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

Dollar general is arguably worse than many mom and pop shops they’re replacing.

https://www.nbcnews.com/business/business-news/dollar-genera...

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

The grocery business is extremely low margin. The independent grocer is increasingly being squeezed. There really is no way for an independent operator in this space to compete head-to-head on price or selection. If the local market allows they can go niche, or high-end and increase prices further while offering better product/ better customer experience, but most markets won’t support such a store.

This is the same argument about local newspapers - sure it is probably good to have local reporters covering local events, but replacing $5/line classified ads with Facebook Marketplace probably had a more positive impact on people vs. biased and poorly-read write-ups of a city counsel meetings ever did.

If there are two underrepresented groups in HN comments its poor folks and people that live in rural communities. This article is just scapegoating 'dollar stores' for scenarios where their growth intersects with environments suffering from incompetent leadership and shitty education as if a) it's the only place these stores exist and b) they are the root cause for the problems being outlined.

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.

Does Amazon refuse to deliver to homes in the town you're familiar with? Doesn't help with produce since not everywhere has same-day Amazon Fresh I guess (and Amazon's isn't very good compared to store alternatives in the Bellevue, WA area), but it hasn't occurred to me to buy basic office/school supplies, OTC medical stuff, or many other things from a store instead of Amazon for a long time.

It's not really great for them when they leave the store and go back to being citizens of their communities. The dollars they just spent aren't being reinvested by the local owner, they're going to a private equity firm based in New York. That's pretty clearly extractive, rather than being a mutually beneficial relationship.

What is good for consumers may not be good for communities though. I'd argue that there is significant harm perpetuated on economies by the migration of wealth away from wages and small-scale profits of local businesspeople into the profits of large companies.

Here is a wild guess: a new kind of store sells only the top, say, 50% of items in terms of sales numbers, and sells them for a little less. People out shopping for things all from that group go there. But everybody needs the bottom 50% sometimes, and when they do, that store is no longer around.

Dollar general does frequently have a high markup in poor communities without alternatives. It’s for lack of a better term poverty optimized which counterintuitively isn’t about the lowest cost per pound of flour etc.

No. Separate public US companies. You can buy their stock $DG and $DLTR

As far as I can tell, they're not.

> I can't think of a way to intrude that isn't intrusive or patronizing. :/

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.

Strike up a conversation. People do like talking about where to shop for the best bargains. "Hey, does this place have a good deal on X? I usually buy that at Lidl."

It's really hard to spend $70 at a real grocery store, isn't it? I feel like just a small number of items suddenly you're $100+. You certainly can't buy $1 batteries or light bulbs.

Well, Walmart's produce isle is cheaper than most prepared food. I would say that a lot of people don't buy it because of inconvenience not price.

If we have a semi functional system and a change made to it worsens the populations health it is more reasonable to stop this change and reverse over hoping for revolutionary change.

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.

What I want to know is whether it actually changes fresh food consumption all that much.

The food desert discussion is about availability.

I also read a partial rebuttal which amounted to "Rich people pay less because they can buy more durable boots, but they also pay more because they buy fancier boots, and the increased expense from buying fancier boots is more than the savings from the boots lasting longer."

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?

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.

Also have some a few pair of Redwings Heritage boots. First real-leather shoes I bought were some Iron Rangers. I wore them as my main shoes for the first year I had them, nearly every day. Wore the absolute hell out of them. They still come out many times a year, and I treat them as work boots, so they get things dropped on them, I sit on the floor and crush them side-down for long stretches, et c. I also wore them up a couple mountain trails in the Appalachians maybe three years back, one a pretty damn long and high-elevation-change trail (do not do this, they are heavy as fuck compared to any modern hiking boot or, especially, shoe, it was a very bad idea) which beat them up plenty.

"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.

Thanks for sharing!

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!

There's absolutely a difference. Going to Costco is a monumental hassle compared to Dollar General. They have few locations so for most people it's a farther drive. There's a line of cars snaking around the place waiting to buy gas. The parking lot is huge and I have to walk through it. Once inside, I have to pass the giant-screen TVs and half a warehouse of rarely-purchased items before I get to the food. All the food is in huge units. Often the lines at checkout are extremely long, and then there's another line to have my receipt checked before I get out. Then I have to load the stuff into my car - they don't bag it. Oh - and I paid a membership fee to experience all this!

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.

Absolutely. When I do my grocery shopping, I occasionally think about how I could get a better deal on something at Costco, but I either don’t have the space or wouldn’t eat it fast enough.

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.

Always bought ours from Costco in fairly large units, even when we lived in a smaller apartment.

I wish I could have bought a pallet of toilet paper in early 2020.

This isn't new and your example is a good one. Craftsman tools have always been cheaply made with poor metallurgy. They got by with the lifetime warranty because they marketed themselves at consumers who don't rely on their tools and don't use them very often. At least as far back as the 1950s and 1960s, people whose job depended on their tools wouldn't touch Craftsman.

Thanks for clarifying.

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.

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.