re: Older Baton Rouge residents. What lead to the decline of NBR?

You are right.
Owning a few stores and selling two locations to a big box I understand this well.
The big box Grocery stores, drug stores, etc have different price codes. In a high theft market they go up on prices on the exact same item they sell for less in a less theft area. They make their profit off turns and renting space to vendors (hallmark cards in a drug store). When you vendors who rent space cannot make money and your theft more than your turns it is time to go.

When you have high theft you have to go up on margins or move out the area. It is to the point the prices you have to charge are just way to high to cover your cost and not show that you are doing it to survive in the gehtto. That is why you will not see a Wal Mart or big national chain grocery store go deep into the gehtto. At the same time you do see Wal marts pop up on almost every corner in a middle class growing area.

Now an independent can possibly make it as they do typically have higher margins to make up for the high theft. If a Wal Mart's A,B, or C level price goes too high they can get caught and looks bad for them.

Smaller drug stores use to do it all the time. I do not know if they still do it. Their pricing set depends on how much competition, projected theft, and avg income of clientele. Set by A,B, or C pricing system.