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Family Dollar to close almost 1,000 stores
51–60 of 91 posts
Re: Family Dollar to close almost 1,000 stores
#52When they were competitors, before the merger in 2015, they built stores next to each other. Rite Aid did the same thing with Walgreens drug stores. Then after the merger, they ended up with redundant stores in the same location. Duh! https://corporate.dollartree.com/news-media/press-releases/d... The thing I don't like about these stores is IMO they take advantage of poor people who think they are getting cheaper pr…
These places create food deserts, for the reason you mention. They are engineered to get poorer people to come there instead of a normal grocery store. The grocery store in your neighborhood struggles and closes, now you have to drive twice as far to get fresh produce, or go to Family Dollar and buy a week's worth of frozen Banquet meals. That can't be healthy for any population. I avoid these stores on principle now…
I would have thought a certain portion of the population becoming poor enough to want to shop at a cheaper store for lower quality products is what causes a store selling at higher quality products at higher prices to go out of business.
Edit to reply to post below due to posting limit:
The people choosing to shop at the cheaper store are also benefiting, otherwise, they would not have switched from shopping at the higher priced store.
Re: Family Dollar to close almost 1,000 stores
#53When they were competitors, before the merger in 2015, they built stores next to each other. Rite Aid did the same thing with Walgreens drug stores. Then after the merger, they ended up with redundant stores in the same location. Duh! https://corporate.dollartree.com/news-media/press-releases/d... The thing I don't like about these stores is IMO they take advantage of poor people who think they are getting cheaper pr…
Another good thing about Aldi is that they let their cashiers sit down. It's unethical that other grocery chains don't provide chairs for their cashiers.
Is "unethical" really the correct word here?
Re: Family Dollar to close almost 1,000 stores
#54Every Dollar Tree and Family Dollar that I've been in (and this applies to Dollar General as well, here in the southern US) has had 1, maybe 2, employees working and aisles filled with boxes waiting to be unloaded. A couple employees can't contain any sort of theft, much less help customers and unload all the stuff to put on shelves.
Little reason to be shocked on why their business model isn't working...
Re: Family Dollar to close almost 1,000 stores
#55Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The thing I don't like about these stores is IMO they take advantage of poor people who think they are getting cheaper products This only makes sense if you think poor people are dumb or naive. They don't know how to compare prices? As other people have mentioned, sometimes the value is the amount you can buy. If your personal financial margins are small, it is okay to spend more per oz on a single bar of soap beca…
>This only makes sense if you think poor people are dumb or naive. I would say ALL consumers are not consistently logical / will make choices that aren't in their best interest.
True, but I think most consumers aren't obviously "dumb". Most people past 3rd grade can tell that $4 for 1 gallon is cheaper than $2 for 1 quart. It gets trickier when it's not a direct comparison though... would you rather drive 20 min farther to save the $4? Probably not just for that one item, but if you are buying a large amount then the answer changes.
We don't necessarily do a cost/benefit analysis of all these options, which is why we can have irrational preferences, but that doesn't mean we don't think about it at all. Irrational just means it's not optimal, it doesn't mean it's the actual worst choice.
Re: Family Dollar to close almost 1,000 stores
#56A couple of good videos about the business of dollar stores with similar takes: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4QGOHahiVM (Last Week Tonight with John Oliver) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQpUV--2Jao (Wendover Productions)
I'm sympathetic to this view, but ultimately I think it's likely they are providing some benefit (even if their practices aren't 100% ethical) or else consumers wouldn't prefer them so much. I don't like to assume that a huge % of the population is too stupid to make basic choices.
Re: Family Dollar to close almost 1,000 stores
#57When they were competitors, before the merger in 2015, they built stores next to each other. Rite Aid did the same thing with Walgreens drug stores. Then after the merger, they ended up with redundant stores in the same location. Duh! https://corporate.dollartree.com/news-media/press-releases/d... The thing I don't like about these stores is IMO they take advantage of poor people who think they are getting cheaper pr…
Dollar stores are good for those little on-off random kitchen chotchki, some tin foil, greeting cards, toilet drop ins, basically things that dont need to be 'buy for life' but there is no need to spend regular grocery store prices for that thing you will use rarely - and such. Never for food. Oh and now that im older and I need lots of reading glasses - its GREAT for 1$ reading glasses - so now they are scattered al…
Aluminum foil at the dollar store is about half the price of the supermarket, but you get about a tenth as much.
It's fine if you truly know you'll never need more, but it's not like aluminum foil ever goes bad. Most of the time you're better off spending the extra dollar for 10x as much.
Re: Family Dollar to close almost 1,000 stores
#58Earlier quoted context omitted.
And even then Aldi isn’t always cheaper. They make a ton of money on convenience items, like Soda. But I do agree, aldi is pretty incredible. Most of the people shopping at my local Aldi are definitely more well off.
We could probably afford to shop somewhere other than Aldi but why would we? It would easily be 20%+ more expensive for most items. Anything we want that we can't get at Aldi (local items, good BBQ sauce, less popular stuff) we'll make a special trip for.
Exactly. I went into a Vons last night after going to Aldi and was just laughing at how expensive it’s gotten there. It’s not even inflation, it’s straight price gouging.
Re: Family Dollar to close almost 1,000 stores
#59Earlier quoted context omitted.
These places create food deserts, for the reason you mention. They are engineered to get poorer people to come there instead of a normal grocery store. The grocery store in your neighborhood struggles and closes, now you have to drive twice as far to get fresh produce, or go to Family Dollar and buy a week's worth of frozen Banquet meals. That can't be healthy for any population. I avoid these stores on principle now…
I would have thought a certain portion of the population becoming poor enough to want to shop at a cheaper store for lower quality products is what causes a store selling at higher quality products at higher prices to go out of business. Edit to reply to post below due to posting limit: The people choosing to shop at the cheaper store are also benefiting, otherwise, they would not have switched from shopping at the h…
I live in the American West. Frequently these places open in very small towns, think sub-1000 people and 25 miles from anything else.
Such towns only have the population to support one grocery store, usually a locally-owned store that's been there for a very long time. Then a dollar store moves in, takes advantage of the size of the parent company to take a loss for a few months/year until the local store is driven out of business, and then is able to sit on a monopoly for food for that town.
Such stores destroy communities. The only people benefiting in the above scenario are the dollar store's shareholders.
Re: Family Dollar to close almost 1,000 stores
#60"Amid higher costs throughout the economy, consumers have begun shifting to lower-margin goods compared with higher spending on discretionary items earlier in the post-pandemic period." If Family Dollar is not lower margin I'm not sure what is. My guess is they have mostly lost out to internet sellers and Walmart.
Historically, dollar stores do better during bad times. I’m wondering if Dollar General is what’s really hurting them. I hear people talk about Dollar General all the time, but almost never Family Dollar. DG seems to be the Walmart of the dollar store game.
Due to rock climbing, I spend a lot of time in poor rural areas (most recently, rural Tennessee).
Dollar General has a few things going for them in these areas:
1. They seem to have very low staffing costs. Most stores seem to have at most 2 workers on staff at a given time (obviously this is higher in busier areas).
2. They seem to have no compunction about putting stores in pretty remote locations (example: [1]). This is probably enabled by having low staffing costs--a store doesn't have to make huge revenue if its costs are low.
3. They seem to have a very standard formula for new stores, which allows them to build them quickly. I've seen a flat lot with trees starting to grow in it, go to an open Dollar General in approximately 9 days. I can't imagine what sort of feats of organizational engineering allows that, but it has to be an advantage because it allows them to pivot into an area quickly. And I would imagine the non-descript buildings are fairly easy to sell, allowing them to pivot out of areas quickly as well.
4. Their competition in remote areas is usually gas stations. While DG isn't cheap compared to Walmart or Aldi, they're often about 2/3 the price of gas stations for a lot of items.