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A Tale Of Two Dollar Stores

Willa Rubin

Dollar stores — they sell everything from holiday decorations to groceries to Skittles-scented candles. The business proposition: a grab bag of items for a dollar (or around a dollar). These stores thrived during the financial crisis, but their success in the post-Recession era has been a mixed bag.

Dollar General and Family Dollar (now owned by Dollar Tree), two of the dollar store titans, have been at the center of this. These companies each took a bet: whether they could grow their businesses by keeping everything priced at $1, or by leaving the dollar behind.

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Stacey Vanek Smith is the co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money. She's also a correspondent for Planet Money, where she covers business and economics. In this role, Smith has followed economic stories down the muddy back roads of Oklahoma to buy 100 barrels of oil; she's traveled to Pune, India, to track down the man who pitched the country's dramatic currency devaluation to the prime minister; and she's spoken with a North Korean woman who made a small fortune smuggling artificial sweetener in from China.
Cardiff Garcia is a co-host of NPR's The Indicator from Planet Money podcast, along with Stacey Vanek Smith. He joined NPR in November 2017.
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