Dollar General will give $1.875 million in food and personal-care goods to Rochester-based Foodlink under a New York agreement that adds pricing controls after state inspections found repeated errors.
New York Attorney General Letitia James announced the agreement Oct. 15. The goods, valued at retail prices, constitute a civil penalty. The agreement gives Dollar General 18 months from its effective date to deliver them. Foodlink said its network of food pantries and meal programs will distribute the goods to people facing food insecurity. The agreement does not specify payments to individual shoppers.
The Attorney General’s office reviewed 913 Weights and Measures inspection reports covering 287 stores and 95,539 scanned items during fiscal years 2021 through 2023. Overall, 43% of inspections did not meet the state’s standard, which requires at least 98% of sampled items to be priced accurately. The failure rate was 42% in fiscal 2021, rose to 55% in fiscal 2022 and fell to 28% in fiscal 2023.
A separate undercover investigation by two state investigators covered 11 stores from March through June 2023. Of 114 items they bought, 16 were charged above the lowest advertised price. The four largest overcharges were 39%, 38%, 26% and 22%, according to the agreement.
Dollar General must honor the lowest applicable price, keep shelf tags current, train its New York employees and make discounts clearer on receipts. An independent auditor must inspect every New York store twice per fiscal year from 2027 through 2029. The agreement also calls for 15 random audits each year comparing weekly-ad prices with shelf and register prices. Discrepancies found in specified inspections and audits must be fixed within 24 hours.
The agreement describes mismatches involving shelf tags, advertisements, digital coupons and checkout prices, as well as receipts that made discounts difficult to understand. It calls for added labor to keep shelf tags accurate but does not identify staffing as the cause of the discrepancies. Dollar General neither admitted nor denied the state’s findings.
“Too many households are being forced to make difficult choices between food, housing, transportation, and other essentials,” said Foodlink President and CEO Julia Tedesco. The Guardian reported that Dollar General said it was “disappointed any time we fail to deliver on this commitment.” The enhanced audits are scheduled to begin in fiscal 2027.
