Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.
nextcity.org
nextcity.org
The Dollar General near me has the exact same brands as you would find in any larger retail establishment, they just have found a way to stock the 80% that folks typically need. They are filling a niche between the gas station convenience store and traditional grocery/big box retail. They don't have a produce section, just a bit of fruit. Is that the issue?
Are the small independent grocery stores in these communities stocking produce? Is Dollar General and the like creating some kind of price cartel that's putting them out of business? I know of two Dollar Generals near me, one in a small one-light town that previously only had a gas station convenience store and people had to drive 12 miles to get anything besides milk, condoms and beef jerky. The other on the outskirts of a small town that still has a thriving small grocery store in the middle of it.
Frozen produce - which the dollar stores in my area do carry - tends to be more nutritious nowadays. It is also much easier to prepare, and, assuming you have access to a freezer, is less susceptible to spoilage.
And if your food preparation options don't amount to much more than a microwave oven, or you simply don't have the time to do a lot of cooking, the frozen dinners that these types of stores sell might be one of the healthiest meal options you have.
Which isn't to say that food deserts are necessarily a good thing. I used to live in one and it was awful. But I do want to at least consider the possibility that the reason that these stores get a lot of business is that they are better serving the actual needs of their clientele. If that's the case, then perhaps the way forward is not to try and force everyone back to the old stores they probably did have a reason to not be shopping at anymore, so much as to try and figure out new things that suit their needs even better.
Nobody can make a decent meal exclusively out of frozen vegetables; there just aren't enough macronutrients there. And everyone wants their meals to be appetizing. So it's not just about whether or not you can make frozen vegetables hot, it's about whether or not you can feasibly incorporate them into a nutritionally complete and appetizing meal.
Also, with TV dinners, you can buy just tonight's dinner on the way home from work, heat it up as soon as you get home, and have nothing left over to store. So, even though the food is frozen, there's no need to own a working freezer. With frozen vegetables, unless your meal plans typically involve eating half a pound of Normandy blend in one sitting, not so much.
Also the Chet's grocery shown in this report had to be saved by community action in the face of the competition. https://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/kingsley-grocery-sto...
https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/its-time-to-end-t...
Classic article.
It's Time to End the War on Salt - The zealous drive by politicians to limit our salt intake has little basis in science
Whether the causality chain is over fresh produce or not. It is established fact that when a dollar store causes the close local grocers the nutrition and health of the local population suffers. On source for that would be Dr. Barry Popkin from University of North Carolina in this interview by CBS Monday morning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtAvJBAJfnE
Dollar Tree is an actual "dollar store" where literally every item costs $1. Dollar Tree's items are generally no-name discount brands that wouldn't be found in big grocery store chains, or familiar brands in unique very small packages.
Dollar General, at least in the two parts of the US I've seen them in (areas of California and the Midwest), is as you describe: something between a convenience store and a traditional grocery store sans produce. They have all the normal big brands: Oreos, Doritos, etc. in the normal package sizes at what seemed to me to be normal grocery store prices.
https://www.mashed.com/199834/the-untold-truth-of-dollar-tre...
https://www.mashed.com/199834/the-untold-truth-of-dollar-tre...
Also, in my experience when you can find the same items as the grocery, the Dollar store will be cheaper. They somewhat fit the description of a convenience store, but in terms of prices they are at the opposite end of the market with Walmart and Target.
So the prepared foods and toiletries get marked up to make up for low margins on fresh fruit. Wealthier customers are fine with this as they want to not have to make two trips and they will pay for the fruit.
Dollar stores ditch the fresh stuff and just take a lower margin on the toiletries and prepared food to make up for it, resulting in lower prices. A bit of extra savings matters more to poor people, so they shift those purchases to the dollar store. The grocery store’s business model fails.
If some company has a buisness model that has negative externalities they should be taxed more for it. When taxing is not responsible because this would hit the poor dispropoertionally the buisness model should be banned.
The food desert discussion is about availability.
Meanwhile, the store-brand pop tarts can deliver 2,000 calories/day for like $3, and come with sealed-per-serving packaging. Sure, they'll give you diabetes and malnutrition, but....
I think many people on HN have not been in a dollar store, not all sell for a "dollar" like Dollar Tree. Dollar General and such usually have a "larger" markup on basic goods.
Original Article quotes
"growing evidence suggests these stores are not merely a byproduct of economic distress. They’re a cause of it. In small towns and urban neighborhoods alike, dollar stores are triggering the closure of grocery stores, eliminating jobs, and further eroding the prospects of the vulnerable communities they target"
This links to a report here as a source: https://ilsr.org/dollar-stores-factsheet/
Which cites https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/aug/13/dollar-gene... as its only source.
The actual quote:
"“We lasted three years and three days after Dollar General opened,” he said. “Sales dropped and just kept dropping. We averaged 225 customers a day before and immediately dropped to about 175. A year ago we were down to 125 a day. Basically we lost 35 to 40% of our sales. I lost a thousand dollars a day in sales in three years.”"
Unless the master plan is to run competitors out of town and then change to "Two Dollar General", it seems like Dollar General is good for consumers (at least if you judge by consumers' own revealed preferences).
In this way, shoplifting is essentially a tax on everyone else in your community.
1) That the local business owner will invest back into the community, more than the chain store would have. Sure, some of that revenue will go towards employees, local sales tax, charitable donations, etc., but the same could be said of the chain store. The rest of the profit... what's to stop the local owner from accumulating savings in a national bank, or investing in out of area stocks, crypto, etc.? Unless they were thinking of expanding/franchising their store, their actual investments (as opposed to costs) may or may not be in the local economy vs whatever has the highest ROI.
2) That the local consumers who saved money from the chain store wouldn't simply spend that money at other local businesses. Let's say the chain store saves 1000 customers $10 each, that's $10k of unspent money that could be organically used at other businesses, vs that $10k being funneled into the control of a single small-business owner who might just invest it elsewhere. On average, there's probably a higher chance of 1000 customers spending at least SOME of that money locally than that one local business owner deciding to.
3) Small local businesses typically do not have the economies of scale that benefit pricing and processes, which means they don't have the same margins, which means they might not be able to afford good wages & benefits for their staff, or have to pass on those costs in the form of higher prices for local consumers (who then have less money to spend on other businesses).
4) Most market goods are fungible and UPCed and distributed across the whole country anyway, whereas things like schools and real estate are strictly local/geographical. Money consumers save can be spent on their own immediate family needs, building community by allowing them to afford actual roots instead of just shopping local and supporting that one small business owner.
5) Small businesses tend not to have a very diverse labor force (in terms of skill sets), especially if they're retail. That means the local labor pool has limited employment options beyond low-end service jobs. Especially in a post-COVID employment landscape, large digital-savvy companies probably offer a more realistic pathway out of rural poverty (i.e. people can learn skills, work for remotely for one, but stay local). The small local mom-and-pops can only very rarely offer that to local residents... maybe they contract a local print shop or two, but rarely do they employ full-time marketers, designers, artists, coders, architects, sustainability people, etc.
Basically the whole "buy local" argument seems to stem from the idea that your money is better in the hands of a small business owner than Jeff Bezos's pockets. Maybe that's true in some statistical sense, but it also misses the savings that YOU keep and can spend how you see fit, including investing in your community in actual, non-trivial ways (employment, real estate, schools, local government, marriage, etc.). Buy local might be good for local business owners, but I don't think it's necessarily good for local consumers or local communities. I'd be happy to see data showing otherwise though...
"A long time ago, there was one store, and prices were high. Then a second store came to town, and prices were low. Eventually, one of the stores closed, so now we have one store again, and prices are high."
At the same time, I'm not convinced we can just assume that to be the case. When a new grocery store in the neighboring town came and put the IGA out of business, my friends were also comparing notes and noticing that the new store paid better than the old one. And offered some things locally where we previously had to drive all the way into the city to get them.
I'm just not convinced these kind of situations can all be neatly fit into a single, straightforward narrative.
I'd say this is to be proven. People that own businesses in broke areas (which is what we're talking about here, no?) are also likely to invest their money in expanding their company in other broke areas, personal financial investments and their children's education.
I live in a relatively rural community where the public schools actually do quite academically when compared across the entire state and we would get families moving into the community because of the excellent care we provide to developmentally disabled kids. Unfortunately the vast majority of people I know that went to college moved out of town and is now generating tax revenue elsewhere.
Dollars leaving the community is a good thing. Those dollars don’t just go into a black hole. They go to other towns. And some of those towns’ dollars come to our town.
That allows all of us to diversity our risk across geographic areas. I’d much rather own a small slice of grocery stores in 1000 towns across the country than a large share of the grocery store down the street.
Trickle-down economics failed the U.S. before and will fail us again. Trickle-down economics are a lie sold by the mega-rich.
But as price-sensitive consumers they do benefit from the substantially higher economies of scale, the productivity efficiencies of management best practices, and the lower cost of capital that comes with a professionally managed multinational corporation.
I really don’t think that’s true.
At the end of the day people shop where it's convenient and cheap, with a bit of a tradeoff between those too. Some people like spending more at a locally owned place, but most would rather pocket that extra cash.
Dollar General is at the crossroads of a bodega and a grocery store: it’s way better than the bodegas despite not being much more expensive, but it also replaces enough grocery store trips that grocery stores are no longer economically viable.
So he's had to rely upon the two local gas stations, and their meager and overpriced groceries much of the time. DG opened up last year in town, and now he has a much better place to shop. The store also pays better than the gas stations. I think it's a win win.
And can you point to where I can read about DG's "master plan?"
Maybe my area's DGs are atypical, but their selection of food that doesn't fit this description is barely better than a decent gas station's. If your only option is a DG then you may already be in that situation, without their needing to close the store to make it happen.
Dollar objects get replaced much faster than better quality objects.
They’re manipulating that “new purchase” high similar to Facebook juicing us via likes.
Very aptly put. I've been captive to their charm and can verify there is a certain dopamine thrill that quickly vanishes after the subpar goods are brought home and inspected.
These phantom brand dumps invariably smell of cheap plastic dust. That tragic scent fits the gloomy foreboding that such places bring, and should also ward off would-be entrants. It is a literal air of hopelessness. I miss real shops and solid kit.
Anyways... what I meant to say is probably something like don't be so fucking picky! (Regarding measurments and such.)
Arf! Arf! (SCNR)
So I can't really blame a company for taking over a market underserved. They are a symptom of larger changes in the economy and society, that which one SHOULD criticize.
The problem is poor and low to middle income folks everywhere in America seem to be getting poorer.
That is the problem that people have with dollar stores. They have a cheaper cost of entry, but are more expensive overall. Those of us that aren't living paycheck to paycheck have the liberty of buying things a year in advance to get a better price, and Amazon is great for us. But most of the country isn't doing quite so well.
The Dollar General was a real game changer. Prior to its arrival, you had a 25+ minute/mile (your pick - mostly 55 mph speed limit country roads) drive to the nearest thing passing as a grocery store. When I was a kid there was a gas station, which did sell some food (maybe bread and milk and some canned goods, along with the typical junk food).
DG is such a real improvement for people out that way. It sells the stuff they need at prices that aren't ridiculous.
Crucially, it doesn't displace or undercut anything. There wasn't any other store to displace - even that old gas station is still there! Dollar General is effectively an oasis in a food desert, even with its lack of fresh produce.
I don't know what percentage of Dollar General / Family Dollar / etc type stores are in areas like that, versus in small towns where they might be competing with an IGA or something. But there are definitely places where their presence is a real win.
My dad has such a small business, that was struggling under threat of potential new regulation to increase competition: he joined a big national franchise, destroyed the other stores and now HE is the big store. Maybe some of the same business will have to close, but the clients are happy because prices dropped, my dad can keep his 5 employees and push towards retirement with a valuable business to resell, and the regulator will be happy to see that not only big malls will survive their liberalization attempt.
The only people who lost are people who sat on their hands, looked at the sky in angst and complained people outside the village are coming to change things...
A problem in the US is that there are many thousands of communities that are below the size/density threshold where the traditional Walmart model makes sense. Dollar General seems to be well-optimized to fill this part of the market.
Another nice thing about national chains is that they mostly stay out of community politics. Local monopoly business owners have a bad tendency to leverage that status into completely unrelated political and personal matters.
https://www.msnbc.com/opinion/solution-trump-biden-polarizat...
> Studies show a direct correspondence between the closing of newspapers and the polarization of people formerly served by those newspapers.
A 1.9% decrease as a result in a social science experiment does not exactly feel like a lot to me. The paper is paywalled, but I'd love to see their community matching methods and confidence intervals.
EDIT: Found it [0]
The paper tests how 66 communities (defined as only the county that the newspaper is headquartered in) with closed newspapers voted in 2012. The experiment tests for how many people split their vote only among President and Senator. Those communities skew very white (76% vs. 60% US average) and way over-represented the US East Coast + Midwest.
Even taking all of that for granted, when they ran a placebo test on the 2008 election, they found literally the same difference (1.9%), just with a higher standard deviation (so they could call the result not significant).
I don't think Facebook is good for news at all (we probably agree that it is by design polarizing), but local papers are not the salvation many make them out to be.
0: https://joshuadarr.weebly.com/uploads/5/1/8/1/51819147/darr_...
There is still a niche for independent grocers, and I live in the middle of a triangle of multiple large supermarkets.
However, these days the independent grocers really have to try hard. There's not that many of them, but the ones that are left are survivors.
Independent grocers certainly do exist here, but it is increasingly rare and, in my experience, it is almost always a long running business that, yes, is trying very hard and have either a market that is too small for a chain to move into or, as I said in my previous comment, a specific niche. Typically this niche is the very high end or a specific ethnic cuisine such as Korean, Mexican, or Italian where you can find ingredients and brands you just can’t find in a chain store. Though these stores are typically very small and are closer to general stores in some cases. A good deli or grill is another good differentiator for some grocers. I have yet to see a fully independent one store grocer compete head to head with a chain grocery store. I just don’t think the economies of scale are there to allow it. There are smaller regional chains that are able to compete with the national grocers, but they get bought up eventually by chains to eliminate competition in a region.
https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/dollar-genera...
I know a wealthy person with impeccable culinary taste whose guilty pleasure is eating certain frozen/canned vegetables. She grew up very poor and loves the taste/texture of them even though she can easily afford the most bougie fresh vegetables available. It isn't nearly as bad to get your produce this way as I think some upper-middle class people assume it is.
I knew some kids growing up whose parents did not know how (and did not want to learn) to cook even the essentials. If it couldn't be microwaved, warmed up in an oven, eaten cold, or bought from McDonalds, they didn't eat it.
Nobody in a Dolllar General is making much more than the proprietors of the old local store were making. Yet, their prices are cheaper. Why? Because Dollar General is taking a cut.
This may seem better to the local community at first (lower prices means more money in their pockets) yet this money is leaving the community forever. With the local grocery store, money flowed in circles, now Dollar General is extracting what value is in the community until the community dies.
A community needs a way to import money, not just a way to export less. That could be a locally owned store, but only if it's attractive enough to get clients outside of its community.
Yes, it is as produce is a group of products that a better margin than produce (and produce spoils easier). By comming into an market and serving produce any other store is put at an disadvantage if they sell produce. This leads to "food deserts", places where you can not find healthy, affordable food.
> Are the small independent grocery stores in these communities stocking produce?
If there are any, they are worried. If you have 7 minutes this video by VICE from 2018 explains some of the concerns. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N6IqsG-Iiik There are also community actions against dollar stores such as here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-vLWTkBQWP0 This CBS reports about grocers being closed due dollar stores moving into towns https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GtAvJBAJfnE drawing parallels to Walmart killing mainstreets
> Is Dollar General and the like creating some kind of price cartel that's putting them out of business?
By serving only non produce goods a competing store which previously was able to carry produce and was able to bear this expense due non-produce sales will see reduced non-produce sales leading to worse financial performance and possibly clousure or a slow death while loosing customer to dollar general.
> previously only had a gas station convenience store and people had to drive 12 miles
This is an improvement for those people, good.
There was recently a video about a lady who worked at Dollar Tree for just a short time before quitting. I posted a link below, but it's kinda long so I'll summarize. She basically wasn't allowed to take breaks, and had to find her manager to ask permission to get a drink of water. In Florida heat. It was pretty heartbreaking.
I remember living in a rural area where people couldn't afford a car, but could walk to a gas station and pay 3x the prices on everything compared to if they bought everything at grocery store - it just helps keep them poor. And often, I think people see "dollar" in the name, and think that automatically means cheap, but being poor doesn't mean being financially literate.
If people weren't segregated into rich areas | poor areas, or maybe grocery stores found some other way to be profitable in low income areas, or some other thing, this wouldn't be such a problem. But as it is right now, they are filling a need, granted with negative side effects.
Edit: I realize the article focuses more on Dollar Generals causing food desserts, rather than being a response to them. Guess I'm focusing on more what I've seen.
.7 miles from here - in a more convenient area to drive to, is a Lidl, with everything that person bought about 40% cheaper. 1 mile away there's a Wegmans. 1.4 miles away there's Target, Lowes, and Harris Teeter. All just as accessible via taxi/uber as this DG.
The only real thing I can think of in DG's favor is it's very easy in/out - there's 2 counters, no self-checkout, the store is small itself. Just walking around to find what you want in those other stores would take 3-4x as long as hitting the 6 aisles in DG.
But... they're paying a terribly high price for that little bit of convenience. There's been a couple of times I've wanted to tell that person "hey, you can save $20 or more by driving another 3 minutes down the street" but I doubt it would be welcomed. I can't think of a way to intrude that isn't intrusive or patronizing. :/
If you go to a bulk store like Costco it certainly adds up. I don't go to those places because I can never use the stuff up fast enough before it goes bad.
Because it is, people can spend their money however they like and they can value convenience or have any other reason to shop there. Also being old doesn't make them incapable of deciding where to shop.
I don't think people understand that sometimes your body makes savings not a savings. You don't miss good health till its gone, or the ability to do things with it.
- it is newly built. Building a dollar store is a fairly cheap way to raise the value of undeveloped land so some land owners use them as an exit strategy for declining communities.
- likely in an odd location, compared to other stores. The developers asked an inexperienced city council to rezone non-commercial land to approve the new build.
Dollar stores wouldn't be as much of an issue if they leased existing commercial space but this rarely happens.
Sub-optimal land usage can lower the chances of a depressed community from ever rebounding.
I wonder if there are other differences in what they're shipped. Like how "outlet stores" get shittier versions of brand-name clothes.
1. Dollar stores do (as you say) offer products in much smaller sizes. This isn't necessarily bad for consumers: if you don't have the money to pay for extra product, it's to your benefit to shop at a store that lets you buy in smaller increments.
2. Dollar stores have no fixed inventory. They buy whatever brand is the cheapest at any given time, rather than trying to stock the same brands consistently. This leads to them often having unusual versions of products that aren't available elsewhere.
Per-unit cost of dollar-store goods is often significantly higher than regular grocery stores due to smaller packaged quantities of the exact same product. It is terrible for poor people, but ridiculously profitable for the dollar stores.
Putting "dollar" in the name makes everyone think of the dollar trees (everything $1), so I guess the author wants this to be a bit of a commentary on how this is catering to the poor possibly? But the other chains are essentially just well stocked stores. Who doesn't want to shop somewhere that's both convenient and cheap?
42% of the united states is overweight. nearly 20% of children are obese. dollar stores could be seen to directly undermine US health policy by displacing larger grocery stores and encouraging unhealthy consumption of overprocessed foods high in sugar salt and fat. "filling a niche" is an idea the marketing department came up with to justify selling garbage.
the lack of access to food (food deserts) and a healthy balanced diet are direct contributors to obesity and its myriad of comorbidities. They disproportionately affect people of colour and low income communities, and have been correlated with income inequality and the wealth gap across racial boundaries as well.
unpopular opinion: the "wealthy" version of the dollar store is Trader Joes in that both cater to the american "idea" of cooking food moreso than actually preparing a meal. Both rely on processed and frozen offerings of sugar salt and fat that present a reconstituted/reheated 'cooking' experience as opposed to actual cookery involving fresh ingredients and thoughtful planning. many people have a favourite product at these places, but few people can conceive of a favourite recipe they assemble from ingredients sourced at either.
Wage stagnation is very real and inflation, which remained somewhat muted is now also very real. The average cost of a new vehicle in the US is now over $40,000. That is almost double what it was 20 years ago. The cost of groceries, anecdotally, is almost double what it was 10 years ago where I live. And yet, wages have increased only moderately.
There is nothing wrong with Dollar stores. They serve an important niche. Most everyone has probably shopped at one. The problem is that this is the primary market demand. Dollar stores are many things, but “nice” or “pleasant” are not words used to describe them. People aren’t usually shopping at dollar stores as a first choice. People are shopping at dollar stores as an only or last choice.
More dollar stores means that these chains are seeing increased demand for their retail niche, which could be interpreted as a leading edge economic indicator that families are getting poorer.
"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."
And a good explanation to boot.
The only thing that quote is good for this century is letting upscale consumers pat themselves on the back. Goods are so much cheaper than when that quote was written that using cheaper alternatives and treating them as disposable is often times cheaper in the long run for many classes of goods and usage patterns.
These sorts of tropes and rules of thumb that have been stripped of all nuance and packaged up nice and neatly so that the lowest common denominator consumer on the internet can read, understand and press the up-vote button are good for little more than achieving said upvotes. When subject to the complexities of real life they are wrong as often as they are right. You may as well toss a coin. There are unfortunately no rules of thumb you can follow that will outperform even a minimal application of critical thought.
There's also the question of why the poor person doesn't take out a loan to buy the more expensive boots, and pay off the loan with the money that he saves from not having to continually buy pairs of cheaper boots. Many poor people still have credit cards, and even the ones who don't can often trade favors or get loans from relatives.
And even the response "they should save up for the boots" isn't obviously wrong. For obvious reasons it's hard for poor people to save, but how often is it so hard that something like this isn't possible?
A lot of it comes down to leverage: if you're poor, you have very, very bad options when it comes to borrowing money.
Say you're already living paycheck-to-paycheck, and then you fall and break your wrist. You don't have health insurance, so you go to an urgent care clinic, and have to pay $200 out of pocket (a very optimistic number!)
You were already gonna finish this week with less than $30 in the bank. Now you literally can't buy yourself groceries until Friday. What do you do?
For a lot of people, the answer is credit card debt (18-26% or more APR) or, worse, payday loans (20-40% PER MONTH if it's a legal place, worse if it's not).
Say you take out a payday loan at 20% to borrow back just that $200. Now you're gonna owe the place $40 at the end of the month. Congrats -- your bank account is now gonna be overdrawn. Hope you don't try and use your debit card, because now you owe $35 in overdraft fees, too.
If you can't borrow money cheaply, the very first time that you're forced to borrow, you are fucked if you can't get back out very quickly. And if you're in a place where you were going to a payday loan, there's very little reason to think you're gonna be able to get back out.
There's a lot of other shit. If you're poor you have a worse car that needs more maintenance/uses more gas/gets more traffic tickets. You get shittier sleep because your mattress is 12 years old and you're stressed all the time, so it's harder to even bring yourself to work. You can't afford a daycare, so you have to stay home with your kid an extra day every week, so you work fewer hours and make even less.
And that's not even scratching the surface of what it's like to live amongst poverty. Everything I've said can happen to someone who's trying their absolute hardest every single day, and doing it all "right"; and people aren't perfect. An unexpected kid, a drug addiction, getting involved with gangs; these things happen to well-meaning, good people, and trap them in a life of poverty in a way that's incredibly difficult to escape even if you do everything right afterwards.
It's a vicious spiral when you don't have a safety net.
If you just bought cheap Walmart boots, you'd probably be spending $50 per pair, but need 2 pairs a year (maybe even more, but you're not putting a huge amount of wear and tear), call it $100/year. Over 18 years that's $1800!
"Camp mocs", chukkas, and loafers have replaced them for everyday wear, for me, but that first pair of IRs still see some of my hardest-wearing days, probably 20-30 days a year.
Given the rate of wear for the ~2 years when I wore them very heavily, I'd say I could have gotten 5-8 years without babying them a bit (with a re-soling around year 4, probably). With my current usage pattern I expect they'll last about 20, with a re-soling at some point. If a person used shitty work boots for the really rough days to avoid abusing the expensive boots, and maybe kept some purpose-specific shoes for things like snow, heavy rainy weather (duck boots in both cases, perhaps), or hiking (god, just get a modern hiking shoe or boot, leather shoes are so heavy), 10 years of ~50%-of-days wear is very possible out of that boot style, I'd say. That may even be on the low side.
Yes it's absolutely possible for well-built footwear to last a long time.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27650477
TLDR: The products in Dollar Stores aren't 'cheap' in the sense that they cost less than other stores per unit - its just that they're (mostly) packaged into smaller units that people living paycheck to paycheck can afford.
Everybody trades off the unit size, handling costs and cash flow when buying goods.
The “they’re paying more per-unit because they’re buying smaller packages” crowd seems to realize this, but they think that the size packages they buy are the correct size, and anybody buying something smaller is being exploited.
And when you look at Walmart, Target and Costco remember time is money. And it takes significantly longer to shop at Walmart, Target and Costco (the long walks to and from your car, the long walk in the store itself, the waits at the cashiers).
I make weekly Costco runs and my total time car door back to car door is 15 minutes or less. I just order for pickup at Target, but even if I had to find the item, I can just see what aisle the product is in in the app and grab it and go within 10 minutes easy.
On the other hand, Dollar Tree or Dollar General is probably only budgeting 1 person for the staff, maybe 2 and so there is at most 1 register open 90% of the time. So you have a high probability of spending minutes just waiting in the checkout line. At Walmart/Target/Costco, you have self checkout and at Costco you have super fast staff at checkout with many lines open such that the lines are always moving quickly.
Dollar General has many multiples more locations, and I can park right in front of the door. I'm in Costco every week and it's fine but yes, that walking time combined with everything else is definitely a factor.
That’s literally the definition of living pay check to pay check - one’s outlook only cares about the next week or two, because you have to make trade offs between food, clothing, shelter, and essentials.
TLDR: people who have never worked in retail, don't understand retail.
Also, saying that these stores are more expensive is crazy if you actually lived at a time when these stores didn't exist. These stores grew because production moved offshore for many products, and retailers took all that profit to their bottom-line (and the five layers of distributors). A lot of these chains cut this out and returned that profit to the consumer. Ofc, the product composition of each store is different (the ones with more FMCG do more optimisation of store size, range of products)...but yes, it turns out people will complain about lower prices...loudly (I have seen this in almost every country where similar formats exist, the loudness of the people complaining about low prices outweighs everything else).
For example, Unilever selling the same washing powder in India, just in miniscule packages.
> This follows two decades in which Walmart’s super-charged growth left small-town retail in shambles. By building massive, oversized supercenters in larger towns, Walmart found it could attract customers from a wide radius. Smaller towns in the vicinity often suffered the brunt of its impact as their Main Street retailers weakened and, in many cases, closed. > Today the dollar chains are capitalizing on these conditions, much like an invasive species advancing on a compromised ecosystem.
Shouldn't it be harder to open a dollar store now that there's both an independent grocer and a Walmart? Who knows? Without facts, it's just whatever narrative supports the author's worldview.
I do believe in food deserts. But the simpler explanation is that fresh produce is more expensive than processed food, and stores specializing in expensive things don't do well in poor areas.
I have visited a few times and while there are a few things it would make more sense to purchase there than locally, every other checkout interaction was truly awful. It isn't a big deal really, and the younger staff there clearly don't have much retail/working experience. But I'd rather not have to waste several minutes on what should be an in-and-out trying to get the cashier to understand that I should be getting substantially more back in change than she is trying to give me.
Ultimately I don't actually do much grocery shopping locally either way, because the prices are so high that it makes more sense for me to go 40 miles to Costco/Wal-Mart or about the same distance in the other direction to the Commissary on an AFB once a month.
I'd be okay paying a little more to support the local businesses, but most things are selling for double or more locally, and that is a non-trivial markup for me. So I mostly stock up on perishables locally in between big grocery runs.
1. We have more people without much disposable income (which is composed of two populations: poor immigrants with few marketable skills, and two, poor Americans left behind due to shipping MFG overseas --going on for a while, jump-started by MFN status in the 90s).
2. People want cheap stuff. It's unfortunate. It means more disposable crap going into the landfill. Save up and buy something that will last. (unfortunately ads don't contribute to model behavior here)
3. Overseas there have always been these cheap goods stores (100-goods stores in East Asia (百貨公司)), we're just late to the party --however in Asia these popped up because people didn't initially have disposable income as their economies evolved after ours. They are on the upswing, we're on the down.
Same as 2008. a lot of ppl left behind in recovery, which benefits Walmart and dollar stores.
Unfortunately, just because somethings costs more doesn’t mean it will last more. Maybe in the past there were brands that prides themselves on durability, but now most of the stuff seems not to really consider durability and longevity, and the financially smart move might just be to buy the cheapest thing that works and plan on replacing it when it breaks.
Furniture is now disposable. Clothing is disposable (even if you didn't mind fashion, it will end tattered after a couple of seasons. You can still buy excellent clothing, it just costs 5x.
In absolute terms, or just on average? This may be the case simply because the US population went from 250 to 320 million people over that time, but household disposal income is up considerably as well.
An alternative answer may be that Dollar stores have very low franchise fees (~$50K, from one site I looked at) and low inventory costs. This, along with cheap commercial rent, makes it an attractive option for non-tech people who want to start a retail business but don't have a lot of money saved up.
In my experience, they are one of the best options for buying budget non-food items at low volumes where quality is not the most important factor. Things like cleaning products, office supplies, arts and crafts supplies, batteries, deodorant, candles, even common tools and repair equipment.
The reason is that if I want to save on many of this items, I would need to buy in bulk at a large store like Costco, or order on Amazon - at a greater volume than I need, and at a steeper price. (e.g. batteries, pens, superglue, oven cleaner, drywall patcher,rope etc..)
Not everything you use needs to be of premium quality, and these are the kind of items that large department stores and large online retailers have trouble competing against when selling at low volumes.
Now when it comes to food, there are better cheap ways to help undeserved communities. Large department stores waste a lot of good produce because it is close to their expiration date. Where I live, a couple of grocery stores specialize on selling this type of produce at a discount.
Otherwise you can just ship it from Amazon, Instacart, or a speciality store.
Reasonably priced fresh food access within walking distance should be a basic right. However, the people who need this most are those who are underserved.
So it makes sense that any increase in retail would be meant to serve that population.
I guess the point left to further discussion would be whether or not these stores truly server that population.
They clearly found a gap and a solid business model (for now) but is it a success from capitalism is concerned? or humanitarianism is concerned? I'd say the former and maybe a bandaid for the latter in some regions.
Interesting to watch the changes unfold.
This sounds more dystopian than utopian to me.
Repurpursing the enormous waste of land that does no longer have commercial value into cafes, hair salons, take away places and whatever else seems a more diverse, vibrant place. It also means that if you have some creative use for commercial real-estate you are likely to be charged a lower rent.
The takeaways will also disappear, why do you need a shopfront when everything is delivered on a moped via an app.
I also don't get why you think they will be converted into poor quality housing, since poor quality housing is mostly old housing that isn't maintained probably and/or is in a bad environment.
The data doesn't align with their conclusions; the article even admits that "Five Below", which are basically toy stores where everything is exactly $5, aren't "technically dollar stores", so clearly they must know that Dollar Generals and Family Dollars aren't either, which makes the whole headline fall apart.
Is this nextcity.org a political advocacy organization or something?
HN monoculture loves to crap all over things like this. I see it as deeply beneficial to society. Not everyone lives in SF or NYC and can use their iPhone to order delivery 24/7.
Walmart already came through and blew away the local mom and pop market in these rural areas.
Are they more convenient than driving an hour to a walmart? probably.
I've seen small family run stores go out of business specifically because they can't compete with a dollar general that opened a mile away.
"Deeply beneficial" seems like a strong phrase for something you might want to reflect on more.
Ask some of your older family members what they did before Walmart
Walmart not only sells merchandise cheaper than "Mom and Pop", they almost certainly pay their employees higher wages than Mom and Pop ever did. They also have a 401(k) (fully-vested after only 7 years) and an education program that covers tuition, books, and fees for majors of interest to Walmart (e.g., IT and supply-chain management).
The opportunities for advancement at "Mom and Pop" were pretty much limited to "Son or Daughter". By contrast, the current CEO of Walmart (annual compensation $22 million, net worth > $100 million) started working there as a summer job in high school, unloading trucks, and has never worked anywhere else.
https://www.econtalk.org/platt-on-working-at-wal-mart/
The truth about the mom and pops is that they had very limited selection, high prices, long delivery times, and often were owned by the local business man rather than a decentralized group of independent business owners. I recommend listening to the podcast before knee-jerk deciding that you know everything.
You imply this is undesirable. Care to elaborate? A large talking point during the protests last year was businesses in Black communities being owned by people outside those communities, or more often than not, by large corporations.
Or are you suggesting that a lot of the owners actually owned multiple such shops and that this isn't true for the shops that replaced them?
My general point is that this fantasy of a "mom and pop utopia" of small businesses that Walmart and similar destroyed is just that - a total fantasy. They were not a dream situation and they went away because they were not the best for consumers or their community, not because of some grand conspiracy.
What I do think we can say definitively is that any market that has few competitors over time will atrophy. Having the store landscape reduced to a few big chains with little variety is not healthy for that market.
Convenience is absolutely a justification for charging higher prices.
That said, people also find the service offered by drug dealers attractive. And yet if the number of crack dealers in your neighborhood explodes overnight, it's unlikely most people will see that as a positive development. A healthy neighborhood is not one riddled with drug pushers, and a healthy economy is not one riddled with dollar stores. There's nothing wrong with a few discount stores, in the same way there's nothing wrong with someone stopping at a fast food place every once in a while. But if you're eating every meal there, something isn't right.
One offers convenience, along with relatively cheap products at relatively cheap prices. They occupy retail spaces in lower-end retail outlets that would - in current conditions - likely go unoccupied.
The other is an illegal activity engaged in norms-violating economic behavior outside of the rule of law.
I'm disappointed that your comment was downvoted because you're absolutely correct.
Let me add context to why I upvoted the OP's comment. There are large portions of the United States (and I'm currently visiting one) where big-box discount stores simply don't exist. These are the same places where Amazon two day shipping is either not available or unreliable - Amazon doesn't pack everything in their inventory in every warehouse. Smaller discount stores add some variety, and are a benefit to people who would otherwise have to spend more in fuel and lost time to get to the nearest Costco/Walmart/what ever than they would save from lower prices.
This is an issue for a large minority of the United States, and may very well be an issue for a geographic majority (if not a large majority) of the country. I'm sure there are plenty of HN users who live in places like this, but it's also very, very likely that a majority of HN users, such as myself, live in urbanized regions - whether in the US, the EU, or in other developed areas.
While it's certainly expected that these users will have different views and opinions based on their situations and life experiences, echoing the OP's comment, I've noticed that many of them have a concerning lack of empathy for people who come from different backgrounds.
Dollar General is like a micro walmart and stocks the exact same stuff for more or less the same prices. They are actually great little stores that, around me anyway, service communities that would otherwise have to drive 10+ miles to get what they need most of the time.
Dollar General and Family Dollar both sell things over a dollar.
Yes, everything is $1.
The strategy is predatory: You take a product like name-brand dish soap, divide it up into smaller containers (but not small enough to be obvious!) and presto, your soap is "cheaper" per unit, when in reality, you're charging more per oz. Then you make it as convenient as possible: more locations that Starbucks, nice rounded off prices so customers don't have to do math, and so on. The bottom line is that you end up profiting by over-charging poor people who either don't realize what's happening or have no other viable options.
I'm not sure why this is especially "predatory". It is totally normal for smaller quantities of an item to sell for a higher unit price.
Wheat is trading for $229.00/metric tonne right now. Loaves of bread are selling for about $5.00/kilogram, or $5,000/metric tonne. Is that "predatory"?
No, it does not work like that. They take no-name soap and water it down so a 32oz bottle is $1. The stuff is more stepped-on then frat house cocaine.
They also have smaller, more concentrated bottles. That is what I buy.
Another strategy would be "shrinkflation" (great Planet Money coverage on this: https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2021/07/06/1012409112/bew...). Over time you'd just sell less stuff for the same price point.
But yes, some of the various Dollar stores have left the strict $1 product rule.
https://www.npr.org/sections/money/2019/04/26/717665452/epis...
https://www.npr.org/2019/05/09/721685190/planet-money-dollar...
Also how weird that a one dollar store can exist in any kind of inflationary economy. Prices have doubled from 20-30 years ago, right?
Wall Street Journal has a really good video explaining the strategy and economics of Dollar General.
Seems like a bunch of hand wringing by middle and upper-middle class Americans who consider Trader Joe budget stores and Whole Foods to be the norm.
Similar to rich white people solving minority problems by elbowing all the minorities aside and instituting the solutions they see fit.
I am not surprised at all thriftiness is back.
But everything else in retail around me is Chipotle, Noodle's & Company, Nails place, some other equally ubiquitous brand ... and yet there's lots of retail space available near me that is nice, but empty. Seems wasteful.
https://www.propublica.org/article/how-dollar-stores-became-...
Though "dollar stores" have items that are not always only $1, the bulk of their inventory is keyed in on that price point, Dollar General has no such paradigm.
I’m “summering” in a rural part of NY and Dollar General is a bigger messier version of a sundries shop. They don’t have the value-size packages of items but they do have various price points of trash bags for instance.
Probably due to competition from big box stores at the distributor level it’s expensive/competitive to get product across vast depopulated areas to stores so there are few of them. And the local economy can’t support enough stores to cover the land mass.
Dollar General tackles this and prices it in but also cuts the overhead of a full-service grocers like a deli counter, butchers and produce.
There are a few full-service grocers for the affluent business owners, tourists and people at their lakehouses. They’re usually near a few fine dining restaurants and a weekly farmer’s market.
Propane delivery companies probably look predatory if you look at the areas they serve. No telling how fast they will consolidate nationally like retail has.
It seems like the reasons you're wrong would be different in each case, because the value proposition is different, but I don't see the argument either way.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grocery_Outlet
Our local one is excellent, plus the wine deals are amazing.
It's funny how many branded items here are 1/2 the price of the local 'normal' grocery stores.
Of course, when you peek at other peoples' carts, garbage food can be strongly associated with the weight of the cart pusher (or a rough guess at the socioeconomic class), but at least they have the opportunity to eat well on the cheap.