This is a little outside of my normal blog topic scope, but today I am going to talk about Dollar General, specifically Dollar Generals opening in poor rural neighborhoods.

There are lots of articles about this.  I mean lots.  Dollar General actually has a practice of opening (to quote one blog post, “where Wal-Mart won’t go,” which makes the pundits talk about “shutting down Mom & Pop stores.”

Which – might be true in some places.  I don’t live in an urban area right now, although I know that most of the grocery stores left downtown Rochester when I was a teenager.  Your options are the corner bodega, the one sort of sketchy Shur-Save, or take a bus (or drive, if you can afford a car) out to a Wal-Mart or a grocery store on the edges of the town.

Where I live – Where I live, there’s not even the old half-carcass of a former grocery store.  If you want groceries, you drive/take the bus into town.  Or you buy them overpriced and stale at the gas station – which is what a lot of people I ride the bus with did.  Continue reading →