This happened in 2008 too with the housing downturn. Part of the store boom I participated in was fueled by that growth.

The problem is they can’t manage to keep most of them once the economy bounces back, and growth slows significantly (their top line growth was only 2-4% per year for most of the 2010s and they still aren’t profitable on e-commerce)

Maybe since inflation is a different beast it will capture more consumers like this, we shall see

We shall see, indeed. I believe that this round of inflation is going to stick around for a while for to geopolitical reasons: decreasing globalization, China no longer exporting deflation to the rest of the world. As someone who has only ever seen sovereign bond yields go down over time, it'll be interesting.

very interesting, I wonder if they picked up on my demographic and kept pestering for reviews and feedback when I let it out regarding my price experience shopping there and noting explicitly the lack of inflation increase I had seen elsewhere at the other stores I frequent. I definitely contributed a data point to these reports referenced above.