Consumers are forgoing bags of Doritos and packs of cigarettes as convenience stores across the U.S. face sales declines. It’s another sign of stress for Americans, who are dealing with ever-changing tariff policies, fears of stagflation, and a potential recession.

Sales volume at U.S. convenience stores dropped 4.3% in the year ending Feb. 23, according to data from Circana, a Chicago-based market-research firm, and first reported by the Wall Street Journal. Refrigerated and frozen products, tobacco, and general food sales saw some of the steepest declines.

The sales slip comes as working-class and middle-class households are pulling back spending and overall consumer sentiment is dropping due in part to President Donald Trump’s ongoing trade war and fast-changing tariff policies. Top CEOs like JP Morgan’s Jamie Dimon are becoming increasingly worried about the possible inflationary and recessionary effects of the president’s evolving policies.

There are other factors at play, like higher gas prices, WSJ reported. Though the cost is coming down now, it has been elevated, meaning people have less to spend on a quick snack or drink inside a gas station’s convenience store. And some consumers are looking for healthier options.

And it’s not just convenience items. Consumers say they are planning to pull back discretionary spending in a number of areas, according to McKinsey & Co., including apparel, footwear, and electronics. In general, Americans have less in their checking and savings to absorb higher prices.

That said, Jeff Lenard, vice president of media and strategic communications at the National Association of Convenience Stores, says some of the lost consumer dollars stores are experiencing in packaged food is going toward prepared food in the stores, so not all is lost. Still, he says consumer sentiment is not strong and stores “really need to fight for customers.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

• Pi Day is March 14. Plenty of restaurants and pizza shops are offering deals for cheap or free pizzas and pies. Even more have deals for $3.14.

As you sat in elementary school or junior high and your math teacher began introducing algebraic terms to your vocabulary, you (like many others) may have thought “there’s no way I’ll use this once I’m out of school.” That may be true with integrating factors and centroids, but Pi can save you some money.

The ratio of the circumference of a circle is 3.14 (though the number itself goes on forever). Long ago, math nerds declared March 14 (3/14) Pi Day. And it didn’t take long for marketers to capitalize on that.

Head to your local dessert store, grocer, or bakery and there are better-than-average odds you can get a discount on an apple, cherry, or blueberry pie today. But the discounts don’t end there. Here’s a roundup of retailers, many of whom specialize in pizza pie, offering discounts and freebies on Friday, March 14.

Pizza bargains on Pi Day

Papa John’s

Buy one large or extra-large pizza at the regular price and get one for $3.14 today. You’ll need to be a Papa Rewards member, though.

California Pizza Kitchen

Spend $25 on anything at the restaurant and you can add an Original BBQ Chicken, Pepperoni, or Traditional Cheese pizza for $3.14. You’ll need to enroll in CPK Rewards or use the app to take advantage of the offer.

Marco’s Pizza

Get a medium one-topping pizza for $3.14 when you purchase a large or extra-large pizza. Use the code PIDAY.

Cici’s Pizza

Buy a medium or large one-topping pizza ad get another for $3.14. Cici’s also uses PIDAY as the coupon code.

Mountain Mike’s Pizza

Mountain rewards members can get a free mini pizza with the purchase of a 20 oz. bottled beverage.

Blaze Pizza

Buy one 11-inch pizza and get a second for $3.14 today. And by taking advantage of the offer today, you’ll get a code for the chain’s app that give you another buy-one-get-one-for-$3.14 deal to be used later this month.

Grimaldi’s Pizza

Don’t want a whole pie? Get a giant slices for $3.14 from 11 a.m. to 3 p.m. today.

Non-pizza pie deals

Perkins Restaurants

Not all the deals are pizza-related. Perkins customers can present their server with this coupon to get a slice of pie with the purchas of any entrée.

Famous Dave’s

The BBQ chain is offering a free slice of Bakers Square pie to anyone who makes a $10 minimum purchase.

Village Inn

Get a free slice of pie with the purchase of an entrée and beverage

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com

LAKE WALES, Fla. (AP) — As Trevor Murphy pulls up to his dad’s 20-acre (8-hectare) grove in one of the fastest-growing counties in the United States, he points to the cookie-cutter, one-story homes encroaching on the orange trees from all sides.

“At some point, this isn’t going to be an orange grove anymore,” Murphy, a third-generation grower, says as he gazes at the rows of trees in Lake Wales, Florida. “You look around here, and it’s all houses, and that’s going to happen here.”

Polk County, which includes Lake Wales, contains more acres of citrus than any other county in Florida. And in 2023, more people moved to Polk County than any other county in the country.

Population growth, hurricanes and a vicious citrus greening disease have left the Florida orange industry reeling. Consumers are drinking less orange juice, citrus growers are folding up their operations in the state and the major juice company Tropicana is struggling to stay afloat. With huge numbers of people moving into Florida’s orange growing areas, developers are increasingly building homes on what were once orange groves.

Many growers are now making the difficult decision to sell orange groves that have been in their families for generations to developers building homes to house the growing population.

Others, like Murphy, are sticking it out, hoping to survive until a bug-free tree or other options arrive to repel the disease or treat the trees.

Mounting concerns

When Hurricane Irma blasted through the state’s orange belt in 2017, Florida’s signature crop already had been on a downward spiral for two decades because of the greening disease. Next came a major freeze and two more hurricanes in 2022, followed by two hurricanes last year. A tree that loses branches and foliage in a hurricane can take three years to recover, Murphy said.

Those catastrophes contributed to a 90% decline in orange production over the past two decades. Citrus groves in Florida, which covered more than 832,00 acres (336,698 hectares) at the turn of the century, populated scarcely 275,000 acres (111,288 hectares) last year, and California has eclipsed Florida as the nation’s leading citrus producer.

“Losing the citrus industry is not an option. This industry is … so ingrained in Florida. Citrus is synonymous with Florida,” Matt Joyner, CEO of trade association Florida Citrus Mutual told Florida lawmakers recently.

Nevertheless, Alico Inc., one of Florida’s biggest growers, announced this year that it plans to wind down its citrus operations on more than 53,000 acres (21,000 hectares), saying its production has declined by almost three-quarters in a decade.

That decision hurts processors, including Tropicana, which rely on Alico’s fruit to produce orange juice and must now operate at reduced capacity. Orange juice consumption in the U.S. has been declining for the past two decades, despite a small bump during the COVID-19 pandemic.

A prominent growers group, the Gulf Citrus Growers Association, closed its doors last year.

Location, location, location

Pressure on citrus farming is also growing from one of the state’s other biggest industries: real estate.

Florida expanded by more than 467,000 people last year to 23 million people, making it the third largest state in the nation. And more homes must be built to house that ever-growing population.

Some prominent, multigenerational citrus families each have been putting hundreds of acres (hectares) of groves up for sale for millions of dollars, or as much as $25,000 an acre.

Murphy owns several hundred acres (hectares) of groves and says he has no plans to abandon the industry, though last year he closed a citrus grove caretaking business that managed thousands of acres for other owners.

However, he also has a real estate license, which is useful given the amount of land that is changing hands. He recently sold off acres in Polk County to a home developer, and has used that money to pay off debt and develop plans to replant thousands of trees in more productive groves.

“I would like to think that we’re at the bottom, and we’re starting to climb back up that hill,” Murphy says.

A bug-free tree

A whole ecosystem of businesses dependent on Florida citrus is at risk if the crops fail, including 33,000 full-time and part-time jobs and an economic impact of $6.8 billion in Florida alone. Besides growers, there are juice processors, grove caretakers, fertilizer sellers, packing houses, nurseries and candy manufacturers, all hoping for a fix for citrus greening disease.

Tom Davidson, whose parents founded Davidson of Dundee Citrus Candy and Jelly Factory in Lake Wales in 1966, says the drop in citrus production has impacted what flavor jellies the business is able to produce and the prices it charges to customers.

“We’re really hoping that the scientists can get this figured out so we can we can get back to what we did,” Davidson says.

Researchers have been working for eight years on a genetically modified tree that can kill the tiny insects responsible for citrus greening. The process involves inserting a gene into a citrus tree that produces a protein that can kill baby Asian citrus psyllids by making holes in their guts, according to Lukasz Stelinski, an entomology professor at the University of Florida/Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences’ Citrus Research and Education Center.

It could be at least three years before bug-resistant trees can be planted, leaving Florida growers looking for help from other technologies. They include planting trees inside protective screens and covering young trees with white bags to keep out the bugs, injecting trees with an antibiotic, and finding trees that have become resistant to greening through natural mutation and distributing them to other groves.

“It’s kind of like being a Lions fan before the Detroit Lions started to win games,” Stelinski says. “I’m hoping that we are making that turnaround.”

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com