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The Second Tier
The area where I live was once rural ranch land, rapidly turning into small residential properties. Most are six or so acres and larger, and the property prices have skyrocketed in recent years. So instead of land-rich, cash-poor ranching families, most area residents are people with money fleeing the suburbs.
Since it’s unincorporated land, businesses are starting to build on properties adjacent to nearby the I-10. (That’s the 10 to all the California transplants). The most recent arrival is a Dollar General and some area residents are furious. I don’t really get it – the store is nice and clean and the staff friendly and polite. It’s a three-mile drive instead of the previous 10-mile drive to town.
When we moved here (27 years ago), we knew growth would come our way. Now that we are in our 60s, we are happy that there are now ERs in town with a full hospital on the way. But that Dollar General sure makes people crazy.
There is a whole set of “second tier” stores like Big Lots and Dollar General that provide goods to people that seem to trigger anger in some folks. I’ll do my part to keep them profitable.
Published in General
Indeed- you never know when you’re gonna need some of what they carry. Anything from respectable plastic serving pieces to take to a pot luck (nothing to wash or bring home or risk losing) to a paint scraper that comes with the replacement blades you don’t want to go to the hardware store for. Or the extra bag of frozen peas when a couple extra people stay for dinner. Or real food when you just don’t have much. Or glow sticks when your grand children come . You name it they have it. $5 goes a long way there for an 8 yr old and they feel like a million bucks.
I’m the same way with the Family Dollar store that is a few blocks away. Sometimes I find their prices are actually cheaper than Walmart which is ~30 miles, and I don’t have a vehicle. I do as much business with them as I can, also the locally-owned True Value hardware franchise, and for the same reasons.
Your neighbors see your area as a positional good. They don’t like the Dollar General, because it detracts from the prestige of living in that area.
This isn’t about economic rationalism, it’s about status.
Not necessarily. They could have moved there to get away from the citified, big stores.
This isn’t about status, it’s about wanting small town living.
About 10 years ago I entered a Dollar General store for the first time. I was quite surprised to see that it was indeed a modern version of the ancient general store in the village I grew up in. They are all over the country, in small towns and rural locations where they are the only local business. I think on balance they are saving a lot of people a lot of gas money.
Agreed. Where I live, a pleasant suburb with an historical downtown, a long-time, family-owned/run grocery store near downtown sold so the aging owners could retire. But the new owners were inexperienced and under-capitalized, and the store failed after a few months (in part because many locals resented the newcomers from out of state, and refused to give them any trade).
When it was announced the space was soon to reopen as a Dollar Store, I actually overheard some neighbors complaining about the kind of people a Dollar Store would attract to downtown. Sheesh.
Without the small town po’ folk. Who were there already.
Dollar General isn’t sufficiently Sam Drucker for them?
Bullsh*t.
They move there just for “the small town po’ folk.”
It’s the corporate stores They’re running from.
There’s nothing wrong with maintaining community standards.
I used to work at a Dollar General. It’s got a decent selection of goods.
They tend to spawn other Dollar Generals. This one won’t be the last in the area. My only complaint is that their chips and cheese dip are marked up beyond my sense of value.
Dollar General seems to have that problem a lot more than Family Dollar.
But they don’t complain about the kind of people that frequent our local food/clothing bank . . . presumably because supporting that makes them feel virtuous, while a Dollar Store is icky capitalism.
Dollar General really is a lot like general stores used to be. Some still are like than, and they’re hanging on. I just came through a little town that had two such stores. One of them closed decades ago when the proprietor retired. The other one was sold to someone who mismanaged it. A Dollar General has opened up and is saving the locals a twenty minute ride into town for incidentals on a regular basis. I don’t know of anyone who has a problem with it, but there has been an influx of people building big houses on what were once farm fields.
Well, be fair. In an era where marijuana laws are being relaxed, there is market value to be had in being the closest source of munchies.
I understand. But how about a price war?
That’s the opportunity presented by such pricing. A mom & pop opens up, or a gas station expands its munchies rack.
The chances of a gas station having lower prices on chips and stuff than even Dollar General, are slim to none.
The Progressives hate the Dollar Generals, naturally, for their ability to supply low income families with groceries and goods at affordable prices. They have a solution. Can you guess what it is? Did you guess it was to regulate the Dollar Generals and replace them with Government-subsidized “Community Co-Ops?” If so, reward yourself with a beer. But not a Bud Light.
That is disgusting.
I used to read what I saw as two primary arguments against towns allowing dollar stores: 1) they drove out local stores (rather like the anti-Walmart arguments, but for smaller towns) but often stayed only a few years before closing themselves; and 2) they attracted a clientele of undesirable people.
As to 1) (I read this mostly when I lived in western New York State where the economic survival of a number of small towns was up for debate), a reading of the pattern of dollar store moving in, local stores closing, then dollar store closing, was that the dollar store didn’t cause the pattern; the dollar store was reflecting and revealing that the town was dying.
As to 2) (“undesirable customers”), the dollar stores set up where their customers are. The “undesirable” people are already there and the “nice” people don’t like that the dollar stores brought them out of invisibility.
Today inflation is challenging the business model of dollar stores. Different chains are pursing different strategies to deal with inflation. Re-jigger products and packaging to maintain $1 pricing? Make $1.25 or $1.50 the new “dollar”? Expand “dollar” to include dollar multiples ($2, $3, $5)? On the consumer side, inflation is driving new classes of customers to the “dollar stores.”
I am intrigued that in the last couple of weeks that among the ads attached to some of the podcasts to which I listen are ads for the Dollar General chain that 1) rebrand the store as “DG” and 2) present “DG” as a store of choice, not just a store of last resort. The ads tout the quality and desirability of the merchandise, and the excitement and fun of shopping there.
We have a Dollar General at the end of our road. If you need a couple of things pretty quickly, it’s very handy to only have to drive 1 1/2 miles . . .
On my side of the country we have the same thing, only they are Dollar Tree and 99-cent Store (don’t know if any of them share the same parent company).
This appears to be the same “five and dime” business model as Woolworth’s and Kresge’s (K-Mart).
Depending how far you must go to get to a different store, Dollar General and the like might be the best option for a lot of things, not just a couple.
Absolutely perfect. One begets two begets three begets . . .
There are people who just need something to complain about. Some people complain because other people choose to shop at a store that the complainer doesn’t care to go to. Some people ridicule others for drinking a common mass-produced beer, rather than something more “authentic.”
While I like several fast food restaurants, I have never liked McDonald’s. But I’m not going to complain if McDonald’s builds a new store in my town and I’m not going to ridicule the people who do like McDonald’s.