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Episode 909: Dollar Stores Vs. Lettuce

For years, Doug Nech ran a grocery store in Kansas. But then a dollar store decided to set up shop just around the corner.
Sarah Gonzalez
/
NPR
For years, Doug Nech ran a grocery store in Kansas. But then a dollar store decided to set up shop just around the corner.

Four new dollar stores will open in the U.S. every single day of 2019. That's a new dollar store every six hours. There are more dollar stores than there are Walmarts, McDonald's and CVS stores combined. And they are setting up in places no one else will go — tiny towns, urban areas, poor communities.

Today on the show, we go to a town that decided there were too many dollar stores. And we talk to a woman on a mission to ban them.

Some of the numbers in this episode come from research by the Institute For Local Self-Reliance.

Music: "Tulsa Tumult" and "Tulsa, Oklahoma."

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Sarah Gonzalez is the multimedia education reporter for WLRN's StateImpact Florida project. She comes from NPR in D.C. where she was a national desk reporter, web and show producer as an NPR Kroc Fellow. The San Diego native has worked as a reporter and producer for KPBS in San Diego and KALW in San Francisco, covering under-reported issues like youth violence, food insecurity and public education. Her work has been awarded an SPJ Sigma Delta Chi and regional Edward R. Murrow awards. She graduated from Mills College in 2009 with a bachelorâ
Noel King is a host of Morning Edition and Up First.
Sarah Gonzalez
Sarah Gonzalez is a host and reporter with Planet Money, NPR's award-winning podcast that finds creative, entertaining ways to make sense of the big, complicated forces that move our economy. She joined the team in April 2018.