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Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

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Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#231

Post by CincinnatiMan »

ketzo wrote: post #194
throwaway0a5e wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I would give 50 downvotes if I could. 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 stripp…

Okay, the quote might not be literally true for boots (or many consumer goods) in 2021, but it's a good intuitive explanation of why it's quote-unquote "expensive to be poor," which is absolutely a meaningful and important idea to understand.

The person you're replying to though is saying the quote isn't worthwhile because the idea doesn't pan out. Is it actually expensive to be poor?

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#232

Post by jandrewrogers »

emodendroket wrote: post #228
jandrewrogers wrote: post #171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is a presumption here that "local" grocery stores are an unalloyed good. In my experience, having grown up in these kinds of places, they were often more exploitive and extractive than the national chains. When Walmart rolls into town, many times it breaks a local monopoly that used this fact to its advantage with both customers and employees. A problem in the US is that there are many thousands of communities…

I generally agree but if the grocers offered fresh produce and the dollar store doesn't the picture is murkier.

Poor people don't eat much fresh produce unless they grow it themselves. Frozen vegetables are preferred because they are cheaper and often higher quality because they weren't sitting around for days and weeks. I grew up quite poor in a few different regions of the US, it works like this everywhere. In more rural areas, there are a lot personal gardens and barter. You aren't going to convince a poor person to spend more money on a worse product. Insisting that grocers in poor areas carry large stocks of fresh produce isn't helpful, it just demonstrates a naive lack of familiarity with how poor people optimize their food spending. They have plenty of access to quality vegetables.

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.

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#233

Post by JeremyNT »

analyte123 wrote: post #130
safog wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After a couple of levels of indirection, I think the whole argument hinges on one anecdote. It might indicate a general pattern, but no actual authoritative sources back it up. 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, e…

Amusing. My personal experience is that DG is awesome. Before DG in the town I'm familiar with if you wanted to buy basic office or school supplies, basic OTC medical supplies that were not a gas-station 2-pack of aspirin, essentially any cookware, or a better variety of packaged goods than the local mediocre grocery store (like detergent, snacks, juice, sauces) you had to drive over 20 miles. The produce that DG doe…

I no longer live in the rural area where I grew up, but near enough that I've been out there periodically.

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.

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#234

Post by emodendroket »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #232
emodendroket wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I generally agree but if the grocers offered fresh produce and the dollar store doesn't the picture is murkier.

Poor people don't eat much fresh produce unless they grow it themselves. Frozen vegetables are preferred because they are cheaper and often higher quality because they weren't sitting around for days and weeks. I grew up quite poor in a few different regions of the US, it works like this everywhere. In more rural areas, there are a lot personal gardens and barter. You aren't going to convince a poor person to spend m…

I don't mean to offend the honor of frozen vegetables, which often are fresher even in the fancy grocery store, are equally nutritious (maybe less true of canned ones), and are perfectly suitable for many uses. Nor do I mean to pretend to have some kind of deep understanding of how the other half lives. My point is just that if the grocer had nutritious options and the dollar store just sells garbage then there are some negatives to the latter replacing the former for people's health.

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#235

Post by lostandbored »

etempleton wrote: post #205
lostandbored wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, as someone who grew up (and still is) lower middle class near rural areas, DGs and the like served a niche that would be hard-press to be filled by other companies, national or local. 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.

Yeah, I don’t think this is the dollar store chain’s fault. They are serving a niche. The problem is that this is such a growing niche, that well, it isn’t really a niche anymore. The problem is poor and low to middle income folks everywhere in America seem to be getting poorer.

Agreed. It is honestly, a failure of government policy, from the local level to the state and to the Federal government.

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#236

Post by ketzo »

CincinnatiMan wrote: post #231
ketzo wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Okay, the quote might not be literally true for boots (or many consumer goods) in 2021, but it's a good intuitive explanation of why it's quote-unquote "expensive to be poor," which is absolutely a meaningful and important idea to understand.

The person you're replying to though is saying the quote isn't worthwhile because the idea doesn't pan out. Is it actually expensive to be poor?

Extraordinarily so.

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.

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#237

Post by unishark »

tshaddox wrote: post #31
jcims wrote: post #16

It's not clear to me what the problem is that the article is outlining. 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…

It's always odd to me to throw Dollar General into the same category as Dollar Tree. 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…

It is confusing. There's also Family Dollar. I was a bit glad they combined them because I never remember which is which, but it probably does hurt their generalizations.

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.

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#238

Post by tomjen3 »

mnd999 wrote: post #141
tomjen3 wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? 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.

I disagree, I think they’ll be mostly empty places, or converted into poor quality housing. The takeaways will also disappear, why do you need a shopfront when everything is delivered on a moped via an app.

I don't think you are right about the takeaways: there will be some need to meet at places that have food at low cost, and those places will naturally want to do take away on top.

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.

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#239

Post by readflaggedcomm »

runbathtime wrote: post #167

Dollar stores are for poor people. Americans are becoming impoverished. Elites are getting richer, thanks to Fed policy and our bailout economy that creates inflation at the expense of the saver.

Do you mean "dollar stores" like this story means to refer to general stores, or actual dollar stores like Dollar Tree (the only one they got right) and 99 Cents Only?

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.

Re: Dollar stores make up nearly half of all new store openings in the U.S.

#240

Post by sangnoir »

handrous wrote: post #154
jcims wrote: post #16

It's not clear to me what the problem is that the article is outlining. 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…

One weird thing I've noticed about Dollar General is that they seem to get special versions of many products. Like sizes of food items/containers that I've never seen anywhere else. I wonder if there are other differences in what they're shipped. Like how "outlet stores" get shittier versions of brand-name clothes.

> Like sizes of food items/containers that I've never seen anywhere else.

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.

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