Most Roses stores are in somewhat remote or somewhat poorer areas. K-Mart was sort of like that, but Roses reminds me particularly of Ames, if you remember them. Their mid-sized discount stores were scattered all over rural and small-town New England. (In addition to Walmart, overexpansion killed them.)
The lawn and garden displays outside the store—there is no garden/outdoor department here, which is a space- and cost-saving measure—offered great bargains on a few tools. Cheaper than Home Depot for the same lightweight versions. Plastic lawn chairs for $10.99 too. Not bad.
There’s also no real electronics department. So this is not fully comparable to Walmart or K-Mart. However, some of the now-defunct discount department stores also lacked certain departments. So while there are elements of the closeout store or variety store here, I think Roses qualifies as a “true” discount department store.
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