South Asians and convenience stores

Yesterday on my way back from Athens I got off to get gas at a forlorn-looking convenience store. At first I wasn't entirely sure it was open, the I saw that it was and that gas was only $3.10 a gallon, much cheaper than the $3.49 we've been seeing around Chapel Hill. It's all too easy for us to forget how much of the price at the pump reflects local real estate prices.

I went in to use the rest room and saw that the register was being staffed by a South Asian woman. It is probably pretty safe to assume that she is part of the family that owns the store, not an hourly employee. I've been seeing more and more South Asian-owned convenience stores here in NC in recent years. I first saw it at the store out at Calvander where we used to go to the grill at lunch from CHHS in the 80s. There was also one when I got off the highway on the way out to Appalachian Ski Mountain back in February. They had pretty tasty looking breakfast biscuits for sale at that one, so I was kinda sad I had gotten one at Sunrise in Chapel Hill already.

I guess Apu from The Simpsons indicates that South Asians in convenience stores has been a thing elsewhere in the country for a long time. And of course independent southern motels have been disproportionately owned by South Asians for a long time, witness Mississippi Masala, the 1991 romcom in which Denzel Washington falls in love with a beautiful Indian young woman somewhere in the Delta. But this convenience store thing is either new or is just registering for me. I hope those families thrive in rural communities. It can't be easy.

I've reflected at times on how the brutal challenges of being a small business owner in the shrinking economies of rural America has been greatly injurious to the self-concept of the populations there and has laid the ground for populism. Small corner stores seem like exceptions, especially ones with grills, which Dollar Generals will never have. Seeing this retail segment taken out by outsiders can't help. But it is nonetheless the story of America.