The Small-Town Grocery Store: an Economic Necessity

VAIDEN, MISSISSIPPI. Visitors from large cities often laugh at residents of tiny rural towns. They tease them about how they can live without major shopping malls, famous gourmet coffee shops, and well-known department stores. All of these are nice, but they are more luxury than necessity. What tends to hurt the economy of a small rural town is the lack of a grocery store.

Glorified gas stations and dollar stores don't sell produce, so if a person has to buy fresh tomatoes, ripe bananas, firm summer squash, or fragrant yellow onions, she has no choice but to drive to the nearest modernized city to purchase them. The nearest city can be eleven miles away or even more! Gasoline prices are high. When the price of fuel is factored into a trip, the consumer can leave the store with an extremely expensive bag of produce!

The closure of one grocery store can force food prices to go up in the remaining store. Such was the case recently when a nearby store went out of business. The competitor that was located in the same city suddenly had no competition, and it raised its prices. Residents had no choice but to pay the inflated prices, since there was nowhere else in the city to purchase groceries.

When a grocery store closes in a city, leaving nothing but one store that has inflated prices, it can have a negative economic impact on the people of small rural towns nearby who don't have small grocery stores to patronize. People in these tiny towns have to drive to the nearest grocery store, which has higher-than-normal prices (possibly as a result of being a monopoly).