What Killed the Country Store?

Found this video (below) the other day.  It is a catchy little tune but not exactly correct in saying that Walmart alone killed the country stores.  Long before Walmart emerged on the scene, the “has-everything-you-need” general store was being undermined by grocery stores such as national food chains like Safeway and the A & P.  

That was particularly true here in the County.  Once those two chains opened for business in Lexington Park, all of the little general stores were negatively impacted as folks naturally migrated to the bigger, more selection and cheaper priced stores.   Then along came the 7-11’s and Highs convenience stores carving out their pieces of the action and all of sudden the little general stores were mostly home alone.  This from Wikipedia:

From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/General_store

In true, big-fish-eats-littler-fish fashion, the Walmarts and Wegmans of the world have been scarfing up the grocery store business from the smaller food chains.  By extension then, maybe you could say that Walmart did kill the country store.
But now, we have all of these Dollar General Stores popping up like mushrooms all over the place (related story click here.)  Two more DG’s are projected to open here in the County soon in addition to the two that we already have – one in Mechanicsville and one in Ridge. Obviously they are niching themselves into smaller areas.  Could the big, bigger, biggest trend be reversing? 

From http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2014/03/05/the-new-wal-mart-ceo-wants-dollar-generals-success.aspx

Who knows, maybe the country store will rise again.  Don’t bet on it though.