Target Uses AI to Discover that Water is Wet
Welcome to Friday, futurists.
Today, Dollar General announced the closure of 141 locations—96 Dollar General stores and 45 PopShelf locations. This is a dramatic reversal from their earlier strategy to open 575 new stores in 2025. So what changed from three months ago? 🤔 Forget food deserts, we’re heading for meaning deserts.
But before we get into today’s essay—have you ever noticed that every AI brand’s logo looks like a butt? 🌟Especially Home Depot’s new AI Assistant, Magic Apron. We get into that and a… hole… lot more on this week’s podcast. Listen on Apple or Spotify.
Dollar Store Diaspora: America's Meaning Deserts
Forget food deserts; we're heading for meaning deserts. As Dollar General shuts 141 locations—a stark departure from promises to open 575 new stores—we're witnessing not just retail contraction but cultural contraction, where community engagement and context are lost to the aether of the algorithm.
This is no isolated phenomenon but a visible manifestation of Trump's tariff regime colliding with America's bargain retail ecosystem. And perhaps this was always the endgame, but the current austerity of the new administration has accelerated it.
The carnage is widespread, but some of the damage was done well ahead of the election: Big Lots (1,392 stores), 99 Cents Only (371 stores), Bargain Hunt (92 stores), and Family Dollar (718 stores) have all either declared bankruptcy or announced substantial closures—creating retail deserts in precisely the communities most dependent on price-accessible goods.
The causality is direct and unambiguous. As we discussed in Episode 389 of the Future Commerce podcast, the commercial landscape now reflects America's political anxieties. Our eTail Palm Springs report revealed brands like Olly Vitamins experiencing unexpected Amazon uplift from Hispanic consumers—a demographic increasingly shopping online to minimize public exposure amid heightened deportation concerns. Commerce patterns have become fear patterns, with customer journeys shaped as much by immigration policy as by convenience or price.
But beyond these retail deserts, we're witnessing the expansion of something more insidious: meaning deserts. Food deserts describe geographic areas lacking nutritional resources, meaning deserts represent spaces where algorithmic curation and profit motives have stripped away cultural nutrition—the context, history, significance; things that give consumer experiences deeper value that can be had through commerce (because we believe that culture can be experienced via commerce).
Target exemplifies this phenomenon when it deploys AI to “spot the mob wife aesthetic” trending on TikTok (rather than employing human cultural interpreters) to understand why this aesthetic resonates. Their Chief Guest Experience Officer boasted this week in Retail Dive about "quickly amplifying all things leopard print" across platforms; but the real triumph would be if Target could stick the landing with cultural intelligence. At all.
As discount retailers vanish from physical neighborhoods, we're simultaneously witnessing the spread of these meaning deserts online. Both phenomena disproportionately affect vulnerable communities, creating a two-tiered system where some consumers enjoy richly contextualized shopping experiences while others receive only algorithmic approximations of culture, stripped of nuance and depth.
The dollar-store contraction is both symptom and symbol—a visible manifestation of America's crumbling relationship with global trade, domestic inequality, and the politicization of consumer behavior. As we turn inward, our culture and commerce adapts and ultimately reshapes American consumer identity.
These retail contractions exist within a broader economic context of necessary—if painful—fiscal recalibration. With U.S. debt service costs approaching an astronomical $952 billion annually and interest rates at historic highs, the chaotic pressure on markets may serve a function: forcing the Federal Reserve's hand toward rate reduction.
The dollar-store diaspora is collateral damage in this larger economic chess match, and the average middle American is a sacrificial pawn.
— Phillip
Prebiotic Powerhouse Poppi Procured by PepsiCo in Pricey Purchase. PepsiCo prepares to procure probiotic pop purveyor Poppi for a princely $1.5 billion plus, positioning the parent company to penetrate the prosperous "better-for-you" beverage paradigm. The playful prebiotic soda brand, popular with the post-soda generation, proves big beverage behemoths remain partial to purchasing promising potables rather than pioneering their own products.
Our Take: Guess that Super Bowl activation didn’t harm the brand too much after all. Founder Allison Ellsworth took to TikTok on February 10th to address criticisms about their splashy vending machine “giveaway” (which was, in reality, a machine on loan) to several influencers. While acknowledging the criticisms, Ellsworth didn’t do much to defend the original intent of the campaign—which seemed like an obvious thing to do for a brand with long-term plans. That is, unless the plans were to sell; then, capitulation makes perfect sense.
Toys for Aging Peters (Pan). Hasbro's strategic pivot to "kidults" reveals the profit in perpetual adolescence. With 60% of its revenue already coming from those 13 and older, the toymaker doubles down on Marvel figures and G.I. Joe nostalgia. Trump's tariffs threaten this relationship, as China manufactures half of Hasbro's U.S. toys. In the company’s Feb 20 earnings call, CFO Gina Goetter's claimed that grown-ups have "more spending power" is corporate-speak for "adults with childhood fixations have disposable income and emotional vulnerabilities we can monetize."
MoMA Wants a Digital Warhol. The Museum of Modern Art seeks a $260K Head of eCommerce to transform artistic appreciation into commercial transactions. This cultural commerce czar will oversee a $35M business that bridges the gap between contemplative spaces and conversion rates. The job description reads like a manifesto for our times – even our most sacred cultural institutions must now worship at the altar of abandoned carts and email capture.
Robot Colonel on the Prowl. KFC's self-driving food pods now roam Chinese streets like hungry predators hunting for customers. Four years after SoftBank's bet on Neolix, we've arrived at the logical conclusion of delivery convenience: restaurants that stalk you. The dystopian charm of being chased by fried chicken raises a profound question – when even fast food abandons its fixed location, what permanent institutions remain in our lives?
Condiment Innovation Nobody Asked For: Heinz introduces ketchup specifically formulated for potato chips, solving a problem exactly zero people complained about. This wide-mouth container joins Claussen's rebranding of pickle juice as a premium mixer and Guinness-flavored pretzels in the unholy trinity of unnecessary food pairings. The modern CPG playbook revealed: take existing products, recombine them in slightly different configurations, and charge a premium for experiencing this "innovation."
Economic Choose-Your-Own-Adventure. Dueling narratives around Trump's tariffs create a Rorschach test where your preexisting beliefs determine what you see. International boycotts of American goods spread while domestic indicators remain strong, proving once again that modern economics discourse is less science than red pill/blue pill discourse. Tesla sales fall overseas as consumers discover their wallets make excellent political statements, while new apps emerge to help shoppers avoid products from the land of the free trade barriers.
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