Every year for Christmas my wife continues a small family tradition: every year we go there and buy stocking stuffers for our small family. It's definitely a d

Every year for Christmas my wife continues a small family tradition: every year we go there and buy stocking stuffers for our small family. It's definitely a different experience than going to a grocery store for sure. It's almost like you have a department store or modern pharmacies like CVS with the food capabilities of a gas station or 7-Eleven. I can see why it would appeal to lower-income families. If you assume they are short on time you can probably get all your shopping done in one place. It's definitely smaller than a grocery store and there are fewer options. I think this helps because if you're short on time and trying to get in and out of there you have to spend less time in the store and there's less cognitive overload trying to figure out what to get. Most grocery stores I've been to have unit prices somewhere on the shelf. They're noticeably absent and I have to do the math sometimes. I can understand residents being upset about these stores being subsidized by local government. It makes me wonder what the alternate solutions are. I assume they're getting subsidized since stores are fleeing or they don't want to open up shop. If that's true I don't think those stores are coming back unless they're even more heavily subsidized. Is the solution more Aldi's or Lidl's? I've found that there's a "feel bad" for me going in those stores compared to a normal grocery store.