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Take a quick scroll through Tiktok or Instagram and you will find countless recipes made with ingredients entirely from Dollar Tree. The steak fadjita! Alfredo Pasta (with black salmon)! Chicken Parmesan!
In recent years, the discount chain has been occupied by expanding its range of frozen shortcuts, closet clamps, desserts and more. The number of new groceries is not the only thing that grows: along with increasing variety, the price of goods is slowly filling from $ 1 to $ 7.
One year after the company has announced its most pricing plans, we are looking more closely at what is happening in the Dollar Tree paths and how these changes can affect buyers. We talked to a long -time buyer of dollars, public health experts and food security and Dollar Tree Vice President (by email). Here’s what we learned.
If you’ve been going to a dollar tree lately, you may have noticed that most items aren’t really 1 dollar. As early as the end of 2021, Dollar Tree announced the 25-tent blow to the paths and introduced a selection of $ 3, $ 4 and $ 5 products. The shaking, called “more choice” by the company, was an early step in its “strategy for many prices,” says Rick Drailing, CEO at Dollar Tree, call for profit last March.
The expansion has brought “new and higher income clients,” Dreasing says. “In 2023, Dollar Tree added 3.4 million new customers – the most of the households who earn over $ 125,000 a year,” he adds.
Building a successful launch of items such as $ 3 steaks, Dollar Tree added brackets with a first-class price, such as a brand sauce with names, ground coffee, frozen dumplings, garbage bags and even cat food for more than 6,500 stores. The company again interrupted news in 2024, when it reported that more than 300 new items would come to thousands of stores, this time at a price of between $ 1.50 and $ 7.
The bigger part of the items is currently in the larger price points: “More than 90% of Dollar Tree’s products remain at $ 1.25 or less,” writes Kate Kirkpatrick, Dollar Tree’s vice president by email. At the same time, Dreilating says that the company is “making great progress” with its new high quality offers-at least with certain buyers.
Dollar stores, including dollar wood, family dollars (also owned by Dollar Tree) and Dollar General, among others, have become the fastest growing grocery traders in the United States, according to Mr. Shopping – especially in systematically marginalized and rural communities.
“Rural areas are most likely to have residents who depend on dollar stores,” says Dr. Courtney Caunen, Assistant Professor at the School of Public Health at the University of Nevada. These “areas also have much less opportunities to adapt changes to purchases so that [those] Residents are more than likely to be overwhelmed by this change. “
Dollar Tree aims to attract higher-income households, but many of its buyers are participants in the Food Assistance Program (SNAP). This program, administered by the Ministry of Agriculture of the United States, provides food benefits to support low -income people in supplementing their food budget.
“When I was a young mom of four on the budget for theft, it was one of the only places I could go to take odds and end up for the house and spend under $ 10,” says Jamie Miles, for decades in the dollar buyer of trees and a frequent fellow penny. “The main lot for me has always been that everything I see is good in my reach.”
The latest USDA data shows that 13.5% of US households have survived nutritional uncertainty in 2023. These are over 47 million people and 7.2 million children living in a household uncertain food.
“Raising food prices disproportionately affects the most vulnerable population,” says Dr. Coughhenour, which makes fair access to healthy food even more challenging. As a result, households are likely to change their purchase and food strategies to “stretch their budgets,” explains CESI Henricks, director of sharing our power. For persons who are not sure of food, this may mean reversal to retailers who provide “high value at lower costs” visiting local emergency food organizations such as closets, or apply for additional government support programs such as SNAP (if ranked).
Further studies are needed to fully understand the impact of the increasing costs of Dollar Tree, especially for low -income buyers. The anxiety is that Dollar Tree can be on the verge of making its products less affordable. As the company introduces higher prices, the variety of affordable options can start to decrease to make room for its “new neighbors with higher prices,” says Miles.
Do you shop food at Dollar Tree? Tell us about this in the comments below.
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