By Nation­al Pub­lic Radio cor­re­spon­dent and “Sun­day Morn­ing” Spe­cial Con­trib­u­tor Alli­son Aubrey:

Moville, Iowa is part of the nation’s bread­bas­ket, so it’s a bit of a sur­prise that it’s not easy to buy fresh food in this town of 1,600.

In 2016, the dis­count retail­er Dol­lar Gen­er­al opened next door to the local gro­cer. “When Dol­lar Gen­er­al first came in, right away our busi­ness prob­a­bly dropped 15–20%,” said Chet Davis. He’s still in the gro­cery busi­ness. But he says his Moville loca­tion just could not com­pete. It’s one exam­ple in a  nation­wide con­tro­ver­sy about the increas­ing influ­ence Dol­lar Stores can have not only on where we shop, but also on what we eat.

Moville’s Dol­lar Gen­er­al does not sell fresh fruits and veg­eta­bles or meats. But it does have low­er prices on just about every­thing else.

Aubrey asked Davis, “Some peo­ple might look at this sit­u­a­tion and say, ‘Dol­lar Stores are sell­ing what peo­ple want at cheap prices. That’s com­pe­ti­tion – sor­ry’?”

“Yeah, but we’re not talk­ing com­pe­ti­tion where we’re on an even play­ing field,” Davis replied. “At the vol­ume that they buy, you’re under their thumb.”

With the gro­cery closed, most of Moville now dri­ves 30 min­utes to Sioux City for a head of let­tuce.

And down the road in Cor­rec­tionville, the local gro­cer also closed after a Dol­lar Gen­er­al opened there, too.

In the strug­gle between Main Street and cor­po­rate Amer­i­ca, the con­cern was once Wal-Mart. Today, the focus is on Dol­lar Stores. Con­sid­er this: there are now more Dol­lar Stores in the U.S. than Star­bucks and McDon­ald’s com­bined – 30,000 of them.

As many brick-and-mor­tar retail­ers strug­gle, Dol­lar Stores have qui­et­ly expand­ed to near­ly every town in Amer­i­ca. And bar­gain hunters love them.

“I’m just delight­ed – I get hap­py every time I come here,” said one cus­tomer, Kim­ber­ly. “I’m like, ‘Oh, some­body’s going to change the price any minute now!’ ”

There are three major chains: Fam­i­ly Dol­lar (locat­ed most­ly in cities); Dol­lar Tree (the only store where every­thing is actu­al­ly $1); and Dol­lar Gen­er­al, now the largest retail­er in the coun­try when it comes to the num­ber of stores – 16,000.

“Our stores have that option avail­able to be able to run in, get it and real­ly get out,” said Dol­lar Gen­er­al spokesper­son Crys­tal Ghas­se­mi. She says in the last year they’ve added a thou­sand new stores, places where cus­tomers can buy two greet­ing cards for a dol­lar.

“Our core cus­tomer has about a $40,000 or less total house­hold income,” Ghas­se­mi said. “And we know that they are shop­ping us from very rur­al areas to met­ro­pol­i­tan areas all over the coun­try.”

In many com­mu­ni­ties, the Dol­lar Store is a real asset, a con­ve­nient place to grab deter­gent or bat­ter­ies. But in some small towns and urban areas, the Dol­lar Store is also the clos­est thing to a gro­cery store, and this can be a prob­lem.

Aubrey asked Bar­ry Pop­kin, pro­fes­sor of nutri­tion at the Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill, “If you could talk to the exec­u­tives of Dol­lar Stores, what would you say to them?”

He replied, “ ‘Shame on you. You’re killing Amer­i­ca just so you can get rich­er.’ ”

“Wow. That’s a pret­ty strong state­ment.”

“Yeah. They have a mod­el that is a bril­liant mod­el to make quick bucks off the backs of our health,” he said.

For years Pop­kin has warned Amer­i­cans about the dan­gers of too much sug­ar and soda. Now, he is con­cerned about Dol­lar Stores.  At a time when poor diets are linked to near­ly 900 deaths a day in this coun­try, Pop­kin says to look at what Dol­lar Stores sell: rows and rows of sug­ary drinks, can­dies, and processed foods high in salt and fat.

“It increas­es their risk of heart dis­ease, mor­tal­i­ty, can­cer mor­tal­i­ty, dia­betes, obe­si­ty,” he said. “This is the worst food that they can be eat­ing.”

“So, is this exac­er­bat­ing the health prob­lems of the demo­graph­ic that’s shop­ping there?” asked Aubrey.

“Yes, it’s adding to the health cri­sis that low­er-income Amer­i­ca faces – black, His­pan­ic, and white Amer­i­ca all shop in these stores.”

Con­sid­er Dekalb Coun­ty, Geor­gia, near Atlanta, where there are a total of 68 Fam­i­ly Dol­lar, Dol­lar Tree, and Dol­lar Gen­er­al stores.

Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Lor­raine Cochran-John­son said 25% of Dekalb Coun­ty live in a “food desert” –a low-income area with lim­it­ed access to super­mar­kets. She wor­ries there are just too many Dol­lar Stores in these neigh­bor­hoods. “They tend to high­ly sat­u­rate areas,” she said. “When you look at the trends and you look at the pat­tern of growth of the Dol­lar Store as well as the areas that have the high­est lev­els of obe­si­ty, hyper­ten­sion, high blood pres­sure, there is a direct cor­re­la­tion. We see that in the data.”

That’s one rea­son why Fort Worth, Tul­sa, Birm­ing­ham, New Orleans and Kansas City (among oth­ers) have already passed restric­tions on where new Dol­lar Stores can open.

As you might imag­ine, Dol­lar Stores oppose these mea­sures.

“Ulti­mate­ly when you sti­fle com­pe­ti­tion, the cus­tomer hurts the most,” said spokesper­son Crys­tal Ghas­se­mi. “And I think it gives us an oppor­tu­ni­ty to pro­vide eco­nom­ic impact through jobs and to be able to real­ly help the com­mu­ni­ties.”

As for the impact the stores have on what we eat, the big three chains say they are not gro­cery stores.  But Chas­se­mi says their stores do offer healthy options.

She and Aubrey toured the frozen food sec­tion of one store: “We’ve got frozen veg­eta­bles, we have all-nat­ur­al chick­en from Tyson’s,” Chas­se­mi said.

“So, the healthy options sort of sit side-by-side with some real­ly not-as-healthy items,” said Aubrey. “There’s curly fries under­neath the broc­coli cuts. There’s bread­ed but­ter­fly shrimp.”

“It goes back to the cus­tomers’ choice to be able to make their deci­sion,” Chas­se­mi said. “And we have the options that should they want to be able to eat health­ful­ly, they can do so with Dol­lar Gen­er­al’s help.”

Dol­lar Gen­er­al is adding fresh pro­duce to some of its stores, but so far that’s only about three per­cent.

As for its com­pe­ti­tion, Dol­lar Tree (which also owns Fam­i­ly Dol­lar) declined our request for an inter­view, but in a state­ment point out they “com­ple­ment and oper­ate side-by-side with gro­cery stores.”

• Read the full state­ment from Dol­lar Tree to CBS News (pdf)

Back in west­ern Iowa, gro­cer Chet Davis has one last store open in the town of Kings­ley. But it’s unclear for how long.  Dol­lar Gen­er­al is build­ing a new loca­tion there, too.

Aubrey asked, him, “Are you wor­ried?”

“Oh, def­i­nite­ly.”

“You are essen­tial­ly ask­ing peo­ple to come into your store and pay a lit­tle extra so that you can stay in busi­ness. Is that a hard sell for peo­ple in your com­mu­ni­ty?”

“Well, that’s def­i­nite­ly a hard sell, because every­body’s try­ing to save some mon­ey,” Davis replied. “It’s up to the peo­ple of the com­mu­ni­ty to real­ly think hard and decide what they want. It’s com­plete­ly up to them.”

     
For more info:

• Dol­lar Stores
• Bar­ry Pop­kin, Gillings School of Glob­al Pub­lic Health, Uni­ver­si­ty of North Car­oli­na at Chapel Hill
• Dekalb Coun­ty Com­mis­sion­er Lor­raine Cochran-John­son
• Dol­lar Store Restric­tions (Insti­tute for Local Self-Reliance)

      
Sto­ry pro­duced by Dustin Stephens.