Nine customers were waiting in the Dollar Tree parking lot when a sales clerk opened the door at 9 a.m. Thursday, and numbers 10 and 11 pulled up before the door swung closed.
Annie Vinson and her daughter Jenny Vinson, both just off morning shifts driving school buses, headed right for the food aisles, where they filled a basket with items including french fries, French toast sticks and French onion dip.
“Look!” Annie Vinson said, holding up a bag of frozen bell pepper strips. “It’s a dollar, and look how big it is.”
Customers like the Bellevue mother-daughter team, who seek out deals on groceries no matter the type of store, have helped dollar stores become the fastest-growing brick-and-mortar retailers today, largely because of growing food sales, according to Kantar Retail analysts. Dollar store sales have grown twice as fast since 2009 as sales at supermarkets or supercenters, according to Kantar.
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