Diasporic Dining XII: A Dollar Saved is a Dollar Earned

Photos by Hallie Cohen

It’s Easter weekend. The cashier at the Dollar Tree is a veteran of both Price Chopper, where she was recently hit by an old woman with a cane, and Walmart, where there were long lines. By comparison, the Dollar Tree Where Everything is $1 is on a far more homey, human scale. In the window are signs advertising frozen and dairy foods for $1 and the “Wow Item of the Week,” some unhappy looking Easter bunnies. Dollar Tree is a backwater compared to discount juggernauts like BJ’s and Sam’s. No membership is required at Dollar Tree, and there is a whole wall dedicated to festively wrapped balloon weights. The Dollar Tree book shelf is composed of the equivalent of minor league hitters who have struck out. For instance, there is a book called The Cult of Perfection: Making Peace With Your Inner Achiever, which doesn’t seem to apply to anyone who walks into the store. The real achievers, those who buy paper towels in bulk, are too ambitious for Dollar Tree. They are to be found waiting patiently on line with their wagon trains of groceries at the big discount clubs. At Dollar Tree, there are mutations like the four-divider pocket notebooks that didn’t make the cut at Mead. At the other side of the store are the rudimentary Easter items. No one who walks out of the Dollar Tree need go hungry or be deprived of a chocolate Easter egg or crucifix. The big epistemological question at Dollar Tree remains: is everything really only a dollar? 

BJ's Acquires Delta

BJ’s Wholesale Cub, the discount warehouse chain, has acquired KLM, Air France, and Northwest, along with its parent airline Delta. While BJ’s executives have admitted that they have little knowledge of aviation, they indicated that the architecture of their mammoth supermarkets resembles that of an airplane hangar.

Passengers on these airlines are still required to report to their operating carrier in order to check bags and receive boarding passes, but they should call their local BJ’s when seeking flight departure and arrival information.

   

The BJ’s announcement has stimulated a rash of interest in beleaguered airline stocks from supermarket cash cows.  Sam’s Club has made an offer for British Air and Food Emporium has threatened a hostile takeover of American Airlines. Jet Blue has found a corporate suitor in Popeye’s, the fried chicken chain, which hopes to exploit marketing opportunities in the frequent flier demographic.

    

“Popeye’s looks at the proposed acquisition of Jet Blue as opening up a lucrative new market of stranded passengers, who will eat just about anything during long, tedious layovers,” said Bill Wilson, an airline industry analyst. “The world is being turned on its axis.” Indeed, Dulles International Airport was the scene of a near collision when the pilot of a Pan Am flight that had been taxiing since the early ‘70s spotted Colonel Sanders piloting an outgoing Singapore Airlines flight.

     

The history of the food industry’s interest in aviation stocks is a subject that will be dealt with in a forthcoming book by Michael Pollan, author of The Omnivore’s Dilemma, entitled, Getting His Wings: How A&P Heir Huntington Hartford Flew United’s Friendly Skies.