A general store, general merchandise store, or village shop (UK) is a rural or small town store

Retailing

Retail consists of the sale of physical goods or merchandise from a fixed location, such as a department store, boutique or kiosk, or by mail, in small or individual lots for direct consumption by the purchaser. Retailing may include subordinated services, such as delivery. Purchasers may be...

 that carries a general line of merchandise

General line of merchandise

General line of merchandise or general merchandise is a term used in retail and wholesale business in reference to merchandise not limited to some particular category...

. It carries a broad selection of merchandise, sometimes in a small space, where people from the town and surrounding rural areas come to purchase all their general goods. The store carries routine stock and obtains special orders from warehouses

Wholesale

Wholesaling, jobbing, or distributing is defined as the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers, to industrial, commercial, institutional, or other professional business users, or to other wholesalers and related subordinated services...

. It differs from a convenience store

Convenience store

A convenience store, corner store, corner shop, commonly called a bodega in Spanish-speaking areas of the United States, is a small store or shop in a built up area that stocks a range of everyday items such as groceries, toiletries, alcoholic and soft drinks, and may also offer money order and...

 or corner shop in that it will be the main shop for the community rather than a convenient supplement.

Bodeguita comes from the Spanish language

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

 as a diminutive

Diminutive

In language structure, a diminutive, or diminutive form , is a formation of a word used to convey a slight degree of the root meaning, smallness of the object or quality named, encapsulation, intimacy, or endearment...

 of bodega

Bodega

Bodega is a Spanish word that may refer to:* a winery, wine cellar or wine bar* a convenience store specializing in Hispanic groceriesPlaces:* Bodega, California, town in Sonoma County, California...

which means "small store" or "small warehouse". Traditionally, Bodeguita existed selling general merchandise, then they were replaced slowly by the chain store

Chain store

Chain stores are retail outlets that share a brand and central management, and usually have standardized business methods and practices. These characteristics also apply to chain restaurants and some service-oriented chain businesses. In retail, dining and many service categories, chain businesses...

, 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

Urbanization

Urbanization, urbanisation or urban drift is the physical growth of urban areas as a result of global change. The United Nations projected that half of the world's population would live in urban areas at the end of 2008....

, urban sprawl

Urban sprawl

Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a multifaceted concept, which includes the spreading outwards of a city and its suburbs to its outskirts to low-density and auto-dependent development on rural land, high segregation of uses Urban sprawl, also known as suburban sprawl, is a...

, and the relatively recent phenomenon of big-box stores.

The term "general merchandise store" is also used to describe a hybrid of a department store

Department store

A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories...

, with a wide selection of goods, and a discount store

Discount store

A discount store is a type of department store, which sells products at prices lower than those asked by traditional retail outlets. Most discount department stores offer a wide assortment of goods; others specialize in such merchandise as jewelry, electronic equipment, or electrical appliances...

, with low prices. Examples include J. C. Penney

J. C. Penney

-External links:*...

, Sears, and sometimes Kohl's

Kohl's

Kohl's Corporation is an American department store chain headquartered in the Milwaukee suburb of Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, operating , 1,089 stores in 49 states. In 1998, it entered the S&P 500 list, and is also listed in the Fortune 500...

.

By country

Canada

In Canada

Canada

Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

 the French term dépanneur

Dépanneur

A dépanneur is a convenience store, usually part of a chain, or an independently-run corner shop, general store or deli, in the province of Quebec in Canada...

is used for a general store in the province of Quebec. The oldest continually run general store in Canada is Trousdale's, located in Sydenham, Ontario

Sydenham, Ontario

Sydenham, Ontario can mean:*Sydenham, Frontenac County, Ontario*Sydenham, Grey County, OntarioSee also: Sydenham...

, which has been operated by the Trousdale family since 1836.

United Kingdom

Village shops have become increasingly rare in the densely populated parts of England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, although they remain common in remote rural

Rural

Rural areas or the country or countryside are areas that are not urbanized, though when large areas are described, country towns and smaller cities will be included. They have a low population density, and typically much of the land is devoted to agriculture...

 areas of Scotland

Scotland

Scotland is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. Occupying the northern third of the island of Great Britain, it shares a border with England to the south and is bounded by the North Sea to the east, the Atlantic Ocean to the north and west, and the North Channel and Irish Sea to the...

, Wales

Wales

Wales is a country that is part of the United Kingdom and the island of Great Britain, bordered by England to its east and the Atlantic Ocean and Irish Sea to its west. It has a population of three million, and a total area of 20,779 km²...

 and Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland

Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...

 along with some lesser populated areas of England such as North Yorkshire

North Yorkshire

North Yorkshire is a non-metropolitan or shire county located in the Yorkshire and the Humber region of England, and a ceremonial county primarily in that region but partly in North East England. Created in 1974 by the Local Government Act 1972 it covers an area of , making it the largest...

, Northumberland

Northumberland

Northumberland is the northernmost ceremonial county and a unitary district in North East England. For Eurostat purposes Northumberland is a NUTS 3 region and is one of three boroughs or unitary districts that comprise the "Northumberland and Tyne and Wear" NUTS 2 region...

 and The Lake District.

Their rarity in England is due to several factors, such as the rise in car ownership, competition from large chain supermarket

Supermarket

A supermarket, a form of grocery store, is a self-service store offering a wide variety of food and household merchandise, organized into departments...

s, 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 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 a post office

Post office

A post office is a facility forming part of a postal system for the posting, receipt, sorting, handling, transmission or delivery of mail.Post offices offer mail-related services such as post office boxes, postage and packaging supplies...

, private business services such as tearooms, cafe

Café

A café , also spelled cafe, in most countries refers to an establishment which focuses on serving coffee, like an American coffeehouse. In the United States, it may refer to an informal restaurant, offering a range of hot meals and made-to-order sandwiches...

s, and bed and breakfast

Bed and breakfast

A bed and breakfast is a small lodging establishment that offers overnight accommodation and breakfast, but usually does not offer other meals. Since the 1980s, the meaning of the term has also extended to include accommodations that are also known as "self-catering" establishments...

 accommodation; or state services such as libraries

Public library

A public library is a library that is accessible by the public and is generally funded from public sources and operated by civil servants. There are five fundamental characteristics shared by public libraries...

 and General Practitioner

General practitioner

A general practitioner is a medical practitioner who treats acute and chronic illnesses and provides preventive care and health education for all ages and both sexes. They have particular skills in treating people with multiple health issues and comorbidities...

 (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 (although recent economic downturns and changed drinking laws have begun to impact upon and change the survival of even this village stalwart) 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 nearby town dwellers with their trendy chefs or local produce/organic menus. In village areas close to Towns and Cities with a modern, mixed ethnic picture, out of town dining experiences of an ethnic kind have become popular in former pub premises. Most notable are large Indian and Chinese restaurants in areas such as Leicestershire

Leicestershire

Leicestershire is a landlocked county in the English Midlands. It takes its name from the heavily populated City of Leicester, traditionally its administrative centre, although the City of Leicester unitary authority is today administered separately from the rest of Leicestershire...

, in the English East Midlands.

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 (http://www.virsa.org/ViRSA) 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

Local food

Local food or the local food movement is a "collaborative effort to build more locally based, self-reliant food economies - one in which sustainable food production, processing, distribution, and consumption is integrated to enhance the economic, environmental and social health of a particular...

, organic

Organic food

Organic foods are foods that are produced using methods that do not involve modern synthetic inputs such as synthetic pesticides and chemical fertilizers, do not contain genetically modified organisms, and are not processed using irradiation, industrial solvents, or chemical food additives.For the...

 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

British Asian

British Asian is a term used to describe British citizens who descended from mainly South Asia, also known as South Asians in the United Kingdom...

 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 are located on the corner plot or street end of a row of terraced housing

Terraced house

In architecture and city planning, a terrace house, terrace, row house, linked house or townhouse is a style of medium-density housing that originated in Great Britain in the late 17th century, where a row of identical or mirror-image houses share side walls...

, often Victorian

Victorian era

The Victorian era of British history was the period of Queen Victoria's reign from 20 June 1837 until her death on 22 January 1901. It was a long period of peace, prosperity, refined sensibilities and national self-confidence...

 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 is 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 greengrocer

Greengrocer

A greengrocer or fruiterer is a retail trader in fruit and vegetables; that is, in green groceries. Greengrocer is primarily a British and Australian term, and greengrocers' shops were once common in suburbs, towns and villages...

s, baker

Baker

A baker is someone who bakes and sells bread, Cakes and similar foods may also be produced, as the traditional boundaries between what is produced by a baker as opposed to a pastry chef have blurred in recent decades...

s, butcher

Butcher

A butcher is a person who may slaughter animals, dress their flesh, sell their meat or any combination of these three tasks. They may prepare standard cuts of meat, poultry, fish and shellfish for sale in retail or wholesale food establishments...

s and fishmonger

Fishmonger

A fishmonger is someone who sells fish and seafood...

s.

In popular culture

Many British TV

Television

Television is a telecommunication medium for transmitting and receiving moving images that can be monochrome or colored, with accompanying sound...

 and Radio

Radio

Radio is the transmission of signals through free space by modulation of electromagnetic waves with frequencies below those of visible light. Electromagnetic radiation travels by means of oscillating electromagnetic fields that pass through the air and the vacuum of space...

 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

BBC Radio 4

BBC Radio 4 is a British domestic radio station, operated and owned by the BBC, that broadcasts a wide variety of spoken-word programmes, including news, drama, comedy, science and history. It replaced the BBC Home Service in 1967. The station controller is currently Gwyneth Williams, and the...

 series, The Archers

The Archers

The Archers is a long-running British soap opera broadcast on the BBC's main spoken-word channel, Radio 4. It was originally billed as "an everyday story of country folk", but is now described on its Radio 4 web site as "contemporary drama in a rural setting"...

, (1950–present day). Or the ITV1

ITV1

ITV1 is a generic brand that is used by twelve franchises of the British ITV Network in the English regions, Wales, southern Scotland , the Isle of Man and the Bailiwicks of Jersey and Guernsey. The ITV1 brand was introduced by Carlton and Granada in 2001, alongside the regional identities of their...

 soap opera Coronation Street

Coronation Street

Coronation Street is a British soap opera set in Weatherfield, a fictional town in Greater Manchester based on Salford. Created by Tony Warren, Coronation Street was first broadcast on 9 December 1960...

(1960–present day) featuring a cornershop; it was owned, until recently, by Alf Roberts

Alf Roberts

Alfred Sidney "Alf" Roberts was a fictional character in the British ITV soap Coronation Street. He ran a grocery shop at No. 15 and was heavily involved in local politics, including two spells as mayor of Weatherfield...

 the grocer and after his death in the late 1990s was bought by Dev Alahan

Dev Alahan

Devendra 'Dev' Alahan is a fictional character in the UK television ITV soap opera, Coronation Street. Portrayed by actor Jimmi Harkishin, the character first appeared onscreen during the episode airing on 10 November 1999.-Character development:...

, 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

BBC

The British Broadcasting Corporation is a British public service broadcaster. Its headquarters is at Broadcasting House in the City of Westminster, London. It is the largest broadcaster in the world, with about 23,000 staff...

 TV comedy series Open All Hours

Open All Hours

Open All Hours is a BBC sitcom written by Roy Clarke which ran for four series a first run in 1976, a second run in 1981, third in 1982 and finally with a fourth run in 1985, with a pilot episode from the Seven of One series in 1973...

(1976–1985), set in the real suburb of Balby

Balby

Balby is a suburb of Doncaster located to the south-west of the borough in the north of England. It is home to the former secondary school, now sports college Balby Carr...

 in Doncaster

Doncaster

Doncaster is a town in South Yorkshire, England, and the principal settlement of the Metropolitan Borough of Doncaster. The town is about from Sheffield and is popularly referred to as "Donny"...

, the shop front used for the street scenes in the series does actually exist in the area and is a hair salon in reality. The BBC Scotland

BBC Scotland

BBC Scotland is a constituent part of the British Broadcasting Corporation, the publicly-funded broadcaster of the United Kingdom. It is, in effect, the national broadcaster for Scotland, having a considerable amount of autonomy from the BBC's London headquarters, and is run by the BBC Trust, who...

 comedy series Still Game

Still Game

Still Game is a Scottish sitcom, produced by The Comedy Unit with the BBC. It was created by Ford Kiernan and Greg Hemphill, who play the lead characters - two Glaswegian pensioners, named Jack Jarvis and Victor McDade respectively....

has a corner shop as a recurring location where characters can meet and gossip; the actor who plays its owner, Navid Harris (Sanjeev Kohli

Sanjeev Kohli

Sanjeev Singh Kohli is a Scottish Asian comedian, writer and actor. He is most famous for his role as Navid Harrid in the sitcom Still Game and as Rajesh Majhu in the radio sitcom Fags, Mags and Bags.- Early life :...

), plays a similar role as Ramesh in the Radio 4 comedy series Fags, Mags and Bags

Fags, Mags and Bags

Fags, Mags and Bags is a Scottish radio comedy broadcast on BBC Radio 4. Its first series was nominated for a Sony Radio Award.The writers, Sanjeev Kohli and Donald McLeary, received a Writers Guild Award in November 2008 for Radio Comedy of the Year....

which is set entirely in Ramesh's shop.

The band Cornershop

Cornershop

Cornershop are a British indie rock band formed in 1991 by Wolverhampton-born Tjinder Singh , his brother Avtar Singh , David Chambers and Ben Ayres , the first three having previously been members of Preston-based band General Havoc, who released one single in 1991...

 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.

United States

During the first half of the 20th century, general stores were displaced in many areas of the United States

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 by many different types of specialized retailers. But from the 1960s through present, many small specialized retailers are in turn crushed by the so-called "category killer

Category killer

Category killer is a term used in marketing and strategic management to describe a product, service, brand, or company that has such a distinct sustainable competitive advantage that competing firms find it almost impossible to operate profitably in that industry...

s", which are "big-box" wholesale

Wholesale

Wholesaling, jobbing, or distributing is defined as the sale of goods or merchandise to retailers, to industrial, commercial, institutional, or other professional business users, or to other wholesalers and related subordinated services...

-type retailers large enough to carry the majority of best-selling goods in a specific category like sporting goods

Sports equipment

Sports equipment is a general term for any object used for sport or exercise. Examples of sports equipment include:-Exercise equipment:Examples for exercise include swiss balls, weights, equipment for the gym...

 or office supplies

Office supplies

Office supplies is the generic term that refers to all supplies regularly used in offices by businesses and other organizations, from private citizens to governments, who work with the collection, refinement, and output of information .The term includes small, expendable, daily use items such as...

.

However, the convenience inherent in the general store has been revived in the form of the modern convenience store

Convenience store

A convenience store, corner store, corner shop, commonly called a bodega in Spanish-speaking areas of the United States, is a small store or shop in a built up area that stocks a range of everyday items such as groceries, toiletries, alcoholic and soft drinks, and may also offer money order and...

 and the hypermarket

Hypermarket

In commerce, a hypermarket is a superstore combining a supermarket and a department store. The result is an expansive retail facility carrying a wide range of products under one roof, including full groceries lines and general merchandise...

, which can be seen as taking the general store or convenience store concept to its largest possible implementation.