Poor Economy Hurting the Bodegas

While there is no doubt the economic woes of this country has hurt the telecommunications business, I never once thought that the small mom and pop stores would be feeling it as hard.

According to a recent article in the Charlotte Observer small bodegas in the south that used to do quite well with their money remittance products are seeing that business almost cut in half. One store they reference in the article used to do over $4,000 a day in money remittance and is now doing only $2,000 a day. The reason for this decline is that many of the communities who had high concentrations of migrant Latino workers are seeing those migrants going home and staying home since there are just not that many jobs anymore (mostly in construction and farming).

While calling card sales have not dipped as dramatically for this store, there is no doubt that those sales are down as well since most of those people that used to use the money remittance service also purchased phone cards.

The migrant worker population is much larger in the South and Western parts of the United States so the decline is felt much more in those areas than in the Northern areas where most of the immigrants are permanent rather than temporary.