company store

noun

1. a retail store operated by a company for the convenience of the employees, who are required to buy from the store.

Word History and Origins

Origin of company store¹

An Americanism dating back to 1870–75

Example Sentences

Miners were paid in scrip, the company’s version of money that could only be used at the company store or in the businesses nearby that honored it.

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And so he has built one of the most expensive towers in America, extending a quarter-mile into the sky, and filled it with 19 Danny Meyer-approved eateries, coffee shops, a company store, a gym and Morgan’s, the English pub where he hopes bankers will commune after-hours.

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Or the overlapping scenes of the company store charging “exorbitant prices” in both texts; how both books create a contrast of the fertile fields against the dying migrants; or how in each novel there is an “emphasis on music as an encouragement for the human spirit.”

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Last week, as JD Vance prepared to take the debate stage with Walz, Terra Vance drove along winding roads through mountain hollows draped with wild kudzu, past an abandoned company store in her hometown where generations of coal miners in her family once shopped and paid with scrip they were rewarded for their work in the mines instead of cash.

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The Itmann Company Store complex functioned as “the center of the community,” according to the building’s National Register nomination form, “The building was not only the location of much-needed services, but also the center of casual social interaction between Itmann residents.”

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