the results are now high prices, less innovation, and mediocre service due to zero competition. Consumers have a choice of X or nothing.

Failed economic and social policies to blame

[guruevi]

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.

Re:Dollar store isn't a grocery store

[MiniMike]

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.

My experience: Safeway is expensive.

[Futurepower(R)]

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.

Oh, also and...

[Texmaize]

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.

Let me guess

[Rujiel]

You actually think you're Christian, huh?