Everything about General Store totally explained
» "Corner shop" redirects here. For the British band, see Cornershop.
In
Australia,
Canada and the
United States, a
general store is a
retailer located in a small town or in a rural area with a broad selection of merchandise crammed into a relatively small space where people from the town and surrounding rural areas come to purchase all their general goods, both in stock and special order from warehouses. In the
United Kingdom, similar retailers tend to be referred to as a
village shop in rural areas or a
corner shop in urban areas or suburbs. In New Zealand, they're called
dairies (from dairy, milk products).
Bodeguita comes from the
Spanish language as a
diminutive of
bodega which means "small store" or "small warehouse". Traditionally, Bodeguita existed selling general
merchandise, then they were replaced slowly by the
chain store, the same way large US chains have practically eliminated the "mom and pop" store.
General stores often sell staple food items such as milk and bread, and various household goods such as hardware and electrical supplies. The concept of the general store is very old, and although some still exist, there are far fewer than there once were, due to
urbanization,
urban sprawl, and the relatively recent phenomenon of
big-box stores.
By country
Canada
In
Canada the French term
depanneur is used for a general store in the province of Quebec.
United Kingdom
Village shops have become increasingly rare in the densely populated parts of
England, although they remain common in remote
rural areas of
Scotland, particularly
The Highlands,
Wales and
Northern Ireland along with some lesser populated areas of England such as
North Yorkshire,
Northumberland and
The Lake District.
Their rarity in England is due to several factors, such as the rise in
car ownership, competition from large chain
supermarkets, the rising cost of village properties, and the increasing trend of the wealthy to own
holiday homes in picturesque villages, consequently houses which used to be occupied full-time are often vacant for long periods.
Of those villages in England who still have have shops, these days they're often a combination of services under one roof to increase the liklihood of profit and survival. Extra services may include a
post office private businesses services such as
tearooms,
cafes, and
bed and breakfast accommodation; or state services such as libraries and
General Practitioner (GP) or Dental clinics; and charity partners such as
Women's Institute (WI) coffee mornings held on the day most elderly villagers might collect their weekly pensions.
Some villages now no longer have either shop or post office, but the village
pub has largely survived and these often function as small shops or post offices as well. Many village pubs have become notable dining experiences, attracting trade from their villagers, tourists and nerby town dwellers with their trendy chefs or local produce/organic menus.
Community shops have become popular in some villages, often jointly owned and run by many villagers as a
co-operative. The Village Retail Services Association (
(External Link
)) promotes the role and function of the village shop in the UK. Many modern village shops choose to stock items which draw in customers from neighbouring areas who are seeking
locally sourced,
organic and specialist produce such as local cuts of meat, local cheeses, wines etc.
In towns and cities, the
corner shop has largely survived by dominating the local and light night convenience market.
The
1970s saw the death of the traditional grocery shop, which would have once dominated in the kind of buildings most corner shops operate from today, such old traditional family grocery stores began to face competition on two fronts: on the one hand from
immigrant-owned corner shops, trading longer hours (typically
British Asian families), and on the other from the rise of the supermarket, which amalgamated many specialist retailers such as butchers, bakers, and grocers under one roof at increasingly cheaper prices and with room for a greater choice of products. With the gradual loss of the traditional grocers came the loss of many aspects of old British shopping culture such as grocery deliveries and being enabled to have a "Tic" account with the grocer, a form of unofficial advanced credit. The cornershop is now much more the local convenience shop than the family grocer of days gone by.
Cornershops are usually so called because they're located on the corner plot or street end of a row of
terraced housing, often
Victorian or
Edwardian factory workers' houses. The doorway into the shop was usually on the corner of the plot to maximise shop floor space within, this also offered two display windows onto two opposing streets. Many have now altered the original shop front layout in favour of a mini-supermarket style. Although it's common that cornershops found in the
UK were former grocer shops, other specialist retailers also occupied such slots and have suffered the same fate of being largely replaced by super and hypermarkets, such retailers as
greengrocers,
bakers,
butchers and
fishmongers.
In popular culture
Many British
TV and
Radio series, especially
soap operas, feature corner shops or village shops as cornerstones for community gatherings and happenings. Prominent examples are the Village shop in
Ambridge, the fictional village in the
BBC Radio 4 series,
The Archers, (
1950-present day). Or the
ITV1 soap opera
Coronation Street (
1960-present day) featuring a cornershop; it was owned, until recently, by
Alf Roberts the grocer and after his death in the late
1990s was bought by
Dev Alahan, reflecting this common change in British culture. The dying days and changing culture of the traditional British grocer was explored to great effect in the
BBC TV comedy series
Open All Hours (
1976-
1985), set in the real suburb of
Balby in
Doncaster, the shop front used for the street scenes in the series does actually exist in the area and has run as a successful, Ladies Hair Salon for many years. It was a Hair Salon in reality, throughout the years the television series was filmed.
The band
Cornershop in part base their image on the perception that many convenience stores are now owned by British Asian people. In terms of British popular culture these media representations give some idea of the importance attached to local shops in the national psyche and as a mainstay of community life.
The former British
Prime Minister Baroness Thatcher, aka
Margaret Thatcher was the daughter of a grocer, spending her formative years living above her father's corner shop in
Grantham,
Lincolnshire. Her father's name, strangely enough, was
Alfred Roberts.
Changing use of the term store in the UK
In the UK, small retail outlets are referred to as
shops. Since the
Second World War many
Americanisms have crept in to popular English usage such as the term
store. On occasion, you may hear of the terms
shop and
store being used interchangeably, which may lead to confusion. A
store (in the UK) is solely a place of storage such as a warehouse rather than a retail outlet. The fire at the
Hertfordshire Fuel Store (UK) in December
2005 was by necessity referred to by the media as a "Fuel Storage Depot" so that it wouldn't be confused with a retail outlet. It is curious that retail units may be referred to as
stores when, in fact, their rate of stock turnover means that there's little storage and restocking may occur on a daily basis from an off-site actual storage warehouse. Furthermore, retail websites may refer to themselves as stores when they don't actually store any items but merely
source them and supply them to third parties.
United States
During the first half of the 20th century, general stores were displaced in many areas of the
United States by many different types of specialized retailers. But from the 1960s through the 1990s, many small specialized retailers were in turn crushed by the so-called "category killers", which are "big-box"
wholesale-type retailers large enough to carry the majority of best-selling goods in a specific category like
sporting goods or
office supplies.
However, the convenience inherent in the general store has been revived in the form of the modern
convenience store and the
hypermarket, which can be seen as taking the general store or convenience store concept to its largest possible implementation.
In popular culture
TV shows with a historic or nostalgic flavour have depicted general stores in small communities as much as gathering places for the exchange of news and gossip as for their stated purpose of the retail trade. Some examples of this slice of American history include Godsey's store in
The Waltons and the Olsens' store in
Little House on the Prairie. A modern reflection of the convenience store's place and importance within American communities is the
Kwik-E-Mart, run by
Apu, in the animated series
The Simpsons. See
Convenience stores in popular culture.
Further Information
Get more info on 'General Store'.
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