Andrea Williams was pushing a shopping cart into a 99 Cents Only Store on a Tuesday afternoon in the Grant Hill neighborhood, ready to find some deals. Signs on the store’s exterior advertised a blowout sale before it shuttered for good.
“It’s going out of business — I’m gonna go crazy in there!” she shouted back at her daughter Nicole Williams.
“Ma! We’re going to the other locations too,” Nicole said. “You know, the ones that (people) don't use that much with the good stuff?”
Shoppers looking for bargains will soon have to look elsewhere — the discount super store is closing its 371 stores nationwide. In San Diego County, there’s 10 locations and some are closing this month.
For the Williams family, the chain’s closure is disappointing; they were frequent shoppers. Nicole’s daughter Nairobi Williams said in some ways the closure will have an impact on her family.
“We've known how to thrive, but sometimes in that moment when you can't thrive, you have to survive — the 99 Cents stores and Dollar Trees and even Family Value stores, they have helped us in a bit of a pinch,” Nairobi said.
Shift in retail dynamics
Discount stores like 99 Cents Only Stores and Dollar Tree thrived at the start of the pandemic, San Diego State University marketing lecturer Miro Copic told KPBS. He pinned their success on people out of work looking for affordable goods.
“One of the challenges in retail is how do you maintain and negotiate with manufacturers to get a very competitive price point for products that people are looking for when there's been substantial inflation,” Copic said.
While the chain used to charge 99 cents for most items, it eventually raised its prices.
“It's very disappointing because this type of retailer really provides excellent value for lower and lower-middle consumers, and now they're going to need to find other options that are available to them,” Copic said.
Impact on vulnerable communities
Karen Gardner, a senior policy associate at the Center for Science of the Public Interest, also believes this will impact consumers. Gardner said that food purchases at dollar stores increased almost 90% between 2008 and 2020.
“We found that dollar stores are a significant source of food, especially for those who are food insecure, participating in SNAP (Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program), are younger or are parents,” Gardner said. “Seventy-six percent of respondents said that they shopped at dollar stores as a way to stretch their budget at the end of the month. Sixty-five percent of Snap participants in our study said that they shop at dollar stores when their SNAP benefits are running low.”
The level of impact of 99 Cents Only Stores closing depends on where the stores are located, according to Gardner.
“We've known how to thrive, but sometimes in that moment when you can't thrive, you have to survive — the 99 Cents stores and Dollar Trees and even Family Value stores, they have helped us in a bit of a pinch."Nairobi Williams, 99 Cents Only Store customer
“Almost 40 million Americans already live in areas that have low income and low food access,” Gardner said. “This is a lot of Americans who are in a vulnerable scenario where they just have low access to food. Any time food retailers are closing — it's going to depend a lot on where they're closing — but there is a big risk of those food retailers closing in places that already have low access to food and leading to further inequity in access to food.”
Dollar stores are more likely to be located in rural areas and areas with high Black and Latino populations, according to research from Center for Science of the Public Interest.
But the center’s research also found that dollar stores weren’t respondents’ first choice — the majority preferred and shopped more frequently at supermarkets or big box stores like Walmart or Target. Most go to the dollar store for specific items or to supplement their food purchases.
But those who use SNAP reported shopping for food more frequently at dollar stores.
Back in Grant Hill, Nairobi Williams thinks consumers are going to have to rely on other stores like Walmart with 99 Cents Only Stores closing.
“To hear and even see (99 Cents Only Stores are) going away, that makes you rely on other places like Walmart and whatever else is local,” Williams said. “With the stores, when you're needing them more … they're seeing that their value is going to go up.”
