On 7/13/2019 at 1:25 PM, gfweb said:A thing on NPR today talked about how Dollar stores drive supermarkets out of inner cities and small towns. Apparently they sell all the higher profit foods eg pasta, canned stuff and avoid the high labor stuff eg meats and veg and dairy. Moreover the big chains get specially made lots of soup etc that they buy cheap and in bulk and undercut the supermarket.
I can't speak to small towns, but grocery chains have been abandoning inner cities for a long time. Detroit was without a single chain grocery from 2007 (when the single remaining store closed) until 2013 (when a Whole Foods opened, which I'm not sure helped all that much). And that's in one of the largest cities in the country by square mileage. I'm pretty sure there was another similar period in the early '90s.
