Dollar General in the Country

Hathaway, Louisiana is a very small town where my son goes to school at the only school in "town." We live between Jennings and Hathaway, Louisiana.  Hathaway High School is PK through 12th grade and has 493 students.  I called Hathaway a town, but it would be hard to really call it a town, though. A village, maybe?  A rural outpost?  A clustering of houses in the country?  There is no McDonald's restaurant or any other chain-type store. Apart from a convenience store/gas station across from the school, there's not much.

Well, that's about to change.  The other day while driving down Highway 26, I passed by the following construction going on in the middle of a horse pasture. Whoa, Nellie!

I asked around to see and found out that this is going to be a Dollar General dollar store.  A Dollar General Store in the middle of a pasture.  I checked the distance from this construction to the Walmart Super Center in Jennings and it is 8.3 miles or 11 minutes away.  In a month or so, inhabitants of Hathaway won't have to make a trip into "town."

Dollar Stores have been experiencing astronomical growth.  According to THIS USNEWS Article, Dollar General stores are booming, with an increase in the stock price of over 162% over the past five years.  Even in small towns there are Dollar General, Family Dollar, and Dollar Tree stores practically on top of each other. Whereas the parking lots of Wal Mart stores are packed, the Dollar Stores have their fair share of customers.  While the Dollar Store shoppers' average purchase is between $10-$11 dollars, Dollar Store overhead is low and they are obviously profitable. They have been successful in siphoning people's dollars away from Wal Mart.  People in Hathaway will probably stay nearby and patronize Dollar General for some purchases rather than driving into Jennings.

I may be nostalgic, but seeing that former horse pasture cemented over makes me a little sad.  I hate to see sprawl and agricultural land being converted into concrete. But who knows?  Someone probably groaned when the Oleson's broke ground on the building project in the village of Walnut Grove shown below:

Image Credit

Whoa Nellie, indeed.