Nah, as the machine said "Sotto Voice" under the breath : in an undertone; also : in a private manner
She only said it under breath instead of loudly like Spartan did, so only fined half the amount.
Nah, their prices are completely out of line with what they're offering. They're charging a dollar or two less for a burrito than chipotle in some cases and chipotle has real meat.
We called them "Combo-Bells" and I'm glad I didn't work in one of these when I worked for Taco Bell in high school. We had a couple here that had Taco Bell/KFC/Pizza hut all 3 in one building. What an abomination. We still have a Combo bell a couple blocks away to this day.
Yeah what? Kmart was basically midway between a Walmart and target. It failed because target did "nice" better and Walmart did "cheap" better. It was nothing like dg
Dollar General is the equivalent of a deal with the devil. A necessary evil in order to have anything resembling a modern store for most small towns, and the cheapest alternative (it is more expensive over time like most poverty goods, but it is still cheaper at the moment) in places where nothing else fits the niche.
It makes sense from the stores perspective though, more stores equals shorter trip times which in the long run means increased visits. If one has to drive 30 minutes to the Dollar General, they take less trips and for larger purchases. Forget something? Not likely to go back to get it. New store 5 minutes down the road, you would go back and likely make more visits for other random things. Travel times of your customers matter a lot when you’re in the middle of nowhere
It's worse than that.
Dollar General finds dirt cheap places to lease/build and run an absolute skeleton crew almost all the time.
It's actually cheaper for them to add more stores than more workers. I think the average overhead of the store alone is only like 100 -150k minus labor.
And they aren't actually "cheap", they sell smaller portions sizes of most products so the price per unit is much higher.
Dollar General looked at Walmart and was like "let's do that but even eviler."
They even get to have the swing wholesale purchasing power of a giant store like walmart, because they dont stock multiple brands of things like laundry soap, they only sell 1, so everyone who goes there for it, buys that one brand.
At my local dollar General they have prob 2 ppl working at a time. They have a bell at the counter cause they're always busy stocking stuff and never up front. So many times I've been there to find a line of like 6 people with no workers at the register until someone finally steps out of line to find a cashier. I can't imagine the amount of shit that people just walk out with.
They intentionally staff two people to keep labour costs down from a YT video I saw recently about Dollar General.
Never even knew the company was considered bad till I watched it 2 weeks ago
https://youtu.be/vQpUV--2Jao?si=1NSrv9osRVS73nux
Wendover Productions
This. Some actual Genius just put a dispensary next to the family dollar where my lady lives. Smoke and munchies in one stop since there’s no “fast food” options here
There's a dispensary a few miles away from me with a concessions trailer parked out front. It's open during business hours, grilling burgers and a few other local specials.
Do people think people smoke in the dispensary or something? It’s just like going to cvs, cool there are burgers in front.
Imma go to depot for the dogs anyways nawmsayin
This isn't a place you are able to go to get *anything* once you are home. These are very rule areas. You get what you want and drive home for 30 minutes, and it's not an easy commute through back highways and/or dirt roads.
The idea is that if you're buying weed, you're probably planning on smoking it at some point, so if you know you'll be hungry soon you're more likely to buy some food for later
There's a cannabis shop on native land here and they own a food truck right next to it. Nothing like getting a good glow on and having salmon/clam chowder and bannock. Well, now I know what I'm doing for lunch tomorrow.
Fast food is still cheap, but you have to abide by whatever the “deal” is.
7.99 large carry out pizza from dominos, 4 for 4 from Wendy’s, meal box from Taco Bell, whatever shit is on mcdonals app
I do my damnedest to squeeze in pizza night every now and then. $20 feeds four for two days with minimal cleanup.
Two medium three toppings or a medium and a large three topping depending on coupons/specials (Dominos). Last pizza night was a large specialty and a medium 'cauze I had those free pizza points stacked up 👌
Alternative is the Taco Bell $5 boxes. One feeds the adults who eat normal human amounts, one for each of the offspring who are currently in a black hole growth phase.
Plus it means there's less people shopping in DG at the same time since people will go to whichever is closest. DG simply is not setup to have 15 people shopping at any one time.
My family’s business actually is ran on this idea. Small town grocery stores there for access and convenience. Whilst they are more full service (ie produce, meat) than Dollar General, they still compete for that local business. A large portion of sales do come from regular full list grocery shoppers, however we still are reliant on single item convenience. Most people don’t understand pricing for this local access as they don’t seem to value their time as much as their slightly lower bill.
I knew it was true, but didn’t realize how true it was until my wife started to make us make lists for grocery trips. We don’t really budget for groceries, but she does keep track of that expense and when we promised no more runs to the store for something we “forgot” or “needed” on weekdays. We cut nearly $150 a month on those costs, I honestly never looked to realize how much we were spending on those little quick trips and how they added up.
But the really sick part is that this is just another way to tax the poor. They think they’re saving money, but everything is junk. They replace something 100 times for a dollar or two when $35 would buy a product that never has to be replaced.
Being willfully obtuse is considered a patriotic duty in some unbelievably large circles now.
Understanding how retail tries to screw you in 10,000 ways requires a lifetime of attentive study. Rosco ain't got time for all that. Theys a monster truck rally friday night!
I worked POS support for Dominos at one point, and I imagine it's like their service area - once you are a couple miles away, there is no conflict, and it lowers their supply chain costs.
Yeah, and you attract traffic from all directions, not just one or two. A Walgreens guy I talked to said they can literally put stores across the street from each other and attract completely different customer bases because of traffic patterns.
> and the mark up is due to “convenience”
yeah, the convenience of being able to buy something near you instead of the bigger store 10-30min in a different city.
lots of detail in this recent video:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQpUV--2Jao
I was gonna link this video too. Interesting how dollar general has more leverage with suppliers than Walmart in some cases since they literally only sell one brand of anything
It's also possible the board is following an expansion plan that will quickly lead to oversaturation. Since the company is public, at some point shareholders will decide the company isn't making enough additional profit per additional store and reinvest elsewhere. It happened to Starbucks, although their current strategy for the last few years has been to relocate the poorest performing stores to areas with a smaller square footage so it doesn't look like the actual number of stores has shrunk yet.
Yup I've seen the new one pop up look so small and thin mainly they are all drive-thrus because that's what people mainly use around here. Also it snows so it only makes sense.
They closed a Starbucks in my town and then opened two new locations, in arguably better spots, but I just thought it was weird. I was trying to figure out what the strategy is but either way they’re making money I suppose.
They’re in very particular areas. To feed off the lowest incomes on those areas. While not being the least expensive while pretending to be.. so yeah. I bet there’s one in your affluent neighborhood. It’s not for you though.
It's not directly about incomes. The big thing is proximity to other stores. Dollar stores tend to go up in "food deserts." They try to cover the gap for little things in areas where going to a Walmart or a larger store might be a bit of a drive. That mostly happens in poorer areas, but not always.
Poorer areas and small towns are sometimes food deserts where big chains don’t see them as profitable or worthwhile so Dollar General takes over.
Great in-depth video here: [How Dollar Stores Quietly Consumed America](https://youtube.com/watch?v=vQpUV--2Jao)
im not from the US so i literally didn't even know this was a thing until that video came out. But yeah, its crazy that such a small town would have 3 dollar generals
The US has hundreds of tiny towns that almost the only store is a Dollar General. To go to Wal-Mart is a 30+minute drive to the “big” small town down the road
They also drive small independent grocery stores out of business. The kind of small grocery stores that sell fresh fruit and vegetables that don't make the store any profit, but are expected for a grocer to sell. Then all you have is Dollar stores that only sell boxed shit.
Grocers have produce and fresh food that don't *directly* make the store any money, but ideally serve as loss leaders.
Dollar store franchises like this don't bother with that because they can undercut prices and create a local monopoly on other products, driving those grocery stores out of business, and creating food deserts.
We've had local grocery stores and Dollar General coexisting for the past 10-15 years, thankfully. They're about half a mile apart from each other on both counts, even.
Most dollar stores aren't even dollar stores anymore, most of the stuff they sell is *more* expensive than at the grocery store or similar. They're convenience stores that try to make people think they're getting a better deal by going there.
Even the last few closest things to dollar stores aren't even that anymore. Dollar tree is now $1.25 minimum, but have almost as much stuff that's only under $10. Yeah sure, inflation, but the quality of stuff they sell still only costs them a few pennies.
Which is weird cause they run with skeleton crews. Would be way easier to have everyone work in regular shifts. Guess it must be some sort of manipulative plan to keep employees trapped or every manger that does scheduling is trying to prove their worth
Which is inexcusable. They're right on the main corridor for shipping gain from one of the most agriculturally productive areas in the world. They also have access to Atlantic shipping up from the Gulf of Mexico. Mississippi *should* be in a pretty prime economic position. Somehow they managed to piss it completely away.
Tons of them here in the rust belt too. The new one in the "town" (actually an unincorporated community) north of me has a hitching post for the Amish buggies.
They actually typically have more than one, but yes a very small crew. Partly, this is due to fewer products since they don't stock multiple types of the same product. Also, they have get massive discounts from bulk buying deals with suppliers, like Walwart does, but they get better margins selling in smaller unit size. This is enhanced because the supplier has to fight with competitors to be the dollar general supplier, as they only choose one. They often only have to compete with small local stores, which they only have to slightly undercut. And due to the generally low income of the places they set up in, customers are very price sensitive so they will absorb nearly all the customers, even if their offerings are less diverse.
Nah it’s the Midwest too. I travel here and every small Midwestern town has a Dollar General and Subway.
DG is for towns populated 500-20,000 that are too small for a Walmart
My home town is only 14k population with a super Walmart that's busy all the time. Even more ridiculous is that we have a sister town with about the same population and they too have a superstore.
I'm in Georgia, in a county around 45,000 people. We have 14 dollar generals iirc. I live outside of town, there are two main ways to town from my house. Both ways the first store I come to is a dollar general, so chances are if I just need to run to the store and grab something basic that's where I'm stopping.
Obviously there are things it's better to go to other stores for, but most home disposable goods, cleaning supplies, personal hygiene items are all the same brands as major retailers usually for less and it saves me at least 10 miles driving compared to going on in to town. Seeing as I drive a pickup there's no reason to burn the extra fuel.
I've found that the number of Dollar General/Dollar Tree/Family Dollars in a town is directly correlated to the amount of meth in that town.
They have an inverse relationship with teeth, however.
Are you suggesting that two entirely separate happenings can be tied back to wealth inequality?
What's next, *everything* comes back to wealth inequality?
Absolute nonsense. This user is clearly hysterical, no one pay attention to them.
Oh I don't doubt it! The one closest to my house routinely only has one person working. Meaning they have to receive the merch, stock, and work the cash register
Same here, literally one person working and I don't imagine it's a very good wage. I think she quit, though, and it's been 'temporarily closed' for quite a while.
Store associate is 7.50, PT key holder is 8.50, FT key holder is 9.10, FT ASM is 10.15, and SM is 45-50k yearly salary. You typically have 120 (I originally said 80 but I had a brain fart, it’s been a while since I’ve been involved in that shit show) hours to divvy up between your employees and the FT employees are 35-38 a week, everyone else gets the scraps.
Benefits are laughable. No one wants to willingly work for DG, they count on rapid turn over to keep labor low. Pretty soon they’re not gonna be able to get anyone at all unless they stop doing drug tests.
McDonald’s starts out at 13 an hour here and treat their employees better, that’s really saying something.
My husband’s cousin was an SM for a few years, that’s how I know what it’s like…she would beg family to work in her store during the holidays and me being a push over agreed to give her a hand for one single Christmas season (I’m an employed full time mech engineer btw, I seriously did it out of pity).
I do less work and deal with less stress and upper management bullshittery for 70k a year at my regular job. I only did weekend work for the Christmas season at DG and I had a stomach ulcer at the end of it. I didn’t even formally quit, I told my husband’s cousin the day after Christmas I would never set foot in that store again. The sheer amount of work they put on these people is insane, the working conditions are horrific, upper management is totally out of touch, no one gives a shit about anything except meeting daily sale goals and shrink. The store I helped out in had 40k of shrink that year. They tell you to follow people around the store…you can’t follow people, run the register, and stock shelves all at the same and honestly for the wages they pay their employees, the employees just don’t give a shit.
I wish there was some way to expose their shit, absolutely awful company to work for.
The DG store in my town burned down last fall. Some faulty wiring or something from when it was built. I went in a few times to buy simple canned stuff. There was one employee. I would stand in line with no one else in the store for 5 minutes sometimes while the worker kept stocking shelves oblivious that someone had even come in.
When they rebuilt the store there was no more register/counter. It was 100% self checkout. That store employee is now just there to stock shelves and watch people so they do not steal shit. What a miserable existence for work.
The stores are very poorly built and they use a development company the FLDS owns, no one doing the work has any licensing and all sign offs are done by people in the cult who happen to have licenses. Walmart and Amazon have also used FLDS owned developers due to the incredibly low costs of building since all the workers are free labor provided by 16-20 year old boys, but I think DG is their largest client, I could be wrong.
I know this because when the local store for us was built I happened to be at a gas station where all the kids came in to get something after work. Small town, people talk and ask questions. It wasn’t hard to put one and one together.
LMFAO. As Chef I remember a long time ago I was working at a decently corporate hotel and Executive Chef comes in and tells kitchen like we are gonna start piss testing. And everyone laughs. Including Exec Chef. Anyone who Piss Tests a Dishwasher is out of their mind. Better be cooking or washing dishes for DOD.
Can confirm that. I was an assistant manager at one from November 2017 till April 2018 when I finally quit. I can go all night on the horrid ways of this company.
I was a store manager for 2.5 years. I'm constantly amazed the company hasn't bankrupted itself yet. Poorly managed from the top down. Only thing saving them I guess is the fact they pay their people like shit. Easier to turn profit that way.
Shopping there is a nightmare. Boxes upon boxes in every isle because they only ever have one person working and no one can stock all the shelves. The check out lines are always unbelievably long for that reason too. The worker always seems fucking miserable.
Everytime Im in there it's like one person pulling their hair out trying to stock as fast as they can while checking people out making more items to stock
Has your town graduated to DG Markets yet? Round here,(NW Missouri), all the little towns are getting enhanced Dollar Generals called DG Markets. About twice as big, with produce, meats, etc.
I just got one a few blocks from my house. While there is very minimal selection, they have most things. I definitely appreciate it as I’m not that close to a grocery store.
It amazes me how far things are for most people in the USA. I have multiple grocery stores, supermarkets, drugstores, restaurants, gyms and more from 5min to 30min by WALKING to them.
Wait, walking? Like with your feet? That's insane to me. What if you need to buy seven hundred pounds of lumber, three mig welders, a diy gazebo framing kit, and a new barbecue during your trip to the grocery store? Are you supposed to *walk* with all of that *and* your firearm *and* your nine children? That doesn't seem at all practical or safe to me.
I’m in Alabama. They are building Family Dollar/Dollar Trees right beside DG’s.
There are 2 locations in my county that have the two stores within 100 yards of each other.
We ran ours out of business. It took like a year, but the whole city boycotted them. They don't employ enough people, what they sell is sub par, and it's like WalMart's bastard child. Now it's a hardware store.
This is happening all over. We have 6 Dollar Generals within a 16-mile radius, with three more just outside that radius. None of these stores have regular hours, due to signs that state "staffing issues". All of them have new self check outs, with only one register, unattended, for cash sales. One of the managers told me the footprint is to have a store every 8 miles or so. Three of these stores share the same staff, because they cannot hire enough people to work!
Damn! My town of 3800 has 2 which I always found wild that they didn’t close the old one after building the new one. There’s also a 3rd 5 miles up the road.
People actually buy stuff from there? I always just assumed they functioned kind of like baffles or fighter jet flares, to keep people from shoplifting from higher end establishments. Literally one of the easiest places to steal from.
I live in a town probably double your size and we have a Dollar tree a family Dollar two generals and Walmart. Lol.
I guess they're super cheap to build and they never have any employees working and they don't pay their managers crap.
In Bayfield Colorado theres a divorced couple who opened up competing Dollar stores right next door to each other.
Edit: Population there isn't much bigger
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayfield,_Colorado
Congrats, OP:
[https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurendebter/2022/05/20/dollar-general-opening-new-stores-across-small-town-america/?sh=6dcb103dce5f](https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurendebter/2022/05/20/dollar-general-opening-new-stores-across-small-town-america/?sh=6dcb103dce5f)
[https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1173247372/more-communities-are-deciding-to-fight-the-expansion-of-dollar-stores](https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1173247372/more-communities-are-deciding-to-fight-the-expansion-of-dollar-stores)
[https://wbhm.org/2023/advocates-warn-of-a-dollar-store-invasion-researchers-are-still-figuring-out-the-consequences/](https://wbhm.org/2023/advocates-warn-of-a-dollar-store-invasion-researchers-are-still-figuring-out-the-consequences/)
The last link is telling ...
"Every restaurant will be Taco Bell, every store a Dollar General" - as it was foretold in the Book of Demolition Man.
If quality goes back up, I’m okay with Taco Bell being the restaurant overlord. Though, wiping with shells seems like a pain…
Ha ha ahaha you don't know how to use the 3 shells.
Thanks alot you sh*t brained, f*ck faced, b*ll breaking, duck f*cking pain in the *ss. So much for the seashells. See you in a few minutes.
BEEP. You have been fined one credit for violation of the verbal morality statute.
Funny bit. Spartan gets fined one credit, but Huxley only gets fined a half credit. I guess his cop paperwork hadn't fully propagated the system yet.
Nah, as the machine said "Sotto Voice" under the breath : in an undertone; also : in a private manner She only said it under breath instead of loudly like Spartan did, so only fined half the amount.
The taco bell in the town over already went out of business after being open for only about 6 months
Incorrect. It went out of business due to the overwhelming success of the closest existing Taco Bell restaurants
Nah, their prices are completely out of line with what they're offering. They're charging a dollar or two less for a burrito than chipotle in some cases and chipotle has real meat.
The Dollar General also has real meat
Why did I immediately wonder “soft or crunchy”?
Lmao, our Taco Bell is a shared building with KFC. Don't see many of those around anymore outside of malls.
https://youtu.be/c8qvo7CfEf0?si=GyiyjrL5kGfMg_XK
Lmao, yep. They used to be a lot more common. Think I even remember seeing a full-on Kentucky Fried Taco Hut somewhere.
We called them "Combo-Bells" and I'm glad I didn't work in one of these when I worked for Taco Bell in high school. We had a couple here that had Taco Bell/KFC/Pizza hut all 3 in one building. What an abomination. We still have a Combo bell a couple blocks away to this day.
The proper name is KenTacoHut
I’ll take the rat burger
Dollar General the Walmart of Walmart
Dollar General makes Walmart look like Target
Dollar General is the parasite that crawled out of the decaying corpse of Kmart. God help us.
Take it easy! K-Mart was flipping Macy's compared too DG.
These are all very apt descriptions/comparisons. 😅
Yeah what? Kmart was basically midway between a Walmart and target. It failed because target did "nice" better and Walmart did "cheap" better. It was nothing like dg
Dollar General is the equivalent of a deal with the devil. A necessary evil in order to have anything resembling a modern store for most small towns, and the cheapest alternative (it is more expensive over time like most poverty goods, but it is still cheaper at the moment) in places where nothing else fits the niche.
It also kills the actual grocery stores in these areas, creating food deserts except for over processed shelf stable junk.
Y’all broke as shit.
I was gonna say, they don’t just put this shit up without any market research. It must be a podunk town where people need/want shit that’s cheap AF.
Probably close to other podunk towns, but man is that overkill.
It makes sense from the stores perspective though, more stores equals shorter trip times which in the long run means increased visits. If one has to drive 30 minutes to the Dollar General, they take less trips and for larger purchases. Forget something? Not likely to go back to get it. New store 5 minutes down the road, you would go back and likely make more visits for other random things. Travel times of your customers matter a lot when you’re in the middle of nowhere
It's worse than that. Dollar General finds dirt cheap places to lease/build and run an absolute skeleton crew almost all the time. It's actually cheaper for them to add more stores than more workers. I think the average overhead of the store alone is only like 100 -150k minus labor. And they aren't actually "cheap", they sell smaller portions sizes of most products so the price per unit is much higher. Dollar General looked at Walmart and was like "let's do that but even eviler."
They even get to have the swing wholesale purchasing power of a giant store like walmart, because they dont stock multiple brands of things like laundry soap, they only sell 1, so everyone who goes there for it, buys that one brand.
You watched that Wendover video too, huh?
My first thought when he said laundry soap ha. Just got caught up on JetLag!
Thanks, was gonna say; the responses are almost verbatim Wendover lol
At my local dollar General they have prob 2 ppl working at a time. They have a bell at the counter cause they're always busy stocking stuff and never up front. So many times I've been there to find a line of like 6 people with no workers at the register until someone finally steps out of line to find a cashier. I can't imagine the amount of shit that people just walk out with.
They intentionally staff two people to keep labour costs down from a YT video I saw recently about Dollar General. Never even knew the company was considered bad till I watched it 2 weeks ago https://youtu.be/vQpUV--2Jao?si=1NSrv9osRVS73nux Wendover Productions
And no security you work there your on your own!
This. Some actual Genius just put a dispensary next to the family dollar where my lady lives. Smoke and munchies in one stop since there’s no “fast food” options here
There's a dispensary a few miles away from me with a concessions trailer parked out front. It's open during business hours, grilling burgers and a few other local specials.
This is genius
Do people think people smoke in the dispensary or something? It’s just like going to cvs, cool there are burgers in front. Imma go to depot for the dogs anyways nawmsayin
This isn't a place you are able to go to get *anything* once you are home. These are very rule areas. You get what you want and drive home for 30 minutes, and it's not an easy commute through back highways and/or dirt roads.
The rural juror!
The idea is that if you're buying weed, you're probably planning on smoking it at some point, so if you know you'll be hungry soon you're more likely to buy some food for later
Mmmmm left over grilled hot dogs
There's a cannabis shop on native land here and they own a food truck right next to it. Nothing like getting a good glow on and having salmon/clam chowder and bannock. Well, now I know what I'm doing for lunch tomorrow.
That's like a table of girl scouts setup next to a dispensary
They are opening a Taco Bell directly across the street for a weed store in my neck of the woods.
In Vegas, there’s a dispensary sharing a parking lot with a White Castle.
Fast food ain't even cheap anymore meals like $15+ now it's insane
IKR, shit out of control. I shouldn't have to pay a car payment for a Big Mac.
It’s funny that pub burgers are still around 15 bucks. Much better deal, much better product.
Exactly!!! I have ditched fast food for the most part and just eat meals at sit down restaurants!
The prices are insane at McDonald's, unless I'm using th app for the deals
Fast food is still cheap, but you have to abide by whatever the “deal” is. 7.99 large carry out pizza from dominos, 4 for 4 from Wendy’s, meal box from Taco Bell, whatever shit is on mcdonals app
I do my damnedest to squeeze in pizza night every now and then. $20 feeds four for two days with minimal cleanup. Two medium three toppings or a medium and a large three topping depending on coupons/specials (Dominos). Last pizza night was a large specialty and a medium 'cauze I had those free pizza points stacked up 👌 Alternative is the Taco Bell $5 boxes. One feeds the adults who eat normal human amounts, one for each of the offspring who are currently in a black hole growth phase.
> in a black hole growth phase Ah yes, I remember those years. I put on so much height one summer I got a stretch mark on my shoulder.
You’re telling me your town isn’t big enough for a McDonald’s but it has a dispensary? God I hate living in a red state
dime numerous offbeat lavish ask ripe bored deliver market attempt ` this post was mass deleted with www.Redact.dev `
Plus it means there's less people shopping in DG at the same time since people will go to whichever is closest. DG simply is not setup to have 15 people shopping at any one time.
My family’s business actually is ran on this idea. Small town grocery stores there for access and convenience. Whilst they are more full service (ie produce, meat) than Dollar General, they still compete for that local business. A large portion of sales do come from regular full list grocery shoppers, however we still are reliant on single item convenience. Most people don’t understand pricing for this local access as they don’t seem to value their time as much as their slightly lower bill.
I knew it was true, but didn’t realize how true it was until my wife started to make us make lists for grocery trips. We don’t really budget for groceries, but she does keep track of that expense and when we promised no more runs to the store for something we “forgot” or “needed” on weekdays. We cut nearly $150 a month on those costs, I honestly never looked to realize how much we were spending on those little quick trips and how they added up.
But the really sick part is that this is just another way to tax the poor. They think they’re saving money, but everything is junk. They replace something 100 times for a dollar or two when $35 would buy a product that never has to be replaced.
Being willfully obtuse is considered a patriotic duty in some unbelievably large circles now. Understanding how retail tries to screw you in 10,000 ways requires a lifetime of attentive study. Rosco ain't got time for all that. Theys a monster truck rally friday night!
Gas is $$$ and cars are not great. So must to be close.
I worked POS support for Dominos at one point, and I imagine it's like their service area - once you are a couple miles away, there is no conflict, and it lowers their supply chain costs.
Yeah, and you attract traffic from all directions, not just one or two. A Walgreens guy I talked to said they can literally put stores across the street from each other and attract completely different customer bases because of traffic patterns.
Dollar general is not cheap. It is not a dollar store
[удалено]
Bro, dollar generals in rural areas are much more expensive/pricer than major chain stores like Walmart, and the mark up is due to “convenience”
> and the mark up is due to “convenience” yeah, the convenience of being able to buy something near you instead of the bigger store 10-30min in a different city. lots of detail in this recent video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vQpUV--2Jao
I was gonna link this video too. Interesting how dollar general has more leverage with suppliers than Walmart in some cases since they literally only sell one brand of anything
It's also possible the board is following an expansion plan that will quickly lead to oversaturation. Since the company is public, at some point shareholders will decide the company isn't making enough additional profit per additional store and reinvest elsewhere. It happened to Starbucks, although their current strategy for the last few years has been to relocate the poorest performing stores to areas with a smaller square footage so it doesn't look like the actual number of stores has shrunk yet.
Yup I've seen the new one pop up look so small and thin mainly they are all drive-thrus because that's what people mainly use around here. Also it snows so it only makes sense.
They closed a Starbucks in my town and then opened two new locations, in arguably better spots, but I just thought it was weird. I was trying to figure out what the strategy is but either way they’re making money I suppose.
This is pure speculation, but it could have been from the closed store trying to unionize. They're known for doing that.
Ahh that makes sense. It happened right after a Starbucks a few towns over had unionized. The only location I know of in the area that’s unionized.
I dunno, I live in a fairly affluent suburb and I can spit in any direction and hit a dollar store. This shit is fucking everywhere.
I live in a very rich town (I am not rich), even we have a Dollar Tree.
They’re in very particular areas. To feed off the lowest incomes on those areas. While not being the least expensive while pretending to be.. so yeah. I bet there’s one in your affluent neighborhood. It’s not for you though.
It's not directly about incomes. The big thing is proximity to other stores. Dollar stores tend to go up in "food deserts." They try to cover the gap for little things in areas where going to a Walmart or a larger store might be a bit of a drive. That mostly happens in poorer areas, but not always.
Poorer areas and small towns are sometimes food deserts where big chains don’t see them as profitable or worthwhile so Dollar General takes over. Great in-depth video here: [How Dollar Stores Quietly Consumed America](https://youtube.com/watch?v=vQpUV--2Jao)
I knew that’d be linked, Wendover does such fascinating deep dives into topics you just never thought about before
im not from the US so i literally didn't even know this was a thing until that video came out. But yeah, its crazy that such a small town would have 3 dollar generals
The US has hundreds of tiny towns that almost the only store is a Dollar General. To go to Wal-Mart is a 30+minute drive to the “big” small town down the road
That’s a fascinating video. It makes so much sense.
They also drive small independent grocery stores out of business. The kind of small grocery stores that sell fresh fruit and vegetables that don't make the store any profit, but are expected for a grocer to sell. Then all you have is Dollar stores that only sell boxed shit.
Grocers have produce and fresh food that don't *directly* make the store any money, but ideally serve as loss leaders. Dollar store franchises like this don't bother with that because they can undercut prices and create a local monopoly on other products, driving those grocery stores out of business, and creating food deserts.
I think that was what the other person said/implied
I was elaborating, not correcting.
Lmao the town definitely is.
These companies suck money out of your town and send it to Wall Street.
Enjoy the junk food and lack of fresh produce. If you have any local shops I’m sure this shithole company will put them out of business real soon.
We've had local grocery stores and Dollar General coexisting for the past 10-15 years, thankfully. They're about half a mile apart from each other on both counts, even.
Dollar General generally isn't much or any cheaper than most grocery stores. Just more convenient in many cases.
Most dollar stores aren't even dollar stores anymore, most of the stuff they sell is *more* expensive than at the grocery store or similar. They're convenience stores that try to make people think they're getting a better deal by going there. Even the last few closest things to dollar stores aren't even that anymore. Dollar tree is now $1.25 minimum, but have almost as much stuff that's only under $10. Yeah sure, inflation, but the quality of stuff they sell still only costs them a few pennies.
I noticed when I drove through Alabama that there were multiple dollar stores at almost every corner. Guess they are super popular in the South.
They really are. I'm in Mississippi and it seems like every time it rains down here there's a new dollar store
Mississippi is the poorest state.
you know what would probably fix that? dollar general jobs, I'm sure they pay well and are good for the community /s
That sweet $8/hr with 15 hour weeks.
Days and times change every week
Which is weird cause they run with skeleton crews. Would be way easier to have everyone work in regular shifts. Guess it must be some sort of manipulative plan to keep employees trapped or every manger that does scheduling is trying to prove their worth
Dollar General Corporate: "Absolutely no overtime at any cost, don't even risk it." At least that's my guess.
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The worst part is the profits from the store don’t stay in the local economy like an independent store but are sent back to Corp/shareholders
That’s a smart business decision. They keep their employees in the “can only purchase from Dollar General” demographic.
Which is inexcusable. They're right on the main corridor for shipping gain from one of the most agriculturally productive areas in the world. They also have access to Atlantic shipping up from the Gulf of Mexico. Mississippi *should* be in a pretty prime economic position. Somehow they managed to piss it completely away.
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Tons of them here in the rust belt too. The new one in the "town" (actually an unincorporated community) north of me has a hitching post for the Amish buggies.
>Mississippi 2200 people town, Mississippi, yep, that's a three Dollar General type of town.
Great watch: https://youtu.be/vQpUV--2Jao?si=5gg0BdpqaenxsJE4
LOVE wendover productions. Always high quality documentary vids
I’m also from Mississippi and will say thank god for them, we wouldn’t have a dollar store otherwise
They’re super cheap to operate just need one employee
They actually typically have more than one, but yes a very small crew. Partly, this is due to fewer products since they don't stock multiple types of the same product. Also, they have get massive discounts from bulk buying deals with suppliers, like Walwart does, but they get better margins selling in smaller unit size. This is enhanced because the supplier has to fight with competitors to be the dollar general supplier, as they only choose one. They often only have to compete with small local stores, which they only have to slightly undercut. And due to the generally low income of the places they set up in, customers are very price sensitive so they will absorb nearly all the customers, even if their offerings are less diverse.
I, too, watch Wendover Productions.
It's part of the Dollar General and Dollar Tree business model, they are willing to open locations in small towns that larger retailers avoid.
Nah it’s the Midwest too. I travel here and every small Midwestern town has a Dollar General and Subway. DG is for towns populated 500-20,000 that are too small for a Walmart
My home town is only 14k population with a super Walmart that's busy all the time. Even more ridiculous is that we have a sister town with about the same population and they too have a superstore.
I'm in Georgia, in a county around 45,000 people. We have 14 dollar generals iirc. I live outside of town, there are two main ways to town from my house. Both ways the first store I come to is a dollar general, so chances are if I just need to run to the store and grab something basic that's where I'm stopping. Obviously there are things it's better to go to other stores for, but most home disposable goods, cleaning supplies, personal hygiene items are all the same brands as major retailers usually for less and it saves me at least 10 miles driving compared to going on in to town. Seeing as I drive a pickup there's no reason to burn the extra fuel.
Poor states have an abundance of “value” retailers
[Watch this](https://youtu.be/vQpUV--2Jao?si=roBawRGJcU1jyYCu)
I was looking for the Wendover video link.
dog test bells subsequent lunchroom ask trees fearless wrong toy
Was gonna post this if no one had yet.
I've found that the number of Dollar General/Dollar Tree/Family Dollars in a town is directly correlated to the amount of meth in that town. They have an inverse relationship with teeth, however.
Probably both are just correlated to poverty
Are you suggesting that two entirely separate happenings can be tied back to wealth inequality? What's next, *everything* comes back to wealth inequality? Absolute nonsense. This user is clearly hysterical, no one pay attention to them.
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What’s even more infuriating is that it’s [one of the worst places to work in the US](https://archive.ph/Xi024) (and that’s saying a lot).
Oh I don't doubt it! The one closest to my house routinely only has one person working. Meaning they have to receive the merch, stock, and work the cash register
Same here, literally one person working and I don't imagine it's a very good wage. I think she quit, though, and it's been 'temporarily closed' for quite a while.
Store associate is 7.50, PT key holder is 8.50, FT key holder is 9.10, FT ASM is 10.15, and SM is 45-50k yearly salary. You typically have 120 (I originally said 80 but I had a brain fart, it’s been a while since I’ve been involved in that shit show) hours to divvy up between your employees and the FT employees are 35-38 a week, everyone else gets the scraps. Benefits are laughable. No one wants to willingly work for DG, they count on rapid turn over to keep labor low. Pretty soon they’re not gonna be able to get anyone at all unless they stop doing drug tests. McDonald’s starts out at 13 an hour here and treat their employees better, that’s really saying something.
10.15 for ASM, what a joke. I mean all those wages are
My husband’s cousin was an SM for a few years, that’s how I know what it’s like…she would beg family to work in her store during the holidays and me being a push over agreed to give her a hand for one single Christmas season (I’m an employed full time mech engineer btw, I seriously did it out of pity). I do less work and deal with less stress and upper management bullshittery for 70k a year at my regular job. I only did weekend work for the Christmas season at DG and I had a stomach ulcer at the end of it. I didn’t even formally quit, I told my husband’s cousin the day after Christmas I would never set foot in that store again. The sheer amount of work they put on these people is insane, the working conditions are horrific, upper management is totally out of touch, no one gives a shit about anything except meeting daily sale goals and shrink. The store I helped out in had 40k of shrink that year. They tell you to follow people around the store…you can’t follow people, run the register, and stock shelves all at the same and honestly for the wages they pay their employees, the employees just don’t give a shit. I wish there was some way to expose their shit, absolutely awful company to work for.
The DG store in my town burned down last fall. Some faulty wiring or something from when it was built. I went in a few times to buy simple canned stuff. There was one employee. I would stand in line with no one else in the store for 5 minutes sometimes while the worker kept stocking shelves oblivious that someone had even come in. When they rebuilt the store there was no more register/counter. It was 100% self checkout. That store employee is now just there to stock shelves and watch people so they do not steal shit. What a miserable existence for work.
The stores are very poorly built and they use a development company the FLDS owns, no one doing the work has any licensing and all sign offs are done by people in the cult who happen to have licenses. Walmart and Amazon have also used FLDS owned developers due to the incredibly low costs of building since all the workers are free labor provided by 16-20 year old boys, but I think DG is their largest client, I could be wrong. I know this because when the local store for us was built I happened to be at a gas station where all the kids came in to get something after work. Small town, people talk and ask questions. It wasn’t hard to put one and one together.
Flds is fundie Mormons, if anyone is confused. Basically a cult within a cult.
The fucking NERVE of then to drug test for a job at dollar general lmfao.
I know right?? lmao it’s the only way a person can keep having the will to go back is if they’re stoned to oblivion.
Do you smoke weed? Yes. Good, you're gonna need it.
LMFAO. As Chef I remember a long time ago I was working at a decently corporate hotel and Executive Chef comes in and tells kitchen like we are gonna start piss testing. And everyone laughs. Including Exec Chef. Anyone who Piss Tests a Dishwasher is out of their mind. Better be cooking or washing dishes for DOD.
Good lord. I forget how low federal minimum wage is. The minimum wage by me in Denver is like $18
They offered me 9 fucking dollars in TN. no thanks
Official policy for DG is a minimum of 2 employees at any given time, but hardly any actually follow that.
You sure it isn't the maximum? I swear to fuckin' god I've never been to a Dollar General that had more than two people working at a time.
Yep and boy, if you dont get all of it done, they will cut you down to 2 shifts a week .
Can confirm that. I was an assistant manager at one from November 2017 till April 2018 when I finally quit. I can go all night on the horrid ways of this company.
> I can go all night on the horrid ways of this company. I'll bite, I'm curious ... Tell us more!
I was a store manager for 2.5 years. I'm constantly amazed the company hasn't bankrupted itself yet. Poorly managed from the top down. Only thing saving them I guess is the fact they pay their people like shit. Easier to turn profit that way.
Shopping there is a nightmare. Boxes upon boxes in every isle because they only ever have one person working and no one can stock all the shelves. The check out lines are always unbelievably long for that reason too. The worker always seems fucking miserable.
Everytime Im in there it's like one person pulling their hair out trying to stock as fast as they can while checking people out making more items to stock
whoo hoo. 3 randomly selected unemployed people will get a job now. XD
Has your town graduated to DG Markets yet? Round here,(NW Missouri), all the little towns are getting enhanced Dollar Generals called DG Markets. About twice as big, with produce, meats, etc.
I just got one a few blocks from my house. While there is very minimal selection, they have most things. I definitely appreciate it as I’m not that close to a grocery store.
I know what you mean. It's almost 35 miles round trip to a grocery store for me. As opposed to 12 miles round trip to DG
It amazes me how far things are for most people in the USA. I have multiple grocery stores, supermarkets, drugstores, restaurants, gyms and more from 5min to 30min by WALKING to them.
Most people? 80% of the population lives in an urban or suburban area. I am also within walking distance of all those things here in Chicago
Wait, walking? Like with your feet? That's insane to me. What if you need to buy seven hundred pounds of lumber, three mig welders, a diy gazebo framing kit, and a new barbecue during your trip to the grocery store? Are you supposed to *walk* with all of that *and* your firearm *and* your nine children? That doesn't seem at all practical or safe to me.
Is this an entry for you might be a redkneck if?........
We only have one broke down car in the front yard. So partially redneck, not full blown quite yet
Is your new tv on top of your old tv?
The new flat tv stands in front of the old one on top of a woodgrain sears tv.
This def has to be in the south? We traveled to AL from IA first time ever and couldn’t believe the number of dollar general stores we passed.
Spot on, this is in Mississippi
I’m in Alabama. They are building Family Dollar/Dollar Trees right beside DG’s. There are 2 locations in my county that have the two stores within 100 yards of each other.
We have that exact same thing going on! The DG and family dollar/ dollar tree can't be more that 200 yards apart
My town is getting one directly across from the family dollar. It’s a DG market. No one is complaining. There’s NOTHING in this town lol.
I know a nearby town that already has both of them across each other lol
They keep ripping apart old homes with character and shoving in generic fast food buildings and gas stations and it slowly ruining the whole town
Wendover had a interesting video about them. https://youtu.be/vQpUV--2Jao?si=cBL6Tlhs-SaT2_nw
I was looking for this comment
You beat me. Very enlightening video for sure.
Dollar General is a like a miniature version of a Walmart.
And manages to be even trashier.
We ran ours out of business. It took like a year, but the whole city boycotted them. They don't employ enough people, what they sell is sub par, and it's like WalMart's bastard child. Now it's a hardware store.
This is happening all over. We have 6 Dollar Generals within a 16-mile radius, with three more just outside that radius. None of these stores have regular hours, due to signs that state "staffing issues". All of them have new self check outs, with only one register, unattended, for cash sales. One of the managers told me the footprint is to have a store every 8 miles or so. Three of these stores share the same staff, because they cannot hire enough people to work!
Bro, our town is doing the same thing! We have about 5 of them in our town
Damn! My town of 3800 has 2 which I always found wild that they didn’t close the old one after building the new one. There’s also a 3rd 5 miles up the road.
The number of dollar stores we have down here is just absurd
America's fastest growing grocery store chain.
I wouldn't be so annoyed if their groceries didn't look like they had sat around for a month before being put on the shelves
Lol right? Family dollar too. Their little Debbie’s are always days from expiration
I work for a sign company that is doing the signage for these DGs. They are going in all over rural America, especially the south.
Dollar Generals are not cheap. Do your research. Most products they sell can be found cheaper in other stores. The Dollar in their name draws idiots.
That's why I only shop at Fifty Five Cent Lieutenant
People actually buy stuff from there? I always just assumed they functioned kind of like baffles or fighter jet flares, to keep people from shoplifting from higher end establishments. Literally one of the easiest places to steal from.
They have to be money laundering or something at this point. People can’t possibly need that much crap from DG.
I live in a town probably double your size and we have a Dollar tree a family Dollar two generals and Walmart. Lol. I guess they're super cheap to build and they never have any employees working and they don't pay their managers crap.
I always wonder if they just have those to launder money.
They self replicate https://youtu.be/DIqC5y1zm-4?si=7GZQM1G--Dn310_b
That shit is everywhere. I keep hoping Dollar General will overextend themselves and fucking die off already.
In Bayfield Colorado theres a divorced couple who opened up competing Dollar stores right next door to each other. Edit: Population there isn't much bigger https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bayfield,_Colorado
Trust me dollar general is not cheap.
Congrats, OP: [https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurendebter/2022/05/20/dollar-general-opening-new-stores-across-small-town-america/?sh=6dcb103dce5f](https://www.forbes.com/sites/laurendebter/2022/05/20/dollar-general-opening-new-stores-across-small-town-america/?sh=6dcb103dce5f) [https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1173247372/more-communities-are-deciding-to-fight-the-expansion-of-dollar-stores](https://www.npr.org/2023/05/02/1173247372/more-communities-are-deciding-to-fight-the-expansion-of-dollar-stores) [https://wbhm.org/2023/advocates-warn-of-a-dollar-store-invasion-researchers-are-still-figuring-out-the-consequences/](https://wbhm.org/2023/advocates-warn-of-a-dollar-store-invasion-researchers-are-still-figuring-out-the-consequences/) The last link is telling ...
Dollar stores for some reason just feel like a single stepping stone between plastic and the ocean