Posted on 12/29/2018 6:41:14 AM PST by Diana in Wisconsin
It has become an increasingly common story: A dollar store opens up in an economically depressed area with scarce healthy and affordable food options, sometimes with the help of local tax incentives. It advertises hard-to-beat low prices but it offers little in terms of fresh produce and nutritious items—further trapping residents in a cycle of poverty and ill-health.
A recent research brief by the Institute of Local Self Reliance (ILSR), a nonprofit supporting local economies, sheds light on the massive growth of this budget enterprise. Since 2001, outlets of Dollar General and Dollar Tree (which bought Family Dollar in 2015) have grown from 20,000 to 30,000 in number. Though these “small-box” retailers carry only a limited stock of prepared foods, they’re now feeding more people than grocery chains like Whole Foods, which has around 400-plus outlets in the country.
In fact, the number of dollar-store outlets nationwide exceeds that of Walmart and McDonalds put together — and they’re still growing at a breakneck pace. That, ILSR says, is bad news.
“While dollar stores sometimes fill a need in cash-strapped communities, growing evidence suggests these stores are not merely a byproduct of economic distress,” the authors of the brief write. “They’re a cause of it.”
Dollar stores have succeeded in part by capitalizing on a series of powerful economic and social forces — white flight, the recent recession, the so-called “retail apocalypse” — all of which have opened up gaping holes in food access. But while dollar store might not be causing these inequalities per se, they appear to be perpetuating them. The savings they claim to offer shoppers in the communities they move to makes them, in some ways, a little poorer.
(Excerpt) Read more at msn.com ...
The local c store near me sells bananas - in mindboggling numbers. The manager believes that they are a feel good purchase. Smokes, coffee, donut and a nanna.
What I don’t understand is the people who go in and rob the cashier at a dollar store.
What is the take, maybe $500? tops? Between credit cards and low ticket sales pricing, can’t be much.
Probably could score just as much filling up a shopping cart with boxes of movie theater candy and sending kids to sell it for $5 a box “for charity”.
Uh, how does selling food the author doesn’t approve of “trap” people living nearby, especially if it didn’t cause the closure of outlets for acceptable fare? It didn’t take away choices they had before. Plus, if there were a market in that neighborhood to sell the foods he wants people to eat, people would be there selling them.
He should just listen to his inner tyrant and advocate for Obamafood. Just order the people to buy the food he wants them to or face a tax penalty. If you like your Fritos, you can keep your Fritos!
Two of these “dollar” stores are nearby. Nearly always have three or four cars parked in front. Our minority population is probably less than 1 percent.
Ridiculous.
If there are such things as “food deserts”, they are in rural areas where there’s not a critical mass of population to sustain local stores. (And people find ways to cope or move back into an area in which they can cope.)
Major cities are most of what they are talking about here, and any such city has a robust bus (and/or subway) system by which residents can get to stores with what they want. If enough local residents wanted to buy broccoli and quinoa in a poor area, little street vendors, bogedas, or corner or grocery stores would supply them.
Yeah, with all the theft in areas where criminals congregate, the price is going to be higher, as it is at any convenience location if there’s not a high-enough volume demand and general low prices to support cheaper suppliers.
Look at the Chinatown in any major city—plentiful, cheap vegetables. Also, Latin areas have fresh veggies in their local markets. Same with Koreans. Or Filipinos. Or, well, you get the idea.
I’m surprised Walmart hasn’t bought one of the chains since their expansion strategy has stalled.
Yep, and typically with a tat-sleeve. i have nothing against tatoos, but if you all inked up AND depend on public assistance, your priorities are all F**Ked up
I agree with you !
These stores bring the “bad neighborhoods” with them, inside the very store !
I grew up in the Northeast US. Something that not many people talk about when talking about the NEUS is that it’s DIRTY and disgusting.
The stores are filthy. The public areas are post apocalyptic. It is nasty to the very core. When I walk into a Dollar General they are all like that.
Remember how the countryside used to be dotted with Waffle Houses ? Most of them were utterly trashed. It becomes the norm. Waffle houses are now gross to me. The Dollar General will be the same. Just reminds me of the NEUS where everything is utter sh**.
Those "cash strapped communities" are high unemployment, high crime areas. The only people willing to open a Dollar Store, party store or gas station are from the middle east, typically Chaldeans or Lebanese......
Not only that but the article reeks of liberal elitism.
convenience
So the leftists want to ban dollar stores? Like their hatred for payday loan places and attempts to put them out of business.
Leave the free market alone!
And less expensive to operate.
You see people stock up on inexpensive fresh food that can be stored....carrots, potatoes, onions, cabbage, etc. They'll get fresh fruit for a day or two.
Well packaged food is fine...if it keeps its nutritional value and doesn't have additives such as corn syrup and more than a pinch of sodium. If anything, it is often healthier it's picked ripe and processed almost immediately, items such as canned chicken or tuna are prepared fresh and healthy. There are some soups, stews, salsas, raviolis (etc) that have good nutrition.
The people making these decisions don't get it. I wish everyone had to go through a period of a month or so living on $150 worth of food. It's totally doable, and they'd probably eat better.
More Liberal BS posing as real news and research with the reality of being fake news.
We have one of these in our areas. It is a few miles out of our way for regular shopping.
However it is close to a favorite restaurant, where we eat lunch at about twice a month. So we walk a few hundred feet and shop at this store for get well/greeting cards and whatever is fresh that day re produce.
My wife is a gourmet cook, who raised a professional chef.
She only buys good produce, and this store carries fresh produce that meets her standards in the late fall/winter.
The rest of the time she/we buy fresh veggies and fruit from a family with several farms in the area.
There is another $ store north of that store that has minimal fresh produce. However, it is in walking distance from a Safeway, Traders Joe and a Whole Foods with fresh produce. We are not paupers, however, we still feel that Whole Foods’s prices on basically everything is too high.
I’m surprised that Steyer or Soros haven’t jumped on this “business opportunity”, and shown-up the “capitalist pigs, that socialism is the best economy.
Some of the Dollar Stores, Dollar Tree for example, have mostly healthy food choices for a dollar. The corner gas station/convenience stores tend to be more into overpriced snack food.
I go to Dollar Tree about once a month and have difficulty leaving with less $30 worth of stuff, because some of the stuff there is damn cheap.
Do I need to shop there. No, not even close. I can even afford Walmart (just kidding).
This is just total CRAP from the media, and I suspect they’re carrying out the agenda of the places that are feeling some pain from Dollar Tree, quite possibly Walmart, in fact.
“...they’re now feeding more people than grocery chains like Whole Foods...”
LOL...When you see a jar of honey at Whole Foods selling for $37 a jar, it’s no wonder MORE people shop at dollar stores....
That can hardly be true. The world, and the United States with it, is significantly wealthier than it was a couple of decades ago. What you have is a false nostalgia for a never-was era of universal prosperity.
I don't know where to begin. Google: the world is getting better
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