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The timing for such local action could not be more urgent. In their latest annual reports, Dollar General and Dollar Tree say they have identified thousands of new locations for dollar stores. The two chains are planning to expand their combined empires to more 50,000 outlets.

One immediate effect is a decline in employment. Dollar chains rely on a lean labor model. Dollar General and Dollar Tree stores have a staff of eight or nine people on average, according to their annual reports. Small independent grocery stores employ an average of 14 people, according to federal data.

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Local shoppers lose nearby access to fresh food and they may also end up paying more for groceries. Dollar stores package many of their products in smaller quantities than items sold at traditional grocery stores. This cuts sticker prices, but often results in a higher costs per ounce.

As corporate consolidation erodes the economic foundation of many towns and neighborhoods, these communities are increasingly vulnerable to the dollar chains. The sector itself is highly concentrated. Dollar Tree is the product of a long history of mergers, including, most recently, its acquisition of Family Dollar in 2015. Even though that deal left just two companies in control of most of the small-store discount market, the Federal Trade Commission approved it. (The FTC stipulated only that Dollar Tree divest about 330 stores, but that requirement ultimately failed to produce a new competitor: Dollar Tree sold the stores to a private equity firm, which within two years, sold them to Dollar General.)

Fortunately, some have started connecting all of these dots and are beginning to see dollar stores as both a symptom of larger economic trends and a cause of additional economic despair. With this knowledge, these communities are identifying strategies to control the growth of dollar stores and restore a more balanced local economy.

The long-term effects of this are still being felt today. The neighborhood has relatively few local businesses and has struggled with a lack of political power to control dollar stores and other predatory companies.

The dollar chains have been able to multiply virtually unimpeded because most communities have relatively lax planning and zoning policies. Even in Vermont, where big-box retailers must navigate a thicket of environmental and land use policies, dollar stores, by virtue of being relatively small in size, rarely face permitting hurdles or scrutiny by planning boards under current policies.

As these policy examples illustrate, communities are not at the mercy of the dollar chains and their plans to blanket both rural and urban America with thousands of new stores. By blocking the spread of dollar stores and fostering the growth of local grocers, cities and towns can begin to close the gap in access to fresh food while also building local power and opportunity.

In the jarring video, three people can be seen warding off a single suspect who is desperately trying to exit the store while being hit with a pole-like object. The suspect is able to slip out of his t-shirt and run down the street, followed for a short distance by one of the employees.

They say that upon entering the store, he pepper-sprayed everyone on the floor and began smashing display cases with a hammer. Security footage from a jeweler across the street shows the suspect approaching the store, holding a large item in his hands.

Family members from inside the store say that he was going to use the box to carry out the stolen goods. While he wasn't able to steal anything from the family, the entire ordeal has brought them a world of worry.

"When they tried to chase him outside, he had a gun and like, 'Go back because I'm gonna shoot you guys, I'm gonna kill all of you guys,'" said one of the store's owners, afraid to reveal the identities of her family members due to the violence of the incident. "He said that to my dad and my brother."

If you were to map the dollars store in DeKalb County, Cochran-Johnson says, the areas where they are most prevalent would overlap with maps that show the neighborhoods with the lowest median incomes and the most residents of color. For example, the two mostly white districts in north DeKalb County with the highest median income earners are only home to three such dollar stores.

DeKalb county is just one of a number of municipalities responding to the rapid spread of dollar stores in this way. Kansas City, Kansas was the first to create such an ordinance in early 2016 and in the years since similar bans and moratoriums have taken root in Tulsa, Oklahoma and Mesquite, Texas, as well as larger cities, such as Cleveland, Fort Worth, Oklahoma City, and New Orleans.

Cities enacting new policies are tying local regulations to broader public goals such as formula business restrictions that limit chain retailers as well as specifically targeting dollar stores, says a report released in January by the Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR). In addition to the dollar store density requirements, these policies can also include incentives to foster better alternatives.

Sriya Shrestha, the researcher behind the DeKalb County study and a professor at California State University Monterey Bay, also points out that dollar stores are specifically targeting those who earn under $40,000 annually or live below the poverty line.

In addition to keeping new dollar stores from being built in close proximity to existing stores, some of the new rules cropping up on cities also outline guidelines for dollar store developers, including requiring them to disclose shelving and floor plans and the types of goods and products the stores will sell.

In 2015, Family Dollar was acquired by former rival Dollar Tree in a deal valued at $8.5 billion. Today, the merged company has nearly 16,000 retail stores and 26 distribution centers across 48 states and five Canadian provinces, operating under the brands of Dollar Tree, Family Dollar, and Dollar Tree Canada.

Dollar Tree-Family Dollar officials would not make a company executive available to speak with Civil Eats. Instead, a spokesperson offered a lengthy, prepared statement about the increasing store bans and rapid expansion in poor rural and urban areas.

A Dollar General produce section. The company says 2,100 of its 18,000 stores currently carry produce. A company spokesperson says it plans to increase that number to 10,000 in the next several years. Photo by Wesley Brown.

Like its smaller rival, Dollar General introduced two new larger format stores between 8,500 square feet and 9,500 square feet. The company said it expects the larger stores, along with existing Dollar General Plus format of a comparable size, to become its base prototypes for most new stores, replacing the traditional 7,300 square foot format. In 2022 alone, the company plans to add over 1,100 new stores.

For Dollar Tree, the winds changed in mid-February when the U.S. Food & Drug Administration (FDA) alerted the public that a long list of products at Family Dollar stores may be unsafe for consumers to eat or use because of a six-state store rat infestation.

In store surveillance video, the man can be seen ignoring the alleged attackers demands and walking up to him before he and his friend grab the alleged attacker and hit him with a bottle as they fight.

At Walmart, Best Buy, or Whole Foods, the listed price on any item is usually what you pay. You might be able to get a discount with a coupon, but asking store employees for a discount generally won't work.

Mattress salespeople's power comes from the fact that they know what a fair price is for each mattress and you don't. Many mattress stores invent hugely inflated "standard" retail prices and then offer "discounts" that still price the mattress way above its actual cost. Department stores are particularly notorious for this.

As with any negotiation, the key to getting a better deal is to demonstrate that you know the product's real value and won't pay more. The easiest way to do that is by playing brick-and-mortar stores against online ones.

Once you find a mattress you like at a brick-and-mortar mattress store, use your favorite search engine to find the lowest price for that same mattress from an internet retailer. If you have a smartphone, you might be able to do this right in the store, though it might make sense to go home, do your research on a PC, and then go back to the store.

Once you know the best price offered by competitors, ask the salesperson to beat it. He or she might say no, in which case you can go to another store or just order online. But most stores will agree to match the price.

For example, the popular Simmons Beautyrest line has different brand names at different stores. The "Beautyrest Recharge Allie" at Macy's is called the "Beautyrest Recharge Devonwood Luxury" at Sears, the "Recharge Signature Select Hartfield" at Mattress Firm, and the "Beautyrest Recharge Lyric Luxury" at US-Mattress.com. If customers don't realize these are names for the same mattress, it's harder for them to bargain effectively.

Fortunately, this kind of obfuscation isn't too hard to overcome. Often you'll be able to find charts online that tell you exactly which mattress models are equivalent. Otherwise, you should be able to figure it out by comparing features. US-Mattress.com, for example, says that the Beautyrest Recharge Lyric Luxury has 1 1/4 inches of AirFeel foam, an inch of AirCool foam, a half inch of GelTouch foam, one inch of energy foam, 476 "800-series" coils, and so forth. Ask your brick-and-mortar store for this kind of information on the mattress you want, and then find prices for similar mattresses from online retailers.

But even a leisurely in-store evaluation period won't guarantee that it will be comfortable for a full night's sleep. So you want to make sure that you can return a mattress if it proves less comfortable in your bedroom than it seemed in the store.

Totally free returns are fairly rare, because it costs money to send a truck to retrieve the old mattress and bring a new one. But if a company charges high fees for returning a mattress, that's a reason to call around to see if another store will offer a more generous return policy. ff782bc1db