Dollar stores play an increasingly important role in food retail, especially for low-income americans and those who live in areas with limited food access

The Department of Agriculture National Institute of Food and Agriculture awarded the University of Rhode Island one million dollars on August 15, 2026, under the Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) program to conduct a three-year research project examining dollar store food retail and dietary health outcomes in low-income and food-insecure communities.

The recipient will gather data from key informant interviews with dollar store shoppers and community stakeholders in Louisiana and Minnesota, and analyze household retail food purchase behavior using the Circana Consumer Network, a nationwide consumer panel. The project will examine how consumers respond to food pricing and food inflation, then synthesize findings to develop guidance informed by shoppers who maintain healthy food purchases despite economic constraints. The University of Rhode Island will develop an educational toolkit with resources addressing the intersection of dollar store shopping and nutritional health, pilot test the toolkit with shoppers and stakeholders in four communities, revise it based on feedback, and disseminate it to SNAP recipients, community leaders, and educators in target communities.

The award runs through August 14, 2029, with place of performance in Kingston, Rhode Island. The project addresses a gap in scholarship on dollar stores' dietary health impacts and aims to improve diet outcomes for low-income Americans and populations with limited access to healthful and nutritious foods.

The heart of the concerns regarding dollar stores' impact on health was that they carry less healthy foods, and their competitive pricing may squeeze out the grocery stores that do carry healthy foods. Meanwhile, households actively respond to their food environment, both in terms of geographical access to foods and food pricing. Little scholarship exists on dollar stores and the effect they have on the dietary health of the communities they enter, and existing nutrition and health education materials do not reflect the increased role that dollar stores play in many households' decision-making. In this three-year project, we will gather data from key informant interviews with dollar store shoppers and community stakeholders in louisiana and minnesota, and use the circana consumer network, a nationwide panel that provides a detailed account of household retail food purchases, to examine the intersection of food purchase behavior and consumer strategies used to cope with food inflation. We will summarize the ways that consumers purchase food, in turn to generate guidance informed by the savvy shoppers who manage to purchase a healthy combination of foods. Based on the findings, we will develop a toolkit with educational resources that will be pilot tested with shoppers and established stakeholders in four communities and revised based on feedback. The toolkit will then be disseminated to snap recipients, community leaders, and educators in the target communities. We expect the project's outcomes to be able to improve the diet of low-income americans and populations living in areas with limited access to healthful and nutritious foods.