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from the nothing-in-that-store-costs-1$-anyway dept.
In a Washington Post story picked up by the S. Louis Post-Dispatch, reporter Rachel Siegel asks the question "Are dollar stores a response to poverty - or a cause?"
The fundamental premise of the story is
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.
this creates what is referred to by one patron as a 'food desert'
their unstoppable rise...keeps grocers from opening.
implications are made
With fewer options for fresh food and health care, people in a North Tulsa ZIP code have an average life expectancy of 11 years less than those in South Tulsa, according to a 2015 city report.
"It creates an overall sense of the neighborhood being run-down," said Stacy Mitchell, [of the Institute for Local Self-Reliance]. "It's a recipe for locking in poverty rather than alleviating it."
Contrariwise, these stores
are a vital source of cheap staples
The last Dollar General to open is across the street from a senior citizens home. That store, Henderson said, is a lifeline to residents.
the council thinks it's appropriate for city government to pick winners and losers in the economy.
and while not typical, some do indeed sell fruits and vegetables
grapes, apples, avocados, potatoes sandwiched between bags of fried pork skins and cases of Michelob Ultra.
It's Walmart all over again in a way.
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."
Some localities have added restrictions on the stores, for example
Mesquite, Texas, a Dallas suburb, approved changes to its zoning code last year that will limit the number of dollar stores. The guidelines prevent them from opening within 5,000 feet of each other. And stores must dedicate 10 percent of floor space to fresh food.
Tulsa is working to solve the 'food desert' problem they attribute to the stores
This month, a deal was reached with ECO Farms, a local company that focuses on indoor vertical farming to solve food deserts. Two company executives, Jim Bloom and Adam James, said that while this is their first try at a grocery store, they're intent on making healthy food a reality in District 1 - not a luxury.
"We're attending to this as a human right, not a geographic privilege," James said.
However, as the article notes - "grocery stores have struggled here before"
The nearest dollar store to me is about four-five miles (15 minutes or so) on busy backroads. My experiences with them are lack of selection and significant product gaps. Very hit or miss and you just have to go shop somewhere like Kroger or Publix afterwards anyway to finish out your list, so I don't bother as I don't have the time to spend on the extra commute and double shopping.
If everyone was like me dollar stores might not be experiencing the success they very obviously are.
So how about some other perspectives? Do Soylentils love them or hate them? Is this a first world problem?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kazzie on Sunday February 17 2019, @08:06PM (2 children)
Here in the UK, our pound stores are a slightly different animal to the Dollar Stores I recall over there, and don't have such a vast range of products. They do carry lots of chocolate, crisps and snacks, but not much in the way of general foodstuffs. Some have started selling perishables such as milk and bread in the past few years, but they only have a piddly turnover of these lines. The dominant UK supermarket chains (Tesco, Morrison, Asda (Walmart), and Sainsbury), who also run their own chains of convenience stores (Seven-Eleven style), are far more threatened by European-style discount supermarkets such as Aldi and Lidl. Most penny-watchers do their food shop there, but they offer a good selection of fresh produce, so TFA's concerns aren't really relevant. (Some will go to a pound shop for select items, but not the main food shop.)
The recent years have seen a lot of non-price-point discount homeware retailers move into selling food: chains such as Home Bargains, Poundstretcher, B&M Bargains. This strikes me as being a mirror image of the big supermarkets all increasing their non-food selection over the past decade. There's no natural growth in their markets at all, all they can do is try to steal market share from others.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by stormwyrm on Monday February 18 2019, @02:08AM
Similarly, across the Pacific, in Japan, there are ¥100 stores (roughly $1 at today's exchange rates) such as Daiso, which have spilled over into neighbouring regions like the Philippines (where the ¥100 has become ₱88). Just as with these pound stores you speak of, they don't really have general foodstuffs but you can get chocolates, crisps, candy, and snacks there. I've never seen perishables such as milk or bread in any such store, either in Japan or in the Philippines. The closest I've seen to those are canned beverages, which are only slightly cheaper than from the ubiquitous vending machines at every street corner. What foodstuffs are available are vastly outnumbered by non-food items: household goods such as cleaning brushes, simple tools like screwdrivers and wrenches, cooking utensils, office supplies, children's toys, personal care stuff like nail trimmers, and so forth. Just about everything is ¥100 (¥105 with the tax), with very few exceptions, which is generally a reasonable deal compared to getting such things from elsewhere. A lot of these items are not available elsewhere and are genuinely useful.
Numquam ponenda est pluralitas sine necessitate.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday February 18 2019, @05:35AM
Can't steal customers unless you're doing something better. That's economic growth as well.