Bottom Dollar Food

Bottom Dollar Food, commonly just called Bottom Dollar, is a defunct American soft-discount grocery chain. It was a subsidiary store under Delhaize America, the U.S. division of international food retailer Delhaize Group. It was headquartered in Salisbury, North Carolina before its closure in the beginning of 2015.

The grocery store sold an assortment of their own brands (e.g., My Essentials, Hannaford, Home 360, Healthy Accents, and Taste of Inspirations.) To curtail costs, the grocer offered customers the option to buy bags to sack their groceries, and also used alternative display and stocking techniques, such as cut cases on shelves.

History
Bottom Dollar Food was created by Delhaize America in 2004 after they announced that they would "differentiate the banners within its Food Lion stores." The first Bottom Dollar Food store opened on 2005 in High Point, North Carolina, the same state where they'd have their headquarters. Before their 2010 expansion, they had 30 stores across North Carolina, Virginia, and Maryland. In October of 2010, Bottom Dollar Foods opened 19 stores in the Delaware Valley and Lehigh Valley areas, beginning with opening a store in King of Prussia, PA. Almost a year later (April 15, 2011), They opened a store in Philadelphia, though many stated that the area already had many competitors similar to Bottom Dollar (e.g., Aldi, PriceRite, and Save-A-Lot.) One of these competitors said the following;


 * “It’s always challenging to be the last guy to get in the game, but unlike the other limited assortment discounters already in the market, Bottom Dollar really didn’t present itself as a deep discounter. I believe its mix of private label products with significant branded offerings sent a confusing message to shoppers. Were they trying to become a price-driven operator with decent but not great retails, or a small supermarket with good prices? Their message never seemed to connect.”

In January 2012, Delhaize announced that they'd be closing six and converting 22 of the original Bottom Dollar stores to Food Lion as a act of restructuring, leading to Bottom Dollar only remaining in New Jersey and Pennsylvania.

In late 2012, Bottom Dollar Food expanded into both the Pittsburgh and Youngstown, OH areas, both of which never had a Food Lion or another Delhaize store until then. At the time, the Pittsburgh area was dominated by Giant Eagle, the native grocery store there. Bottom Dollar also competed with similar stores like Aldi, Walmart, and Save-A-Lot.

In Spring of 2013 (to cut costs), Bottom Dollar started to make their carts require quarters in order to use them. Once the quarter would be put in, the cart would be unlocked from the others, then once the cart returned to the others, the customer would be given their quarter back (This method is most familiarly used in Aldi stores.) It was (and still is) quite rare in American groceries stores, though it is much more common in Europe.

Sale to Aldi & Closure
In August 2014, it was revealed that Delhaize Group was seeking a possible sale of Bottom Dollar's stores. At the time, Bottom Dollar had 66 stores, 46 of these were in the Delaware Valley and Lehigh Valley in Southern New Jersey and Pennsylvania, whilst the other 20 were in the Pittsburgh-Youngstown corridor of Pennsylvania and Northeast Ohio.

On November 5th, 2014, Delhaize Group announced that they'd be selling all of Bottom Dollar's stores to Aldi (ironically, one of Bottom Dollar's biggest competitors), with all of the stores closing by the beginning of 2015. Although the stores were scheduled to close on January 15th, 2015, they closed three days earlier due to stock going out much earlier than expected. After the closures, the Bottom Dollar website ended off with a message stating "All Bottom Dollar Foods Locations are now closed. Thank you for shopping. Thank you for believing."

After all the closures, Aldi would announce that they would open 30 of the Bottom Dollar stores that they acquired from the $15 million sale.