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Comment by vraylle | Hacker News Reader

I don't know about other areas, but here in the middle of Oklahoma the Dollar Generals have been a real positive. There's a lot of rural areas where a Walmart came in, then folded later. It left a 1-2 hour drive to get buy any kind of "real" food. The DG stores here have been expanding to include an actual grocery section, including fresh produce and (limited) fresh meat. More is available frozen. They have excellent prices on canned goods. Are they as good as a full grocery store? No, but they're a _lot_ better than the gas station/convenience store and its endless supply of deep-fried burritos...and also the only alternative.

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You are absolutely correct. I do long distance bicycle rides through rural areas. When you've been riding for hours without signs of civilization (other than the road itself), a Dollar General that pops up in the middle of nowhere is a godsend. You CAN get fresh food and healthy groceries there at good prices. Whole Foods it ain't, but I wouldn't expect that due to the different income levels of the shoppers of the respective stores. I give Dollar General and related stores a lot of credit- they have found a way to thrive in underserved markets.

The author has apparently never shopped at a Dollar General or a Family Dollar, because she thinks that these are dollar stores, and she doesn't seem to know that these stores sell many types of products other than food. It gives her article the tone of uninformed snobbery- "I don't even know what these stores sell or for how much, but I know what is best for poor communities".

I was actually driving through rural Wyoming when on a roadtrip and could not find any store when i needed to pick up some essentials. Luckily we came across a Dollar general store in a desolate mining town where the only other establishments included a few gas stations, not even typical fast food joints.

Here in rural Iowa, Dollar General also has claimed the niche of "less stuff, but also nearby". You can either drive 5 minutes into town and go to the Dollar General for most of your basic needs, or you can drive a half hour to the nearest city with a Walmart / Target / etc.

I really quite like stopping by to grab a quick thing or two. Around here, there tends to be a local grocery chain in the same vicinity, so generally I'd pick there for more traditional grocery foods. But ran out of toothpaste or need a pack of diapers? Dollar General is the place to go.

I’m curious, what do you do for work in Iowa?

I’m curious too, and a bit jealous.

I live in what would be considered more urban Iowa. I work in the ISU Research Park [1] for a company doing software development. My brother lives in our hometown and works as an industrial engineer at a plant that makes bio fertilizer and pesticide products [2]. We also have a sock factory in town, which I think is pretty neat [3]. Iowa really has a pretty diverse and thriving economy. It's a good place.

[1] http://www.isupark.org/tenant-directory/

[2] https://www.valentbiosciences.com/about/osage-plant/

[3] https://www.foxsox.com/

That research park has really grown in the last 5 years! I'm finishing up my masters degree online, but it was always interesting to see how it grew while I was on campus. I networked with people from Workiva, Vermeer, and Proplanner over the years. John Deere is in the mix too now (which was natural with how much research they fund on campus).

Also potentially of interest to the HN crowd, my hometown has municipal broadband [1]. Where I live, I actually have municipal broadband as well, though it looks like perhaps OMU beats us on speed [2]. My mom lives out in the country and gets her internet from an antenna pointed at the water tower, which seems to work pretty well [3].

[1] https://osage.net/telecom/internet-services/high-speed-inter... [2] http://centraliowabroadband.org/ [3] https://osage.net/telecom/internet-services/rural-wireless/

This is why I prefer being homeless in the Bay Area to going anywhere else to live for cheap, as people invite me. I spent like 4 days in a nice place in GA, in a downtown without baguettes, and came right back. I can shop at organic markets and coops everywhere. The high rent is a better cost than gas when housed.

Wait...what?

You're homeless and chose to leave a nice place because it had a downtown without baguettes? I mean we've all got our priorities but that sounds like perhaps you should examine your "needs" column more strongly.

Some people really like baguettes. Life is just about priorities

Cliff notes:

    * He is homeless by choice in the Bay Area
    * He lives off the generosity of others
    * He prefers this life style opposed to not have baguettes
    * A Nice place in Georgia is shit compared to shit in San Fransisco

Not my opinions, just restating the original points

Umm, Bay Area has decent baguettes somewhere?!

You just need to be homeless by a Sam's Club. They make wonderful baguettes!

https://www.samsclub.com/locator

They even sell decent enough brie to put on them.

> You can either drive 5 minutes into town and go to the Dollar General for most of your basic needs, or you can drive a half hour to the nearest city with a Walmart / Target / etc.

I'm intrigued by these time estimates. Living in a suburb of Santa Cruz (just south of the Bay Area), the choices are similar. Completely inadequate corner store (much worse than DG) locally, or drive to a location with real stores. That drive is a minimum of 15 minutes depending on the store you want.

But I feel like people in beach communities around the Bay Area would struggle with the idea that they're just as remote as hicks in rural Iowa.

The Iowans probably drive everywhere at 80mph.

The Californians are more likely to be driving 75. That doesn't make much difference over a 20-minute trip.

It does when you aren't stuck in traffic at the start and end of your trip.

Santa cruzian here: I don’t, the views and the weather are too nice to rush and put yourself in danger. Besides you’d probably just be rushing into traffic most days.

Speed limit is between 55 and 80 depending on the type of road anywhere that isn’t a town in Iowa. It’s perfectly safe.

Yeah, Iowa is flat and the people probably know how to drive in inclement weather. Just saying people here shouldn’t be going that fast :)

Iowa is not flat. It's not the Rockies, of course, but it's got a lot more hills than you'd think.

Try biking across it. I have and it ain't flat.

This is a funny, I totally agree that getting just out of Santa Cruz's densest part you'll run into people as redneck as anywhere in Iowa. I'm not so sure about anywhere in Santa Cruz County being like a food desert though...

But inside of Santa Cruz, there's an abundance of corner and grocery stores. Anywhere you live you'll have 1-3 amazing grocery stores within 1-2 miles. My favorite being Shopper's Corner, which has selection on par with stores being 5-10 it's size in physical area, but being quick to walk through and grab exactly what you need. And a butcher that will but 95% of the US's supermarkets to shame. So good and fast...

the op didn't say redneck.

We Iowans usually drive on country roads pretty fast -- also, we're used to 15-30 minute commutes for basic things.

Yep. Visited a girlfriend's rural relatives in Missouri. One of them asked if we wanted to swimming. As I got in the car, I asked how far it was. "Oh, about 40 miles", he said. (Or what is more than that?!) We drove 85MPH or more on not-so-paved roads the whole way.

Suburban Texas must be an odd phenomenon then. Kroger has found the key to dominating a vicinity away from Walmart. They build giant grocery stores about 3 miles away from each other where the Walmarts are more like 8 miles apart from each other. Then are various other competing stores in the mix as well.

* https://www.google.com/maps/search/kroger/@32.8956425,-97.18...

* https://www.google.com/maps/search/walmart/@32.8725386,-97.2...

* https://www.google.com/maps/search/albertsons/@32.8723824,-9...

* https://www.google.com/maps/search/aldi/@32.8724215,-97.2184...

A side note to this crowding is that unless you live within quick access to a freeway on-ramp it often takes about 30 minutes to get to that store 3 miles away.

There's a location in the town where I grew up with two Jewel (Albertson's) locations less than a mile apart on the same road. One is a much older store (early 80s), the other is much newer and was acquired when Dominick's (Safeway) shut down in the Chicago area.

By keeping both stores they have all the good grocery locations at that end of town tied up. There's a Mariano's (Kroger) on the opposite side of town and a Walmart with some groceries a couple miles in another direction, but most people go to what's right there.

To be fair, if I even think of Santa Cruz, I end up in a 15 minute traffic backup

Having to get into a car to get groceries is probably one of the reasons for that.

Interestingly, living in San Jose is the first time I've regularly walked to the grocery store. Why not when I lived elsewhere, equally close or closer to perfectly good Kroger, Harris Teeter, Food Lion, Publix or Winn-Dixie? Hills. Walking 4 blocks carrying groceries up and down hills in heat & humidity (or snow & ice) isn't remotely the same as on flatland in a mild climate.

Chicago is that way, too. The only difference is it's a 30 minute bus ride instead of a 30 minute drive.

That may be an economic equilibrium point.

(Edit: For infrequent stuff like clothes. Obvs, regardless of the free market's default behavior, we need better for food.)

> That may be an economic equilibrium point.

It also reminds me of Marchetti's constant: https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2014/06/why-commute-t...

>>> But I feel like people in beach communities around the Bay Area would struggle with the idea that they're just as remote as hicks in rural Iowa.

Well, that made me laugh a bit, and it helped me frame why someone in a rural area would go to a Dollar General versus a Walmart.

Which would be funny, because driving through the nearby Santa Cruz mountains can be reminiscent of the part of Appalachia where I grew up. Complete with trashed cars in the front yard and trash strewn about.

This also covers a case that I don't see discussed much, the cost of going shopping. Even ignoring wear and tear, if you have a truck or an older car that gets maybe 20 mpg, a 10 mile 20 mile round trip costs you a gallon of gas or $2-4 right now and sometimes more. That's not much as part of a weekly shopping trip, but if you just need a gallon of milk it's a low-visibility jacking up of the price.

It’s safe to assume any travel by personal vehicle costs $0.50 cents per mile (or minute in urban areas since stop and go causes more wear and tear), including fuel and maintenance/saving for new vehicle. Driving 5 miles or minutes to get one item from the grocery list can cost an additional $5.

You’re not the only one. My girlfriend worked for half a year at the local dollar general. She had great coworkers and it paid the bills. She could do all her shopping there and I was surprised how well the DG covered just about everything you wouldn’t want to wait for a weekend trip into a bigger urban area to take care of anyway.

I spent a few years in Texas and often travel by road cross country. I do have to say, finding a dollar store chain of local is a blessing in the big empty in-between.

Dollar stores are like fast food franchises. They're cheap and probably unhealthy, but their inventory is highly predictable.

Good point, reliability is key. Selection is narrow, limited by space, but they have a little of everything.

Healthy food is easy to find at these stores. I can put together a perfectly good home cooked meal from Dollar General no problem. Baking goods, dry goods, dairy, produce... again the selection is smaller than a larger grocer, but it's all there.

Is a Dollar store in the US comparable to a 7-eleven from Asia?

I don't live anywhere where they have either a Dollar store or a 7-eleven, I've only learned about the 7-eleven concept on my last trip to Bangkok.

Dollar General has a much larger selection than an Asian 7-Eleven. It has "real groceries" (albeit a small selection) and many non-food goods like detergent, toys, shampoo, even cell phones and a small variety of clothing. It's kind of like they got a list of the top 10% best-selling items at Wal-Mart and made a store out of it.

Dollar Tree (and Family Dollar IIRC) are a bit different because unlike Dollar General each item is actually a dollar. They're a bit more akin to Daiso, if you visited any of those in Thailand, though again with a bit more food (though less than Dollar General, and in smaller packages).

> Dollar General has a much larger selection than an Asian 7-Eleven.

That is surely because a 7-11 in say Japan, Korea, or China are part of vertical, dense infrastructure. You don't have miles of space in between things.

And I would be curious if Dollar General has that much more of a selection compared to some of the big 7-11 I've visited in Seoul.

Maybe I haven't visited the right ones, but none of the 7-Eleven (or FamilyMart, Lawson, OKmart, or CU) stores I visited in South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan had selections that close to those of the Dollar General stores I've patronized. In my subjective judgement, the difference is pretty big. This is not a knock on them, of course, just difference in business model, and as you say, regional/market context.

Dollar General is not a dollar store.

I have a lot of family in rural Arkansas and Dollar General has been a life changer for them. It's only about 30minutes to Walmart or a grocery store, but that can huge hassle for small things or late night medicine.

Lived in NYC for a few years - I had everything (bank, pharmacy, multiple starbucks, multiple restaurants, gyms, swimming pools ....) within half mile radius. I can't even imagine driving 30 mins to get groceries. Totally different world!

I agree - I live in a suburb outside of Philly, King of Prussia, where I get EVERYTHING I need, and more, within a 5-10 minute drive. In fact per capita there's an excess of options.

I happens on a smaller scale, too. I’m also in rural Arkansas, and about 15 minutes from Walmart. I’m 5 minutes from Harp’s, and with basically no traffic in that direction. I tend to go to Harp’s.

Aren't there any local (small) stores? I can't believe everything has to be a big "chain".

Here in Europe, there are a lot of SMB's that fill in the gap of "fresh food". Although they are a little bit more expensive, they are always good enough to fill this requirement.

There were. The problem is that Walmart moved in and drove them all out of business, then realized that the market wasn't big enough and closed the stores leaving nothing.

Small stores in rural areas are overpriced, understocked, regularly have expired products, and often close around 6pm. I've literally ran into store owners in Walmart who buy things there and just mark them up 2-3x. But to be fair, they really have no other options unless they drive a couple hundred miles.

DG pops up in extremely rural areas that no real store wants to go, not even gas stations. I know several in towns of 100-200 people that are 40-50 miles from anything resembling a town.

It seems that grocery stores are consolidating into the big chains. We had a couple of IGA[1] grocery stores in the town I grew up in - locally owned and operated grocery stores that were much more responsive to customer demands. Now there are none.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IGA_(supermarkets)

Stories like this are a great read. I live in a country were everyone has at least three supermarkets in a 5 kilometre radius. Its easy to take fresh food for granted.

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