Few sights are as ubiquitous in rural America as the simple yellow and black logo of Dollar General, and this is not going to change any time soon.<\/p>\n
In a signal of the times, Dollar General\u2019s marketing executive Jim Thorpe said that Dollar General\u2019s best customer was the low income, government assistance recipient.<\/p>\n
By the fact that Dollar General\u2019s expansion strategy is to create more stores in small towns and cities, that\u2019s a signal to many that the business world is not expecting incomes to rise in the heartland of the United States.<\/p>\n
\u201cEssentially what the dollar stores are betting on in a large way is that we are going to have a permanent underclass in America,\u201d Garrick Brown, director for retail research at the commercial real estate company Cushman & Wakefield was quoted saying.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s based on the concept that the jobs went away, and the jobs are never coming back, and that things aren\u2019t going to get better in any of these places.\u201d<\/p>\n
Rival discount stores Dollar Tree Inc. and Family Dollar (also owned by Dollar Tree) are also operating out of the same principles to give Dollar General a run for their money.<\/p>\n
While they do not enjoy as much market share as Dollar General, these discount stores are also trying to compete for the stretched dollar of the $35,000 salary household. These same households may find it difficult to travel out of their town to do their grocery shopping due to the cost of gas.<\/p>\n
Dollar General, in its confidence of a permanent lower class in America, is also alleviating the problem of food deserts.<\/p>\n
According to the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), food deserts are areas that lack access to affordable fruits, vegetables, whole grains, low-fat milk, and other foods that make up the full range of a healthy diet.<\/p>\n
Dollar General, while not having a full and robust grocery section with many fresh fruits, are offering more than what one can get in a gas station for certain and are alleviating the lack of affordable, moderately healthy options.<\/p>\n
With U.S. income inequality still on the rise, Dollar General\u2019s market share is not going anywhere, and the discount store chain might just become the next small-town staple in rural America.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
(CORPORATE NEWS) Despite brick and mortars closing, discount stores seem to be doing well. But that success seems to be at the expense of the downtrodden. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":337698,"featured_media":12501,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"wds_primary_category":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[101],"tags":[1294,1728,1234,1729],"class_list":["post-12500","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-corporate","tag-business-plan","tag-discount","tag-real-estate-news","tag-stores"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2017\/10\/o-DOLLAR-GENERAL-facebook.jpg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12500","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/337698"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12500"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12500\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12505,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12500\/revisions\/12505"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12501"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12500"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12500"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/theamericangenius.com\/housing\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12500"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}