Dollar stores look to food-stamp customers as revenue stream
Saturday August 9, 2008
Dollar stores look to food-stamp customers as revenue stream
Family Dollar and Dollar General are focusing on the acceptance of food stamps
as a growth opportunity. Both chains have increased the volume of food items in
their product mix in recent years, and over one-third of dollar-store customers
earn less than $20,000 a year, which makes food stamps a logical revenue stream,
says Jim Ohls, a senior fellow at Mathematica Policy Research, a food and
nutrition think tank. Roughly 24 million U.S. consumers receive food stamps, to
the tune of $24 billion a year. The federal program grew 10 percent in 2003,
Ohls says, and currently, more than 80 percent of U.S. food-stamp benefits are
used at supermarkets. Dollar stores want more of the action and are currently
working to tweak checkout processes to alleviate the stigma associated with
using food stamps.