article about Dollar General Stores - which is opening on average 3 stores a day (if true that is incredible)

https://getpocket.com/explore/item/...r-rural-america?utm_source=pocket-newtab


When Dollar General came to Haven, Kansas, it arrived making demands. The fastest-growing retailer in America wanted the taxpayers of the small, struggling Kansas town to pick up part of the tab for building one of its squat, barebones stores that more often resemble a warehouse than a neighbourhood shop.

Dollar General thought Haven’s council should give the company a $72,000 break on its utility bills, equivalent to the cost of running the town’s library and swimming pool for a year, on the promise of jobs and tax revenues. The council blanched but ended up offering half of that amount to bring the low-price outlet to a town that already had a grocery store. ............................................


Buhler’s council called two public meetings in March to gauge the mood of residents and invited Doug Nech, owner of neighbouring Haven’s only grocery store, the Foodliner, to speak. Dollar General had driven his shop out of business days earlier.

“We lasted three years and three days after Dollar General opened,” he said. “Sales dropped and just kept dropping. We averaged 225 customers a day before and immediately dropped to about 175. A year ago we were down to 125 a day. Basically we lost 35 to 40% of our sales. I lost a thousand dollars a day in sales in three years.”

The arrival of Dollar General cost the Foodliner hundreds of thousands of dollars over that time. The foremost challenge was price. The chain has the power of scale in negotiating with foodmakers. Nech discovered the store had done a deal with Campbell’s Soup to make a 14.5oz can of chicken noodle soup for $1.50, the price he was paying wholesale for an 11oz can of the same soup.

D-G is going to bury the Girl Scouts too. Lol

They got the same cookies for a $1.35 a box

lmao

They put in a Dollar General Market[full line of groceries] here in a former Kroger bldg and our one local grocer a bit down the road is all but gone. Of course the fact that Food Lion put a store on either side of the local within a mile or so didn't help either.

Dollar General around here sucks for prices.

The company I work for used to cower to WalMart. Did everything possible to meet Walmart orders, demands, quality. Thoughts were it would keep us in their good graces. It didn’t. They’re still a large customer, but not what they were 15 years ago for us. .

Now we cower to Dollar General for the same things.

Dollar General here just plain sucks.

I don't understand local tax breaks for businesses that pay minimum wage and expect the .gov to pick up the slack. We spend around 60 billion a years is wellfare, etc to Walmart employee's . DG isn't any different. How about they give the tax breaks to locally owned small businesses ?

Ya can't swing a dead cat without hitting a Dollar General anymore.

If the locality doesn’t kiss ass, the one up the street will. It’s a big butt kiss fest.

DG has been growing like a weed....put enough weeds together and it becomes a garden. DG will also show you where the worst neighborhoods in town are too.

It's all competition between towns to attract new business. Personally I wouldn't want to invest in a town that was so lackadaisical they didn't offer even a pretense of benefits to attract my business.

All Hail DG!!!
poor ole mom and pop stores....
Time for the nursing home........

For that matter
All Hail online firearms related buying !!!
Poor ole LGS with nothing in stock except schit gathering dust.
And then wanting ta charge ya 5% over msrp on their already discounted registered dealer status with a online distributor.

Some people fall for the "special order" and its "aura" bullschitt....


Its 2019
Adapt and overcome or go the fugg under.......

Shocking idea................but which ones get the breaks?

The tax break to give incentive to a business to open shop in town has always perplexed me. Especially for pro teams and DG/Wally's/RiteAid, type places.

But, if you give a tax break to an established business in town, let's say the local mom and pop market, then why not to the local druggist, the local auto body shop, and so on?

Our town just got a Grocery Outlet store when we already have a long time family owned type grocery and a regional chain grocery. Why does a town of 2800 people need more than two grocery stores? Oh, the Grocery Outlet lot is supposed to anchor a "national" fast food type restaurant. Our local sit down restaurants already have a hard enough time keeping the doors open. Likely when the Burger King/Jacks/ or such comes in we'll lose another locally owned eatery.

We have a DG, and a Rite Aid, and even a Subway...................ain't that enough?

Geno

I don't spend my money at Target, Wal-mart, Dollar General or any convenience store run by RagHeads.

i keep hearing the dollar general type of stores (there's more than one company) are cutting in on walmart sales & profits.

We got together and kept Dollar General out of our community.

D-G will be the ones that kick walmart in the balls.

So yall sould be suckin up to D-G, since we're boycotting walmart cause of that voluntary 'please don't wear your AR on a sling into our stores' policy


Walmart is anchored in 1 or 2 hard urban locations and buried within congestion. (4) in our town, not sure how many Billings has. No one I know wants to willing navigate 10-20+ red light intersections to go to a walmart as such around here.

Anyway, we have about 10-12 dollar generals in this county. I can be at DG in 6 minutes and get a gallon of milk. No lines, no shootouts, no panhandlers, and OHHHHHH and they don't have self checkout at DG. Holy Fugg, wabigoon you could shop there

Dollar General was actually great for the town I grew up in. Three Wal-Marts within 20 miles had pretty much killed every business in town except for a 150 year old hardware store and the Co-op. Dollar General came in and put a store in and now you don’t have to drive twenty miles for basic stuff.

Adapt or die is not a new concept. People will shop where they feel they get the best value,and why shouldn't they? The dollar stores are having their moment in the sun right now, in time they too will be eclipsed by something cheaper and more convenient, probably online order/delivery. I've lived near small towns all my life and know the "mom and pop" shops all too well....mostly limited selections of overpriced goods due to being the only game in town. If they are great stores with plenty to offer they will probably survive, if not....well, isn't that what capitalism is all about?

Our good local grocers have fared well against Wal Mart, Super One, Dollar General, Family Dollar etc. One of the 24HCF poster's family own local grocery stores that seem to do well. Another local grocer just opened in a completely remodeled KMart building.

The ones that adapt thrive, the ones that do not die.

well yes. and it's a dynamic process for sure.

we've had local communities howl to the moon that a dollar general type store wanted to move in. well, why not? it'll add value.

but no, in their view it devalues the neighborhood. really? are they working undercover for some other big corporation? i don't know.

i like convenience, no matter what the store front calls itself. it's a distribution machine, nothing else. let it run until something better comes along.

it can be eye-opening to see the differences in prices of bagged corn for the farm in terms of various suppliers. it's competition. and it's all good.

Tell ya what, Geno. We had a Shopko in this little burg that did OK but fell victim to a statewide closures. Now we have an empty building only a few years old. For retail we're down to a Dollar General and a Family Dollar and both suck rocks. There's an Ace Hardware, don't know how long it'll last the way the owner runs it, not from this area. Anybody that's not bottom feeding drives 60 miles for the closest decent size town for shopping. Pulls business from the local supermarket and Ace Hardware too. The city council would bend over backwards and kiss it's own ass to get a decent department store in town.

Light manufacturing would do wonders for this town, good location right off the Interstate. But lots of towns up and down the Interstate. We have a small industrial area mostly set to go, utilities in. But so do a lot of towns. Will give tax breaks. Still can't get manufacturing in, lotsa competition.

Giving tax breaks to whats left won't stop people from shopping 60 miles down where the big box stores are. Or eventually the outflow of people because of bad economic conditions.

communities have been known to compete with each other for economic development, often offering tax incentives.

Grant's, woolco, Woolworths, zayres , sears, service mechandise,
S&H green stamps and the redemption store. Full service gas stations. Drive in theater

Ect ect ect ect.
I'm 56

Btdt in my limited time on the planet so far.


All have gone the way of the Dodo bird.


Adapt and overcome or go the fugg under........
Its fugging 2019 if you dont keep the fugg up
No one GAF.
And being unable or unwilling to change and wearing that monkier as some badge of pride or honor is numb..........
No one GAF except yourself.....

Dont lose no sleep about the past........

LOL!!!!

Wal Mart opened a Neighbor market in Interlachen, Fl, a few years ago. Sold gas.
It lasted about one year, them closed.
Dollar general moved into the bldg and is thriving. Sells gas too.

Nellie Olson was hot.

adapt, migrate, or die. it's all really so simple.

and expect to pay taxes to the day you die.

it's all so really simple, just look around.

She also did DVP, DAP, and ATM porn.

Girl gotta make a living....

We stopped at a Dollar General Market store a little while ago and they had their store brand whole and 2% milk for $1.15 a gallon which is cheaper than what Walmart's store brand milk was most recently.

Convenient close up parking, no long checkout lanes, clean and well organized.

Bullscidt

Fug both of them, but that’s about all there is

i like raw milk from the farm, like i grew up with.

but man alive! ya talk about being expensive.

-i love effective, efficient ways of getting goods & services to the tax-payers.

the family dollar type stores offer us an alternative. i'm glad we have choices.

Sombitches would jump off of a bridge if they had to learn new operating systems, new versions every year, updates, patches, scripts,
For 2 different geospatial remote sensing suites Idrisi, ERDAS, , 3 versions of ArcGis , ArcPro, Arc Editer, ArcScene, ArcExplorer, Dashboard Publisher, Wallingford utility mgt software, Enquesta cust service software, SQL, supporting peripherals, SigmaPlot, Leica Geosystems robot interface, Excel, Trimble Pathfinder, AutoCad, Scada.

Talk about anxiety and resistant to change. Fugg you say??

GAWD if I only had had a job working at a goddamm water heater factory. Or johns manville watching the pink shît flow out of the end of an oriface.

Hahaha, I have little,,,errr no patience for someone...wahh I have a quilt for an avatar.

them fuggen boxes are popping up all over rural pa. ain't been in one yet. i still got a good stash of vienna sausages and styro foam coolers so i'm good.

and what town believes their bullschit about jobs?? they employ like 3 fuggen people.

We got a DG in the local town a year or so ago. I think it's a great thing. The local businesses are seeing more business because people aren't driving one hour to the nearest walfart to get their goods and then buying everything else while in that town. DG in my home town gives people a reason to shop local. Little town of less than 700. Closest walfart is 42 miles away. The wimmins used to go to the walfart twice a week to get their goods but now only go once a month at most. That says something to me. They buy local because the knick-nacks are at DG and they get the good stuff locally. Milk? yeah... It's tough to compete. A good steak. It's now bought locally and not in the town with a walfart. I buy everything locally at the small businesses first, DG second, mail-order last.
Employment, tax revenue, etc. That's all a plus. I'm a small business owner in the area and I see it as a good thing. There are a very few businesses that DG will hurt but not as much as Amazon or any other mail-order chain. Keep-up or step aside.

I don't think they have any stores in Idaho yet.

Same way WalMart started.

Service Merchandise was awesome. Go look at chit on display. To purchase, you grabbed a ticket and took it to the counter. In a few minutes , the merch would come down the conveyor belt and off you went. If it wasnt for the ginormous conveyor system, it would have been worse than Rene50’s grammar and typing.

I will never pay the rent I owe you.


Lmfao!!!!

Dollar Generals have sprung up like mushrooms out of a shyt pile all over. They've driven out alot of old time, small town general stores, village variety stores and five and dimes. I'd rather have the old general stores/variety stores back. Many of them carried things I want/need, like ammunition, fishing tackle, bait. knives etc.. Some of the old general stores even carried guns. Dollar general doesn't have any of that stuff. Pretty damn near useless stores to me.

Come on man....
You worked across the street at Shipley,s donuts.....



Hahahaha!!!!

Its a lot like Craftsman tools.

They are made in China now....mostly.

Now that people see the Made in China sticker...they lament that they wish they had an affordable American brand to buy.....Ha!

No schit. Ya had just such a thing in Craftsman.....but you wouldn't buy it!

You people deserve Walmarto and Dollhair Generally.

And they are off ladies and gentlemen........

Dont be hating on us Jim.

We was gonna put together a dry ice shipment of Cici,s pizza and china king stuff for ya and send it outta the blue to ya man!!!
And put some land between the lakes and dolly wood vacation phamplets in it for ya also.


Geez..........

Land between the Lakes,

Ick!!!

A man'l catch lyme disease out there

What can ya catch at Dolly Wood?

Some jailbait if youre lucky

If her name is Bobbie E Lee, it's a cop

Bingo.

Adapt or die. Ask Sears.

Don't see much difference between corporations asking for tax concessions etc, and local out-of-touch small local retailers looking for protection from competition. If a business can't compete on price or selection, they need to offer service and expertise.

Just picked up an internet purchase at a LGS. The fee had gone up $10. Counter guy said online sales were killing them. I told him, " You can't sell what you don't have.", because their shelves and racks are pretty bare, and almost all ARs, beaters, and a few handguns, a lot of them cheapsters. Another local shop has a bunch of good stuff, AND their own online business. They're killing it, own their building, and have expanded to training at another facilty they built and own.

So Dolly Wood is a real place?

I thought is was just a weird joke.

It's like a six flags

Rides, shows, gospel and country music, turkey legs

But for white folk

Ain't this a walmart dissin thread?

Dollywood is our states cultural epicenter.


That, and Minnie Pearl's hat with price tag attached display at Opryland.

I DID buy it, still have it, and don't need new ones, even almost 50 years later. Maybe that business model is flawed as well🤔.

opryland is closed

Walmart ran it out of business

Its real alright .Mountains in the stream ......

With the sum total of my graduation money from high screwl, I bought a 300 piece Craftsman ratchet and socket set.

And that was a real set (vv). All sockets and 3 ratchets.


Unlike today.... "Wooo-hoooo, 1000 piece set" and 600 of em fuggin drywall screwdriver bits and microscopic allen wrenches

Around here the small town stores shut down years ago, long before Dollar General came around. DG didn't run them out of business, they filled the void left when they shut down after Wal-Mart ran them out of business. The problem is the nearest Wal-Mart to me is 30 miles away, a DG set up shop six miles from me and now I don't have to take half a day to go get toilet paper if I run out.

I'd like to have 1950 back too but it ain't happening. The small guys have to adapt or die as the others said.

The majority of the small town privately owned full line grocery stores around my area that are no longer in business now were actually chain/franchise branded and stocked.

They did alright as long as there was no serious price competition within reasonable driving distance but they became their own worst enemy and more than anything else, responsible for their own demise, by pricing things higher and higher, eventually resulting in loss of customers, many of whom previously bought weeks worth of groceries per visit.

When staples like milk, eggs, bread, coffee, fresh meat and produce, etc., is priced almost half again to as much as twice higher than city large grocery stores it doesn't take much to add up to a sizable chunk of money. Customers can take only so much and start shopping at the big stores and stocking up between visits.

Weird selection of stuff at the new Grocery Outlet store. One thing I do like about having them. Our small market and the regional chain grocery have decent selections of stuff, but the GO store has one pound bags of Oberto jerky for 1/2 the price per pound anywhere has it. Of course, it's the ends and pieces, which doesn't bother me. They also have cans of sardines from Latvia, kalamata olives, organic Euro style yogurt (creamy, not that thick Greek stuff). Problem with them is next week it might be gone, never to be seen again just after you've takin' a liking to it.

I expect the majority of folks here will still buy certain items at the two other stores, and the DG, that they have always purchased there. Most of the Grocery Outlet stuff they buy will be for fun...............except the folks on a limited budget might just switch to the Maple Quaker Oatmeal Squares, or the off brand spaghetti noodles and cheap sauce because their budget will stretch further.

Our nearest WalMart and big grocery stores are 100 miles away. Some folks, ourselves included, will tie everything together and make a trip to get the car serviced, buy supplies, and get items not available in our little town. In our case, the money we might save up there will be spent in fuel, but we get to sample different restaurants too.

Rural living has it's drawbacks..................but some excellent benefits.

And I have a cool quilt for an avatar...........................just don't stare at it too long or it starts to spin.

Geno

I can't wait until those stupid Dollar General stores go out of business and I can buy one and turn it into an lube and oil change shop.

Well, the local grocery store prick has prices jacked so damned high, I am all in favor of more options. We got a ghetto-ass Family Dollar and I have no shame spending there.

We got the Fambly Dolla, D-G And the Fred's. Fred's is like DG but has a pharmacy.

Oh and we got the Big Lots too. lol


Like a DG but also with furniture

y'all got them Golden Corrals too I hear.

Put one of them in our town and the restaurant at the auction yard (cattle every Tues I think) and the wagon wheel would go out of biz probably.

Geno

now if dollar general would just start selling guns and ammo.

Got some of those in Arkansas, and they start out pretty good, but the quality goes down after a few years. Ryan's did the same thing and most are gone now. I spent a half day yesterday with my list of things, and visited 3 nearby towns and several stores and came back with about half of the stuff on my list. Nothing real hard, Roundup, real of fake, Maxwell house French roast coffee, and a u-joint for my bush hog, were things that I did not find. Went to a tractor supply, Attwoods, and 3 Walmarts. Two walmarts before I found the type of coffee creamer that my wife likes. Busy today, but tomorrow I will try some small towns in a different direction, to get the rest of the stuff on my list. I wanted to go to a Grocery store in a different town to buy some steaks but got tired and aggravated before I made it there. And people wonder why I buy a lot off the internet. Pissed about that too as most places, if not all, are charging Arkansas sales tax now. I would not be mad about paying Sales tax for the State that I am buying stuff in, but Paying for the State that I live in on stuff bought out of State is just crazy. miles

I had a uncle who was a very shrewd investor and got in on the ground floor of the Dollar General stores when their stock became available. His stock was worth somewhere around half a million dollars when he died. They're everywhere around here, and have been built out in the middle of nowhere in some places. They play a role that Walmart and the big box stores can't, in that they are in small towns and rural areas, and people don't have to make that long drive for a few items. We use them for things like milk and bread if we run out, but that's pretty much it, as most of their other stuff is of even lower quality than you find at Walmart.

I do not see them ever seriously cutting into Walmarts business, but they will always have firm hold on that niche market.

That's like the one here. We're in a former reservation with a big Native American community. That's where they shop. Don't get me wrong, poor (or cheap) white people shop there too. An item on the shelf may not be restocked the next time you want one. Always a line at the checkout. Retail is figured by profit per square foot of floor space so low markup means narrow aisles, disorganized and crowded. I don't find shopping there a pleasant experience. But cheap junk seems to sell here.

They got that mexican nacho cheddar in the 16oz pull top can. Shoooo weeee...bag of corn chips and a mexican co-cola.

I can eat dinner in the parkin lot and clean my truck out on the way home.

Interesting concept considering the overall quality of their merchandise.

That's not been the case for the most part at the Dollar General stores around here. They stock familiar name brands of many basic products most commonly used shelved along side comparable products in their store brands. Things like over the counter medications, personal hygiene products, household cleaning and laundry products, and same for snacks, drinks, canned, frozen and packaged foods, and even name brand engine oil

The only things that in my opinion are low quality I've seen are outer clothing, but then they also stock well known name brand under clothes like Fruit of the Loom and Hanes,

The main issue I've noticed especially with the smaller DG stores is they generally seem to stay understaffed. Often there's only one employee in store per shift and they are expected to along with running the checkout, to restock and organize shelves and do light cleaning, too, so sometimes you may have to find which aisle they are working in in order to get checked out,

Got at least 4 DGs within about 10 miles, two on the same state highway about 4 miles apart. Kinda like 7-11s used to be.

I go there occasionally when I don't want to go far or if it's on my way, but never for groceries or anything important. Main item I get is giftwrap stuff around Christmas. Can't really count on them having what I want otherwise. Would never occur to me to actually "shop" there.

Probably a lot of the customer base around here is walk-ins of people that don't drive, plus quick stops for milk, etc at the ones on the edges of little towns.

Between Dollar General and Bi-Mart, I don't have to shop anywhere else. And Dollar General carries name brand goods just like any other store. Go on Saturdays and they knock $5.00 off any purchase over $25.00.

I'm sure all you fuggers only shop mom and pop stores and buy fuel from Cooter's Corner Station, same ones who bitch about TV, but spend 22 hours a day online....lol

We still have a village variety in one town near here and an old fashioned five and dime in another. Unfortunately, Dollar General has built stores in both towns within the last 6 months. The owner of the five and dime told me a month ago they woud be closing up soon and I just saw a "going out of business liquidation sale" sign in the front window this past weekend. I expect the village variety won't be far behind. What a shame.

DG here has Chef Boyardee Ravioli for $ .75 a can here! 👍🏻

And I don’t have to go to fuggin Walmart.

👍🏻👍🏻👍🏻

They got Nalley's Chili (no beans) and Hungry Man Beef Stew also?

I know ours sometimes has great cookies, like a nice pastry almost, from Argentina.........................and there's almost always some galletas from Ol Mexico.

Geno

PS, every once in awhile they have a sale on Black Forest gummies. Made in the US of A! Ronald Reagan would probably like them, he liked his jelly beans for sure.

Why you guys out there so skeered of beans?

Ya'll born without a small intestines or somethern?

I'm concerned with methane emmissions, doing my part for the environment and all that ya know. I'm a gas without them.

Never took to them, they just don't do anything for me. I'll eat them, but if they didn't exist on our blue planet I'd be perfectly happy.

Good for putting some nitro back in the ground though.

Geno

Love me some canned pork & beans & Ranch Style Beans 🤠

Q: How many beans are in a can?

A: 239, because one more would be too farty.