[NEWS] Five links on dollar stores

[rfmcdonald]

Back in 2012, one of the then-newest outposts of the Canadian Dollarama chain of dollar stores opened up last summer on the western fringes of The Annex, in a location at Bloor and Bathurst formerly belonging to music store Sonic Boom. (Sonic Boom's landlords apparently wanted too much rent, so the store moved into a corner of Honest Ed's just a block away before later moving on to Spadina.) This store's front windows had been covered with paper while the merchandise and equipment were being moved into this store in June, but some of it had been torn away.

This new store's opening marked, for me, Dollarama's successes: from a single store in eastern Québec two decades ago, Dollarama has become a national store with nearly a thousand stores open across Canada. The chain's sustained high growth has been traced by some to a pretty good business model: efficient management, well-trained staff, and a careful management of product to include only the sorts of products that will actually sell to its target markets. Since this particular store's opening, it has consistently done very good business.

As it happens, dollar stores like Dollarama are becoming major sources of controversy. Yes, they allow people access to inexpensive goods including food, but do they provide good-quality food? More, what about the labour market niches they fill? Do they offer affordable wages, or do they just accentuate inequality?

• The new online store of Dollarama allows customers to buy many goods in bulk, CBC reports.


• Quartz looks at how the growth of dollar stores in the United States--and Canada too, doubtless--reflects growing inequality of income at the levels of individual workers and neighbourhoods.


• Newsweek looks at how dollar stores find a niche in poor neighbourhoods in the United States, displacing grocery stores.


• CityLab looks at how dollar stores can contribute to food deserts.


• Todd Schoepflin at the Everyday Sociology Blog looks at dollar stores in the lens of growing inequality, of income and of choice, in the United States.