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posted by takyon on Sunday February 17 2019, @05:00PM   Printer-friendly
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?


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  • (Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @04:06AM (7 children)

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @04:06AM (#802759)

    Dollar stores are just providing what their customers want

    Citation needed. The fact that they are buying it only proves the second part of your comment - what they can afford. If we switched from subsidizing HFCS to subsidizing nutrition, how many of the poor would switch their buying habits?

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  • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday February 18 2019, @05:10AM (6 children)

    by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Monday February 18 2019, @05:10AM (#802776) Homepage Journal

    How about we don't subsidize anything and let the people and their wallets pick the winners and losers?

    --
    My rights don't end where your fear begins.
    • (Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @03:17PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @03:17PM (#802977)

      Apparently they have not been out to a 'rural' area.

      The stores that are there (you know the mom and pops), are usually terrible. They are stores that have been around for a long time. Their prices are wildly higher than what it should be. That is the scarcity part of economics people like to ignore. So those places take advantage of them.

      Price in these sorts of stores is about convenience. I live in the middle of a large city. If I goto my local grocery story and decide to buy a knife I will pay nearly double what I could get it for somewhere else (ironically across the parking lot). That is convenience. In a rural setting you can drive 40 miles and get cheaper products. But is the savings of say 10 bucks worth a tank of gas and 2 hours of your time? So if a store shows up and competes better on price they will win. "Hey this place is mostly cheaper on everything for a few things higher" you will tend to shop there. That is what the dollar store is. They are a chain store. They can buy 8 billion of something and get a better deal than the mom and pop that buys 2 of something. Chain stores are always hard to compete against. This has been going on for a long time. Sears used to be the one everyone feared.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @08:39PM (3 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Monday February 18 2019, @08:39PM (#803159)

      Because the free market is purely reactive. You want to make the decision to grow enough vegetables high in folic acid before you see the birth defects show up. Plus weather has shown itself to be remarkably resistant to the invisible hand of the market, so if you want plenty of nutritious food to be available in all conditions, you want to encourage a supply level that in all but the worse growing conditions could result in supply exceeding demand. And if you want to do that year after year, you need to make sure those farmers get paid enough despite supply exceeding demand or they'll drop out and in years of bad growing conditions you'll have demand exceeding supply. Food shortages have a profound impact on social stability.

      • (Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Tuesday February 19 2019, @12:54AM (2 children)

        by The Mighty Buzzard (18) Subscriber Badge <themightybuzzard@proton.me> on Tuesday February 19 2019, @12:54AM (#803286) Homepage Journal

        Your argument is not a bad one in a world of individual farmers. In a world of corporate farms it doesn't hold up though. Large corporations have the means to assume the risks themselves without undue hardship, so they should.

        --
        My rights don't end where your fear begins.