5.13.19 Bee-otch of the Day: dollar stores

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Name: dollar stores
Age: Dollar General: 80, Family Dollar: 60
Occupation: raiders of food deserts
Last Seen: everywhere
Bee-otched For: wanting a chunk of my old hometown
 

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You can say that my childhood town of Elk Rapids, Michigan - pop. 1600 - is your typical small town that has almost anything you want.

Don't feel like cooking? There's several restaurants, though there's no McDonald's for 10 miles. Most of the eateries in town are local joints, though there's a Subway. Need gas? There's three gas stations including a Mobil and a Shell, which are both locally owned. The third gas station is an indie that's attached to the Village Market, Elk Rapids' sole grocery store and it too, is locally-owned. ER once had four gas stations, though the aging Speedway station closed last year. There's a movie theater with only one screen, but it's well-maintained by the town's former mayor.

As far as I know, there's only one major business in Elk Rapids that is not locally-owned, and it's Gill-Roy's Hardware. The 27-store chain is based in Flint.

Now, there's another chain that's wanting to invade the small village, which is the home of the Short's Brewing Company: an unnamed dollar store.

A broker for one of the nation's largest dollar store chains wants to build a 9,000-square-feet store on Ames Street, just down the street from Village Market. The current law in the village is for new buildings to only be 3,000 square feet. Now, a public hearing is being planned for the future of the site.

Of course, the two culprits in this case are likely Family Dollar and Dollar General, or as I like to call them, Family Dollar General. Village Market has a location in the Rapid City area, which has a Dollar General and is apparently still chugging along after the Dollar General opened. Bear in mind that the Village Markets in Elk Rapids and Rapid City are closeby to the controversial Meijer store in Acme, which already claimed a Tom's Food Market as a victim.

Now, Family Dollar Generals seem to be everywhere these days, especially in small towns and even more especially in food deserts where grocery stores are miles away. My father lives near a small town in Kentucky where there hasn't been a full-service grocer since he moved there in 2001. The last grocer this town had was apparently very tiny. As a matter of fact, there's hardly any stores in this small town off of a major freeway. But, aside from a Shell station with a Subway, there's - you guessed it - a Dollar General.

Here in Michigan, there's also food desert towns and cities that have no grocers, but have a dollar store. Near my hometown of Grand Rapids, there's a few of them. In Saranac, a Dollar General has long taken up the former Adgate's Supermarket downtown. In Martin - the home of a major NHRA dragstrip - another Dollar General was built over what used to be the town supermarket, which stood since the 1890s. In many other towns in America, dollar stores have been the replacement for grocery stores. But unlike grocery stores, which have a decent selection of goods, meats and produce, dollar stores tend to sell a very limited amount of groceries mixed in with crap nobody needs. So instead of buying fresh bananas and apples, you can get one of those crazy machines that suck the blackheads off of your nose in the "As Seen On TV" section.

In Elk Rapids' case, as I've mentioned, the town is very anti-big business. The town had an A&P Supermarket in the mid-20th century. But it closed in the late 60s because it wasn't profitable enough to keep the doors open. The aforementioned Speedway closed because it couldn't compete with the other three gas stations in Elk Rapids. Last I heard, it was now an empty lot. Many years ago, a Walgreen's was planned at the corner of Ames and US-31. It was shot down because Elk Rapids already had two drug stores, both locally-owned. Hell, I went to school with a girl whose father owned one of the stores!

The point is, is that dollar stores are nice and convenient, but they'll never be a suitable replacement for grocery stores, pharmacies, hardware stores, auto parts stores and so on. The truth is that towns like Elk Rapids are lucky to be a haven for local business and it needs to stay that way. If a town doesn't have a grocery store and has a Family Dollar General instead, then they're defeated. More money going elsewhere and less of it staying in the community.

But, hey! If your town has a dollar store and no grocer, at least you can buy one of those copper pans. Just no steak to cook it on, though.

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