One Thursday about a month ago, I was hit with the news as I
was pulling my car into work. The radio
newsman led into his story with the phrase “Bottom Dollar is outta here”. My favorite supermarket will be gone by the
end of the year. I didn’t see this coming, although I found out later that
Bottom Dollar’s parent company had been looking to get out of the discount
supermarket business. Even if I did know
about it, I wouldn’t have suspected that they would sell Bottom Dollar to its
biggest competitor, Aldi. But that is what happened, and now Aldi will swiftly
do away with what I think is its biggest rival.
It still doesn’t make sense to me in a lot of ways. As recently as this summer, newly constructed
Bottom Dollar stores were opening, and now those brand new buildings will be
vacant as of next year. It doesn’t seem to be a natural death, especially since
it is not even five years old as an entity. What looked to be an up and coming retail
chain suddenly had its foundation torn out from under it because the parent
company decided to sell it to its leading competitor. Bottom Dollar is dying a tragic death at a
young age when compared to Kmart, which appears to have run its course and to
be dying a natural death.
On a personal level, I loved shopping there because there
was a store near my home and I found it cheaper. I didn’t see any reason to pay more when I
didn’t have to. They touted themselves
as having unbelievably low prices, and while that catch phrase may not be
literally true, they seem to beat all competition in that area. The one drawback is that both the quantity
and variety of products seem to be limited when compared to the larger
supermarkets. And like Aldi, they didn’t
provide free plastic bags, but those are minor inconveniences I could live
with. I would usually only go somewhere
else if there was something I needed that Bottom Dollar didn’t have, or if
something I needed was on sale there. I would
guess that the concept with Bottom Dollar is that they are somewhat of a
throwback to the post war days when a supermarket had all the basic items that
were needed to fill the refrigerator and the pantries. It was later that supermarkets became larger
and larger, and added their own bakeries, florists, cafes, and pharmacies. I hope that concept is picked up by another
supermarket that will offer the basics at a lower price.
But right now, I just have to accept that Bottom Dollar will
soon be gone. It’s nothing horrible or
tragic, but I just hate the fact that we had something really good going, and
now it is suddenly taken away.
