TARRS, Pennsylvania — Five years ago, the plot of land where the Dollar General store sits on Glades Pike was just that: a plot of land of pastoral greenery, located not far from a row of neatly kept homes in an unincorporated village that once briefly boomed as a coal town.
Today the familiar, yellow sign with bold, all-cap letters in black sits slightly back from rolling Pennsylvania Route 31, which runs parallel to both the turnpike and the Lincoln Highway. For many people in the area, it serves as a quick stop to pick up a forgotten grocery staple or buy household goods at deeply discounted prices.
Matching the service provided by the mom and pop general stores that once dotted rural America for two centuries or the five-and-dime stores that populated small- and medium-sized towns across the country post-Civil War, these places serve a purpose unmet by larger supermarkets unwilling to locate in lower-population regions that make no logical business sense for them.
The Dollar General parking lot often goes from full to empty to full again, reflecting the swift shopping habits of its customers.
Linda Webster has been the general manager of this Westmoreland County store for just a month, but this isn’t her first discount retail store rodeo. “I’ve been with the company for five years; I actually had the Acme store when it opened two years ago,” she said of the Dollar General 10 miles from here, adding, “Then I was in Norvelt for three years at that store.”
Webster works for a company that no one will argue doesn’t serve a community that needs it. The closest big-box supermarket or chain store is 20 miles away, making the Dollar General much more convenient — particularly in the winter, when frequent snow squalls bury the region and make getting to the big-box a tough journey. Year-round, too, Dollar General is affordable to both millennials and baby boomers looking for bargains on just about anything.
Webster also works for a company that is disdained for its alleged inability to provide nutritious options — so much so that activists have convinced local councils to pass laws banning the stores from opening in their communities.
Cities in Alabama, Texas, and Oklahoma have proposed or already passed legislation banning or limiting their ability to open stores within town borders. The reason? Apparently, they aren’t nutritiously woke enough for their city leaders, who see them as deterrents to full-service grocery stores opening in their cities.
This essentially makes local governments into food police who believe their citizenry cannot make healthy decisions on their own.
Dollar General Corp. spokeswoman Crystal Ghassemi says the company is disappointed that local politicians have chosen to limit its ability to serve its communities.
“We understand and support the desire to improve the health of the communities we serve,” she said in an interview with the Washington Examiner. “However, we do not agree that the dollar store industry, or Dollar General in particular, is the problem, and we do not believe that moratoria and or restrictive zoning ordinances are the solutions. In fact, we believe those most adversely affected by these measures are customers who are forced to travel farther and/or spend more on everyday needs.”
Webster, the local general manager, loves her job with the company and being connected with the local community every day.
“We have a lot that people need access to their basic items, milk, eggs, bread, toiletries, necessities, stuff like that, but we also have cash-conscious customers that buy a lot of other stuff because they save money,” she said.
Dollar General started in Scottsville, Kentucky, in 1955, like its late-19th century predecessors Woolworths and G.C. Murphy’s, as a general store. The only difference was that Dollar General wasn’t a five-and-dime — instead, the promise was nothing would exceed a dollar.
Stores such as Woolworths were a staple across the American countryside and, similar to the Dollar General model, served low-priced trinkets and canned goods for more than 100 years to underserved or cash-strapped communities that appreciated and needed their bargains.
No one at Dollar General will argue that its stores have the same nostalgic charm that Woolworths held within its wood-planked floors or charming lunch counters, but the premise is the same, with one exception: It was hard to find examples of any town councils wanting to restrict their citizens from shopping at Woolworths within their city limits back then.
“Maybe the elites should try stopping in one and listen or talk to people who use them with frequency, and maybe, just maybe, they’d understand why people need to use them,” said Kim Ward, state senator for Westmoreland County and frequent shopper at the Norvelt Dollar General.
“I mean, who doesn’t love a bargain?”
