Stopped off for some groceries at Food Lion in Floyd late Sunday night.
Ohmigod! Did he say Food Lion? Quick, somebody call the political corrrectness police!
You see, in Floyd, is is not politically correct to shop at Food Lion. It’s one of those dreaded “chain” stores. Same goes for munching on a pork chop bisquit at Hardees for breakfast. God forbid that we stop to pick up something necessary at the new Dollar General when it opens.
This is where I part company with some of my more hysterical friends. We buy a lot of our groceries at the locally-owned Slaughters. I went to school with Lonnie Slaughter. But at 10:15 p.m. on a Sunday night the only game in town is Food Lion and I’m not about to forgo something we need just because it is sold at a chain store. I also happen to like the pork chop bisquits at Hardees and the turkey sub at Subway.
Hardees came to town several years ago amid predictions of doom and gloom for Floyd. The other restaurants in town are still open and thriving. Some of those who predicted the worst now gather for coffee and gossip at the fast-food restaurant each morning. Food Lion opened a year ago and Slaughters is still going strong. True, Farmer’s Food closed but anyone who shopped there will tell you that was no great loss. When Dollar General opens the only store it will compete with is another chain store at the other end of town — Family Dollar.
It’s called supply and demand. It’s also called additional places for people who live here to work. When Food Lion opened, an assistant manager for a local store went to work there as a cashier — because Food Lion paid more.
Re (today’s) Monday Rant: Point 1: the white house casualty list for Iraq includes ONLY those KIA. There are MANY others, probably in the thousands, who die as they are being carried to hospital, on the operating table or following surgery. That fact is NEVER included in the KIA stats! – either in the print media or radio/tv. Point 2: Iraq was an intended war target long BEFORE the GOP captured the white house. The PNAC (Project for a New American Century) report makes that very clear. elgee
I’m with you on this one, Doug. Although I try to shop local as much as possible, sometimes I shop the chains. I used to live in a town where the Ma & Pa hardware store was *closed* on Sunday afternoon, for instance…and Sunday afternoon is when we’d typically discover we needed a hammer or other such implement. So, we’d drive an hour to Home Depot to get what we needed when we needed it.
I love the level of service you normally get in a Ma & Pa store…but in some cases, that service is lacking, or limited store hours force you to make a call. I don’t think buying an occasional hammer at Home Depot is going to put Ma & Pa out of business if *most* of the time I try to plan my needs so they match the small stores’ hours.