Ageneral merchant store (also known asgeneral merchandise store,general dealer,village shop, orcountry store) is a rural or small-townstore that carries ageneral line of merchandise.[1] It carries a broad selection of goods, sometimes in a small space, where people from the town and surrounding rural areas come to purchase all their general provisions. The store carries routine stock and obtains special orders fromwarehouses. It differs from aconvenience store or corner shop in that it will be the main shop for the community rather than a convenient supplement.
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 tourbanization,urban sprawl, and the relatively recent phenomenon ofbig-box stores. The term "general merchandise store" is also used to describe a hybrid of adepartment store, with a wide selection of goods, and adiscount store, with low prices. Examples includeJ. C. Penney andSears.[2]
General dealers were established in the 18th and 19th centuries in many remote populated places where mobility was limited and a single shop was sufficient to service the entire community. Due to its close connection and confinement to its customers, general dealers often adjusted their sales offerings to the specific preferences of their community.[3]
General dealers existed, apart frommainlandEurope andAsia, in all European colonies and generally in areas wherecolonists encroached upon communities that previously did not trade with money.[4] In the colonies, trading or bartering in local produce had existed long before official shops were opened. The growing need for imported goods, both from European settlers andnative populations, led to the establishment of a network ofmerchants, and subsequently to the creation of a money economy.[5]
While a large number of general stores still exist in Australia, as in other parts of the world their numbers were greatly reduced by the advent of supermarkets.
The oldest continually run general store in Canada is Trousdale's, located inSydenham, Ontario, which has been operated by the Trousdale family since 1836. Sociability has always been a feature, as locals come to chat as well as buy.[6] Gray Creek Store in Gray Creek,Kootenay Bay, Canada is the largest and oldest general dealer in theKootenay Lake region[7] Enniskillen General Store in Clarington, Ontario has been in operation since 1840 and still continues today. Robinson's General Store in Dorset, Ontario, voted "Canada's Best Country Store", has been owned and operated by the same family since 1921.
In theDominican Republic the equivalent of the general store is thecolmado, a word whose literal translation is 'full to the brim',[8] implying its great density of goods in a small space. The colmado is much more than just a general store, for it offers a social gathering point for the residents of the town or neighborhood. The colmado is an important institution in the Dominican Republic serving as an economic, social and political center for every small community. It is common for colmados to have loud Dominican music such as merengue, bachata, or salsa playing. A common pastime for Dominican men is to play dominoes and drink a beer at their local colmado on Sundays. Another particularity of the colmado is that they provide delivery service of their products directly to the customer's dwelling. Products range from beer, snacks, and toilet paper to flashlights and canned food.
InEgypt the closest equivalent of the country store traditionally tended to beGreek-owned businesses, and these Greek merchants were calledbakal.[9]
General stores (sekatavarakauppa) first appeared in Finland in 1859 when fixed shop retailers were allowed to set up shops in rural towns for the first time. Prior to that, authorised trade in rural products other than those produced in the same region depended on city travel, open-air markets and fairs.[10] A related type of store is the village store (kyläkauppa), typically located in sparsely populated towns, which still performs many similar functions to general stores. As in many other countries, their numbers were greatly reduced with the advent of supermarkets, from over 3400 such shops in 1980 to 241 in 2017.[11]
In India, a tapri is a regional version of a general store. It stores all home, personal, medical, and hygienic daily-use products. Many Kirana shops sell products other than food, such as clothing or household items, stationery, toys, tools, and medicines. Small Kirana stores, which are generally located on the corner of streets and generally known as katta or tapri, sell cigarettes, tobacco, and tea.[12]
Recently, there has been a notable integration of Aadhaar-enabled Payment System (AePS) services in Kirana or general stores across India. AePS allows customers to conduct basic banking transactions such as cash withdrawal, balance inquiry, and fund transfer using their Aadhaar number and biometric authentication. This integration has enabled Kirana stores to serve as financial service points, offering convenient banking services to local communities.
On 30 July 2024,Open Network for Digital Commerce (ONDC) introduced an interoperable QR code to link neighborhood store owners with consumers. With ONDC-registered buyer apps like Magicpin andPaytm, merchants can create a unique QR code that customers can scan to access their online store on the ONDC platform.[13]
Due to its sparse population, there are still a number of general stores (calleddealers) inNamibia, such as the Solitaire General Dealer inSolitaire, an important stopover for tourists throughout Namibia'sNamib-Naukluft Park.[14]
In Puerto Rico, aUS territory, several general stores ("colmado") have proliferated since the 1970s.
There are still many general dealers inSouth Africa; the oldest is Oom Samie se Winkel (Afrikaans:Uncle Sammie's Shop) in Dorp Street,Stellenbosch.[15] Oepverkoop is the oldest general dealer inPaternoster, Western Cape.[16] Goodwood Museum inCape Town displays the operation of a general dealer shop.[17]
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Village shops are becoming less common in the densely populated parts of the country, although they remain common in remoterural areas. Their rarity in England is due to several factors, such as the rise in car ownership, competition from large chainsupermarkets, the rising cost of village properties, and the increasing trend of the wealthy to ownholiday homes in picturesque villages, consequently these houses which used to be occupied full-time by potential customers are often vacant for long periods.
Of those villages in England that still have shops, these days they are often a combination of services under one roof to increase the likelihood of profit and survival. Extra services may include apost office, private business services such astearooms,cafes, andbed and breakfast accommodation; or state services such aslibraries andGeneral Practitioner (GP) or Dental clinics; and charity partners such asWomen's Institute (WI) coffee mornings held on the day most elderly villagers might collect their weekly pensions.
Community shops have become popular in some villages, often jointly owned and run by many villagers as aco-operative. The Village Retail Services Association promotes the role and function of the village shop in the UK.[18] Many modern village shops choose to stock items which draw in customers from neighboring areas who are seekinglocally sourced,organic and specialist produce such as local cuts of meat, local cheeses, wines etc.
Corner shops are usually so-called because they are located on the corner plot or street end of a row ofterraced housing, oftenVictorian orEdwardian factory workers' houses. The doorway into the shop was usually on the corner of the plot to maximize shop floor space within, this also offered two display windows onto two opposing streets. Many have now altered the original shop front layout in favor of a mini-supermarket style. Although it is common that corner shops found in theUK were former grocers' shops, other specialist retailers also occupied such plots and have suffered the same fate of being largely replaced by supermarkets and hypermarkets, such retailers asgreengrocers,bakers,butchers andfishmongers.
Many British television and radio series, especiallysoap operas, feature corner shops or village shops as cornerstones for community gatherings and happenings. A prominent example is the village shop inAmbridge, the fictional village in theBBC Radio 4 series,The Archers, (1950–present). TheITV1 soap operaCoronation Street (1960–present) has featured a corner shop since the first episode; originally owned byFlorrie Lindley, it was later acquired byAlf Roberts the grocer, and after his death in the late-1990s was bought byDev Alahan, reflecting this common change in British culture to Asian shopkeepers. The dying days and changing culture of the traditional British grocer were explored to great effect in theBBC TV comedy seriesOpen All Hours (1976–1985), set in the real suburb ofBalby inDoncaster; the shop front used for the street scenes in the series does actually exist in the area and is now a hairdressing salon. TheBBC Scotland comedy seriesStill Game has a corner shop as a recurring location where characters can meet and gossip; the actor who plays its owner, Navid Harrid (Sanjeev Kohli), plays a similar role as Bangaram in the Radio 4 comedy seriesFags, Mags and Bags which is set entirely in Ramesh's shop.
The bandCornershop in part base their image on the perception that many convenience shops 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.
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General stores and itinerant peddlers dominated in rural America until the coming of the automobile after 1910. Farmers and ranchers depended on general stores that had a limited stock and slow turnover; they made enough profit to stay in operation by selling at high prices. Often farmers would barter butter, cheese, eggs, vegetables or other foods which the merchant would resell. Prices were not marked on each item; instead the customer negotiated a price. Men did most of the shopping, since the main criterion was credit rather than quality of goods. Indeed, most customers shopped on credit, paying later when crops or cattle were sold; the owner's ability to judge credit worthiness was vital to his success. The store was often a gathering point for local men to chat, pass around the weekly newspaper, and talk politics.[19]
In the South, the general store was especially important after the Civil War, as the merchant was one of the few sources of credit available until the cash crops (usually cotton or tobacco) came in. By 1878, for example, there were 1,468 local merchants in Alabama, or 12 for every 10,000 people.[20] There were few towns and very few cities, so rural general stores and itinerant peddlers were the main sources of supply.[21][22][23][24]
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 in trading towns and small cities. However, from the 1960s to the present, many small specialized retailers have in turn been crushed by the so-called "category killers", which arebig-boxwholesale-type retailers large enough to carry the majority of best-selling goods in a specific category, like sporting goods or office supplies.Gray's General Store of Adamsville, Rhode Island is reputed to be the oldest continually operating general store in the United States until its temporary closure in 2012.[25] It subsequently reopened in the summer of 2013.[26]
However, the convenience inherent in the general store has been revived in the form of the modernconvenience store. A fewvariety stores draw upon the concept of having a broad variety of goods servicing small communities where big-box retailers are absent;Dollar General stores, in particular, draws its name from both the "dollar store" concept of having items at a fixed price point and the general store.
This is a select list of historical general stores in the United States, listed in alphabetical order.
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Through their trading activities these merchant capitalists accelerated the transition from a subsistence to a cash economy.
John Olsen's dream for children to see how an old times general dealer's shop use to function has been created at the Goodwood Museum.
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