Every store has it’s margins strategy. C’est capitalism! Go buy a cooking pan at at grocery store and you’ll pay way more than at Wal-Mart. However, go price some Kitchen-Aid brand utensils at Target for $12 a pop, then walk into your Dollar Tree and locate the same exact Kitchen-Aid items for $1 each. Smart shoppers with kids in college dorms know what I’m talking about.
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The chart is also cherry-picking the product though. If you buy a “Happy Birthday” card at dollar for vs. Walmrt or anywhere else, you are saving about $2.50 per card. Gift bags, paper for wrapping a single gift, toys for a kids’ party, and so on it’s a lot of money saved. Plus if you are single or just don’t a large amount of product X, it’s a good way to go. Not arguing with their numbers above, I’m just saying the Dollar stores have their place (just like Walmart, Costco, Safeway, etc.)
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I found that the $1 spatulas at dollar tree/dollar general make great dog-chew toys, since my pup chews any spatula he can reach the handle of on the counter, I may as well get cheap ones. I just have to figure out how to flip an egg with a nylabone.
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Guards! Guards!
OK, personal pet peave:
Dollar General and Dollar Tree are two very, very different stores, with two very, very different operating models. They serve two very different markets, and two very different market niches.
They are both interesting stores with interesting operating models. Both probably need to be studied and understood if you want to understand retail. But they are two very, very different models, and both need to be understood separately.
The only similarities between the two stores is that both have the generic term “Dollar” in their names.
Yes, Dollar Tree is more expensive on a per-unit basis. That’s almost entirely their gig. They package items into dollar chunks and sell them for $1. Almost every SKU in the store costs the same price- $1. Everything in their supply chain is geared to getting an item into the store and selling it profitably for $1. All of their product selection, brand partnerships, everything is geared to selling it for $1. They have held that line for decades. They have somehow managed to hold that line for decades.
The idea behind Dollar Tree isn’t getting the best per-unit cost. The idea is getting a little bit of what you need (enough?) for $1. More precisely, it’s that if you spend $10 at the Dollar Tree, you can get a little bit of 10 items. If you spent that $10 at Walmart, you probably would get much more of two or three items. Which is good if you need more of those two or three items, and bad if you only need a little bit of 10 items, which means you might have to spend $15 or $20 at Walmart to get the little bit of those 10 items you need and you’ll have more left over.
(For those wondering, the idea behind the Dollar General is “I’m willing to pay more for it / accept this crappy substitute because it is here and now instead of driving another half hour into the Walmart / walking along a busy road to get to the Aldi’s 2 miles away and I don’t have a car / leaving the building because it’s raining and I don’t want to pay for an uber”. But this article is not about the Dollar General.)
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As always, it costs a lot to be poor.
Think about what you need to buy stuff in bulk from Costco:
- Enough money up front to pay for a Costco membership
- Enough money on hand to buy weeks’ or months’ worth of food and supplies
- A big vehicle you can drive out to the suburbs, pack with stuff and bring it back home
- A large enough living space to store all those bulk items when you get back
So if you’re one of the countless people who takes public transit to a minimum wage job so you can keep up with rent on your one-bedroom apartment then it’s no surprise that Dollar Tree might be a more viable option for a lot of those purchases.
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This chart is chock full of misleading stats.
First, it’s a carefully curated list of things that might not be the best values at the Dollar Tree.
Second, it compares different sized packages. It is NOT “apples for apples”. Tell me what the price is at Costco for the same sized item. Oh, you can’t?
Now make a fair chart of the same items. Try it with greeting cards, school and office supplies, batteries, sunscreen, phone accessories, kitchen tools, etc. etc.
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Same here. I go for the loss leaders and things that would cost 3 times as much on the other side of the parking lot at 7-11. Candy (especially Haribo brand), greeting cards, even frozen blueberries. I skip the absolutely non-nutritious stuff that’s supposed to be nutritious like canned ravioli, because you’re getting jerked around on both price and quality.
In the San Diego area, Dollar Tree stuff costs a dollar.
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You’re right, but when I was just starting out, my friends and I formed a little cooperative. I bought the Costco membership and we would head over and buy stuff in bulk - tp, dish soap, frozen chicken breasts, etc. and we would split them up amongst the group - sometimes right there in the parking lot when it was a big enough haul. That’s the way to do it. It just takes organization and a bit more work.
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Giving the niece and nephew each $10 and setting them loose in a Dollar Tree was a very fun auntie visit 
If we could get them to be that thoughtful about some of their schoolwork we would have a generation of geniuses, lol.
I get the issues people have with these stores, but they definitely have their place.
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Came here to say exactly this. Once noticed, this can’t be un-noticed, because it comes up again and again and again.
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Yep, its about finding the right item for the job.
Also be aware of local grocery store pricing. I can of peas at the dollar store is $1, but you can likely get it for $0.60.
Things like soap or shampoo (non-name-brand) will always be watered down compared to regular brands. The dish-soap from Costco is so thick that a little tiny bit lasts a long time, versus the watered down dollar stuff. Sure it’s cheaper, but if you have to use twice or more at a time, then factor that into the total cost.
But sometimes you can find a deal. Sometimes you can find Jimmy Dean ground pork (frozen) and when you compare per pound works out on the low end of the price for meat (not that I’d eat frozen meat from the dollar store).
Lastly, if you are going to see a movie, you can get peanuts and candy a LOT cheaper than the movies, but then you can do that just about anywhere.
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I’ve found that “job lot” stores like Ocean State here in New England are not really super great deals either, you might only save 20 cents on a common breakfast cereal for example, the real benefit is finding odd products that either failed on the market, were discontinued, or are only stocked by ethnic specialty stores.
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True. There are certain items where buying at the dollar store makes sense: low-cost household goods, small kitchen utensils, cleaning supplies, party supplies, greeting cards, and batteries usually have prices that match or beat Walmart without having to buy in large quantities and without a sacrifice on quality.
They also often have good deals on very specific food items where they’ve obviously made a deal with the manufacturer (I’m thinking of a specific brand of cookie I sometimes buy at the dollar store, for much less than at any other store).
A variety of shopping options is a good thing. The problem comes in when the dollar store is effectively the only option for consumers in a specific area, especially when it comes to consumables like the items in the main article’s list.
They compare themselves to Costco and Walmart as low-price retailers for everything, including groceries.
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It’s that way even with regular groceries. We rotate our shopping between 3 or 4 different places because we get some things one place and some at another depending on the store’s strengths and problems. One of those places is a “dollar store” of some flavor, because they do have some better deals on certain things.
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True enough. I would never do all my shopping at Trader Joe’s, but TJs has certain things I really want. (Or they used to have them until one day they stopped carrying them. Damn you Trader Joe!)
I’d say the real reason I shop at dollar stores is that A.) they are everywhere around here, and B.) they all carry pretty much the same stuff, so I know exactly what I can get there. So it’s convenience more than savings.
We did the math on buying a breakfast for a family at the dollar store-- at the larger stores you can get a dozen (suspect looking) eggs, instant coffee and creamer, cheap-ass bread, margarine, crappy turkey bacon, juice and oatmeal. Sometimes they have that milk that doesn’t need to be refrigerated too. So for under ten bucks you could feed a family for one or two mornings, but it’s a really low grade breakfast.
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I tried buying an off-brand pack of breakfast sausages. Never again.
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Yeah, assuming there are other choices buying perishables at the dollar store seems as wise a decision as buying gas station sushi.
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