In Praise of Chain Stores

The Atlantic Online ^ | December 2006 | Virginia Postrel

[SamAdams76]

Every well-traveled cosmop­olite knows that America is mind-numbingly monotonous—the most boring country to tour, because everywhere looks like everywhere else,” as the columnist Thomas Friedman once told Charlie Rose. Boston has the same stores as Denver, which has the same stores as Charlotte or Seattle or Chicago. We live in a “Stepford world,” says Rachel Dresbeck, the author of Insiders’ Guide to Portland, Oregon. Even Boston’s historic Faneuil Hall, she complains, is “dominated by the Gap, Anthropologie, Starbucks, and all the other usual suspects. Why go anywhere? Every place looks the same.” This complaint is more than the old worry, dating back to the 1920s, that the big guys are putting Mom and Pop out of business. Today’s critics focus less on what isn’t there—Mom and Pop—than on what is. Faneuil Hall actually has plenty of locally owned businesses, from the Geoclassics store selling minerals and jewelry, to Pizzeria Regina (“since 1926”). But you do find the same chains everywhere.

[Larry Lucido]

KRAMER: Yeah, of course you do. And do you know why? Because you're a bunch of yuppies. It's your go-go corporate takeover lifestyles that are driving out these Mom and Pop stores and destroying the fabric of this neighborhood.

GEORGE: Well, what's so great about a Mom and Pop store? Let me tell you something. If my Mom and Pop ran a store, I wouldn't shop there.

[relee]

LoL!

[goldstategop]

Chain stores deliver economies of the scale and choice that local mom and pop stores can't match. Since mom and pop stores can't compete with the chains on price and choice they can maintain an edge on quality goods and personalized customer service.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus

[goldstategop]

The point to national chains is that people in small towns and nedium sized cities get the same services and amenities once available only to people living in big cities. The point lost on activists who oppose chains in urban downtowns is not that chains change the character of the places they'd take root in but rather that people have to drive further to buy the things they want and need. I can't think of anything more self-defeating, as Virginia Postrel's passage at the end of her column so vividly reveals:

"To [Robert Gibbs'] frustration, he finds that many cities actually turn away national chains, preferring a moribund downtown that seems authentically local. But, he says, the same local activists who oppose chains “want specialty retail that sells exactly what the chains sell—the same price, the same fit, the same qualities, the same sizes, the same brands, even.” You can show people pictures of a Pottery Barn with nothing but the name changed, he says, and they’ll love the store. So downtown stores stay empty, or sell low-value tourist items like candles and kites, while the chains open on the edge of town. In the name of urbanism, officials and activists in cities like Ann Arbor and Fort Collins, Colorado, are driving business to the suburbs. “If people like shopping at the Banana Republic or the Gap, if that’s your market—or Payless Shoes—why not?” says an exasperated Gibbs. “Why not sell the goods and services people want?”

Why indeed not? If people like doing business with a particular company, they should be free to have that choice. The character of our communities is not determined by what's outside the sign of a business; its shaped by the local culture, climate and living preferences. For frequent travellers, all of America looks the same. That's a snap judgment from people passing through a place. For the local folks though, its always the place they call home.

"Show me just what Mohammed brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached." -Manuel II Paleologus

[ME-262]

You are too funny!

I was in South Korea '76-'82. Dried squid, dog, Chicken heads, fermented cabbage, red bean paste and such were the local fare. I would have killed for a nearby McDonald's! Imagine me as a young child biting into what looked like a tasty donut to find it filled with bean curd(tofu). That sort of thing happened way too many times. I grew to like the salted seaweed and such but still came back to the US as a skinny underfed kid.

[elli1]

I cannot get it at home in Colorado.

Yeh. Sitting in the middle of Wisconsin with a strong hankering for a stuffed sopapilla smothered in green chile sauce from the Elkhorn Cafe, Pagosa Springs...

[Condor51]

**** I found a MacDonald's ... The Big Mac tasted entirely unlike anything I'd ever had stateside. It really sucked ****

Yeah, Wallaby does take some getting used to.

[ErnBatavia]

"Who put the 'roo in the stew?"

[Moonman62]

Not to mention that many Mom & Pop stores pleased their customers, had a lot of babies and became chains themselves. It's not like Sam Walton started out with $500 billion and 1,000 stores.

Didn't he start with Franklin Five and Dime stores?

[razorback-bert]

If you travel as long and as much as I have, you really appreciate getting a meal without getting sick too.

I used to eat steak for breakfast, lunch and dinner, because I could look at it and cut it open and if it didn't pass inspection, move on to another eating place. Even if the steak looked okay, it could still be tougher than an old boot.


Many days my meals were crackers, rat cheese, sardines and Vienna sausages.

Walmart is my general store on the road. Remember the horror stories about automotive parts and repairs on the road. I have paid through the nose for belts and tires.

[Dog Gone]

It's fun to try new places, but there's a sense of security in knowing that a chain store (or restaurant) is in the same town if it doesn't work out.