Dollar General location begins selling produce, with a potentially mixed impact on food access
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Dollar store shoppers in Penn Hills can add another essential item to their lists: produce.
After closing in January, the Dollar General at 12818 Frankstown Road reopened Feb. 3 as DG Market, offering fruits, vegetables, dairy products and fresh meats in addition to general merchandise. Specific items include lettuce, tomatoes, onion, apples, strawberries and more, covering about 80% of produce categories carried by most grocery stores, according to a statement from Dollar General.
The company touts these stores as combating food insecurity, and shoppers such as Roger Sebastian, a Penn Hills resident, said they welcome the expanded selection of fresh food.
“It would be easier than running into Giant Eagle,” Sebastian said.
That’s the problem, according to Dawn Marie Clepper-Hall, director of community food access for Just Harvest. The Pittsburgh-area nonprofit has advocated for policies to combat poverty and hunger since 1986.
Penn Hills is not a food desert, she explained, meaning that DG Market could undercut nearby full-service grocery stores, negatively impacting fresh food access in the end.
“It would be a different story if they put this in a rural community that doesn’t have grocery access or an urban community that has better public transit access,” Clepper-Hall said. “Instead, it’s in a community that’s largely not walkable and therefore people have a car and have access to the existing grocery stores.”
This is the first Dollar General to offer produce in Penn Hills, but hardly the first nationwide. The first DG Market opened in 2003, the same year that new coolers allowed the chain’s stores to carry perishable items for the first time. In January, the company announced that more than 5,000 of its roughly 19,000 locations sell produce — more points of distribution than any other U.S. retailer, according to the company’s statement.
Besides the recently reopened Penn Hills location, four other Dollar General stores in Allegheny County offer fruits and vegetables: two in Pittsburgh, one in Mt. Lebanon and one in McKeesport.
Clepper-Hall said her nonprofit would be more supportive of dollar stores selling groceries if they accepted Women, Infants and Children (WIC) benefits. The federally funded program provides food assistance to pregnant women, new mothers and children up to 5 years old.
Pennsylvania moved from checks to an electric card system to disburse WIC benefits in 2019. These cards require retailers to purchase a different reader than credit cards or SNAP benefits, resulting in many opting out.
“Dollar General, as a very large corporation and not a mom and pop operating on a shoestring budget, can probably afford to get the other card reader and accept WIC in their stores,” Clepper-Hall said.
Dollar General continues to expand, with 950 stores in Pennsylvania and four in Penn Hills, though the municipality’s zoning board denied an application to build a fifth in December, citing possible congestion on Rodi Road and too few parking spaces.
The chain also has stores at 10730 Frankstown Road, 7248 Saltsburg Road and 1108 Milltown Road.
Food banks have benefited from the large presence. According to a Feb. 20 news release, the company donated 130,000 pounds of food in 2023 to Feeding America pantries across the state.
But issues with keeping the store well-staffed and organized, as observed by shoppers, raise questions about the move to more perishable items.
The 12818 Frankstown Road location racked up eight Allegheny County Health Department violations dating back to 2018, including some for poor contamination prevention and sanitization. Manager Sheri Robbins directed questions to Dollar General corporate, which did not respond to questions about why this location was chosen to carry produce or how it monitors adherence to health and safety protocols.
Resident Sarah Sloneker said she does a bulk of her shopping at this Dollar General location and may do even more now that it sells produce. She often sees just one “overworked” employee staffing the store but doesn’t blame workers for past problems.
“It did seem like they were trying the best they could,” Sloneker said.