I’ll bite…

I live in a rural area with a Dollar General about a half mile from my neighborhood. For staples, it’s honestly fine. You want a 6 pack and some hot dog buns because you missed it in the Wal-Mart run the other day (15 miles away), it’s great!

You’re not getting fleeced and if you are, the gas savings alone more than make up for it (0.65 per mile per the IRS.)

For folks who depend on the local DG for, idk, clothes and household goods it might be much worse, I don’t shop for those there ever, but on staples it’ll do, especially given the density of stores compared to major chains.

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BobAliceInATree a day ago | parent | next [-]

The problem is that they drive out local grocery stores that were actually pretty good, have terrible safety records, and food sanitation.

Last Week Tonight did an episode on them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p4QGOHahiVM

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WarOnPrivacy a day ago | parent | prev | next [-]

Being in a shopping rich area, I have some luxury of choosing what I get where. DG is a good option for a small list of items, about ½% of my shopping.

But it'd be awful if my best shopping option was 15mi away.

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antonymoose a day ago | parent | next [-]

Having moved from a shopping rich environment of some 30 years to a very rural setting, I was innately trained to hate on Dollar General by my 15 years on HN. In reality, it’s a trade off. Nothing more, nothing less. Whereas before you might have fallen back on a country-store with a small kitchen and minor staples (eggs, cheese, milk) next to the RedBull most folks now have a wider variety of options at a price point comparable to or better than that filling station. All the better, DG has rolled out their “Market” concept with fresh options as well.

At this point I’d love to see a conversation about price points and convenience of a Japanese conbini as compared to a Japanese supermarket on HN. Far less politicized and denigrated I would hope.

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pwg a day ago | parent | prev [-]

> But it'd be awful if my best shopping option was 15mi away.

In much of the rural US, 15mi away is having your good shopping close by. A lot of areas make due with their "best shopping option" being well more than 15mi away.

	▲	BenjiWiebe a day ago \| parent [-]
		Yes 15 miles for good shopping sounds pretty nice. I'd say I've got it fairly good for being rural - only 23 miles to the nearest Walmart. That town isn't really great shopping though.

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autoexec a day ago | parent | prev [-]

The concept of "small convenience store near me" isn't the problem. The problem is that these stores are actively engaging in outright fraud. People who shop there are absolutely getting fleeced regardless of how much gas they burn getting to the store that's regularly ripping them off.

Having a small nearby connivance store and not getting scammed is an option. If the ability to get beer and hot dogs buns without having to drive to a larger more distant store is really worth the higher prices customers are getting fraudulently charged at the register, then these stores can just stop lying to customers and post the accurate prices.

If the laws were meaningfully enforced this is exactly what would happen. These stores would either comply with the law and stop committing fraud or they would be shut down, their CEOs would be sent to prison, and competitors willing to follow the law would step in to fill the need the market has for a small shop that sells beer and buns to rake in that profit for themselves.

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antonymoose a day ago | parent [-]

I’m telling you from living “here” - you see just as many stories of major chains getting popped as you do the ever so scapegoatable DG chain.

I have no stock in the firm, this is just lazy feel god torch wielding here.

Here’s Target getting popped all the same: https://www.newsobserver.com/news/business/article289980944....

	▲	autoexec 20 hours ago \| parent [-]
		Your article lists a few instances of target in an area failing at rates like 9% or 2.67%. The Guardian article shows dollar stores all over the place caught thousands of times and getting error rates like 76% 68% and 58%. One dollar store in Utah was caught cheating their customers in 28 inspections in a row! Maybe the News & Observer could have dug deeper into the Targets in your area and found violations of a similar scale, but they didn't, so from the information we have these are extremely different circumstances. If Target (or whatever the hell a Sheetz is) were ripping off their customers to the same extent that these dollar stores have been doing it then they should also face meaningful consequences for that.