Alanson — Dollar General is laying siege to Michigan. In every small town, there’s one waiting on the outskirts. In the middle of nowhere on 131. Next to a laundromat in a strip mall. Across from the gas station, with a Dollar Tree down the road and a Family Dollar on the other side of the street. We are being swarmed by dollar stores, and the General is leading the charge. It feels like every time I see a new building going up outside a rural town, it’s a Dollar General. In 2010, there were about 250 Dollar Generals in Michigan. In 2024, there were over 725. The company is taking over, and it’s depressing.

Why is it depressing? Low prices are a good thing, especially these days when things are tight, right? Not exactly. It’s not that simple. There’s a bigger story here.

There is the obvious concern about local business being eroded by big faceless corporations. The prices at a local shop can’t compete with the prices a national chain can offer. Everyone knows this. Jurisdictions who treasure their local businesses pass laws to make it difficult for national chains to operate in town. They know that if they want to keep their local business alive, they have to find a way to limit the possibility of national chains driving them out of business. But of course, when a rare town musters the political willpower to hold back these chains, Dollar General creeps as close as they can to downtown, lurking just outside the city limits.

If a local mom-and-pop struggles to compete with a normal national chain—one whose aim is offering quality goods—then there is no chance it can compete with a dollar store, whose aim isn’t quality at all. How do you compete with a business model of offering the crappiest stuff imaginable at the cheapest price imaginable? You can’t. More Dollar Generals means fewer local stores and more goods of poor quality. Everyone loses—except Dollar General.

The argument against the spread of Dollar Generals can be a hard pill to swallow when times are tough. Discussing the problem isn’t about excoriating people who shop there. Money is tight these days, and people are trying to find ways to make ends meet. Still, Dollar General is a uniquely depressing entity.

It’s ugly. It’s sad. It’s cheap, and not in a good way. Most Michiganders didn’t rely on dollar stores for their everyday goods 30 years ago. If you told them that’s what they would be doing in a few decades, they would probably ask, “What happened?” Dollar stores were kitschy little places that you went to get some knick-knacks for a party. They weren’t serious stores for stocking your home and your kitchen.

Them becoming essential feels depressing to everyone with a memory. It’s a sign that something isn’t right with our culture or our economy. It’s not a healthy trajectory.

And of course, Dollar General doesn’t exactly stock up on fresh produce. Generally, apart from milk and eggs, the food that’s available is processed. Candy, pop, chips, and premade food. Essentially, the Dollar General in a rural area helps usher in what many would call a “food desert” in the middle of the country. It’s a grim paradox. 

This uninspiring scene makes you feel like you’re on a sinking ship.

The real core problem isn’t that Dollar General is a big business. Meijer is a big Michigan business. There are tons of them all over the state. But Michiganders love Meijer. If you go into a Meijer, you don’t feel that same depressing feeling at all. Meijer’s stores are very nice, and their 10 for 10 deals are a big help for the family budget. 

You don’t feel that depression when you go into Aldi, either. Aldi is known as an affordable grocery store. Their business model involves stripping down excess and offering lower prices. It’s smart. The prices are cheap, but you don’t feel cheap. It’s not sad there. Aldi sells great food. 

But walking through the small, messy aisles of Dollar General, you feel cheap in the worst way imaginable. This is your life, this is what you’ve got. Your local shop is closed, and there is no grocery store left.

Dollar General’s conquest of rural Michigan reveals a tragic theme of our time. Cheap garbage over quality goods, and faceless national chains over local business. What we are left with is a sea of junk that reminds everyone that our local economies are collapsing slowly. The many Dollar Generals that litter the rural landscape of Michigan are cheap and depressing, nothing more. 

O.W. Root is a writer based in Northern Michigan, with a focus on nature, food, style, and culture. Follow him on X @NecktieSalvage.