Dollar General To Open 800 Stores In 2024

[HCal]

While I'm not a fan of Dollar General, I do like the Dollar General Market stores that they have in some places. I think if they use this as their main vehicle for expansion, it could work out well, just like Walmart used their supercenter concept to expand after the discount stores became stale. They will need more staffing to handle the fresh foods, but I think their sales could increase enough to cover it.

With that said, their stock has lost almost half its value this year, so the CEO probably needs to take some action relatively quickly. Cost-cutting is not going to work because there is hardly anything left to cut. Therefore, growth is the best option, they just have to do it properly.

[retailfanmitchell019]

I would love to see this chain disappear along with its "kin".

It is the ever evolving descent into deep subpar retailing. The more one cannot afford to shop in others stores the poorer one gets and the more one perpetuates the decline in retail grocery.

It has been called the "Walmart Effect".

Cheap prices are NOT free. Amongst the costs are low wages and unaffordable health insurance and a reliance on "social services" along with poor working conditions. Customers lose service, quality and get to pay more taxes for "social services" and there is many other losses for employees, customers and society.

This has been studied and peer reviewed by smarter people than most of us here


Just sayin.........................

Not to get political, but I have three words for all of this Walmart/Dollar General expansion: Trickle down economics. Both political parties have embraced it. During the 80s deregulation, the Feds stopped enforcing antitrust laws that preserved competition and kept companies from having too much power. This is why we’ve also seen consolidation in the media industry. In 1983, 90% of US media was controlled by 50 companies. Now it’s down to four big media companies.
Trickle down economics also weakened labor unions.
As much as I’m not a fan of Walmart and Dollar General, it’s not necessarily the fault of those two for consolidation of the US grocery industry, it’s the trickle down economics which both political parties have embraced that have led to all of this.

And here we are. Kroger is trying to get this Albertsons merger through. Hopefully Lina Khan gets tougher than the previous FTC chairs when it comes to antitrust enforcement and at least partially aborts the merger…

When there’s a lack of choice, it’s not really free-market capitalism.

[jamcool]

The truth is that the “Dollar” stores are often the only mass retailer in a lot of small towns-the alternative is the overpriced convenience stores selling mostly junk food. Ma&Pa’s General Store ain’t coming back.
Now if the people who run Aldi in the US had any sense, they would start building stores in smaller towns as an alternative to the DGs

[storewanderer]

Not to get political, but I have three words for all of this Walmart/Dollar General expansion: Trickle down economics. Both political parties have embraced it. During the 80s deregulation, the Feds stopped enforcing antitrust laws that preserved competition and kept companies from having too much power. This is why we’ve also seen consolidation in the media industry. In 1983, 90% of US media was controlled by 50 companies. Now it’s down to four big media companies.
Trickle down economics also weakened labor unions.
As much as I’m not a fan of Walmart and Dollar General, it’s not necessarily the fault of those two for consolidation of the US grocery industry, it’s the trickle down economics which both political parties have embraced that have led to all of this.

And here we are. Kroger is trying to get this Albertsons merger through. Hopefully Lina Khan gets tougher than the previous FTC chairs when it comes to antitrust enforcement and at least partially aborts the merger…

When there’s a lack of choice, it’s not really free-market capitalism.

The biggest thing to keep in mind is Dollar General and Wal Mart got where they are today by explicitly opening stores where other retailers would not.

After they did that, they started to get into more competitive situations (and in the case of Wal Mart, completely slaughtering the competition). But with Dollar General even those "more competitive situations" often place them in very tough neighborhoods of larger metros where- again- other retailers just don't want to open.

Bigger fish are coming up to fry with FTC plus it is an election year. I suspect Cerberus has played its cards well to unload Albertsons as they want to. I worry for the merged entity's debt level and the various issues I see with how things are run.

[mbz321]

The truth is that the “Dollar” stores are often the only mass retailer in a lot of small towns-the alternative is the overpriced convenience stores selling mostly junk food. Ma&Pa’s General Store ain’t coming back.
Now if the people who run Aldi in the US had any sense, they would start building stores in smaller towns as an alternative to the DGs

Exactly THIS. People can crap on DG all they want, but they are pretty much vital in many rural areas where the next alternative is maybe a gas station mini mart or driving 10-20+ miles to a larger town.
However, it seems the company is greatly overextending itself and should slow down on expansion until they get their current operations in check.

[storewanderer]

The truth is that the “Dollar” stores are often the only mass retailer in a lot of small towns-the alternative is the overpriced convenience stores selling mostly junk food. Ma&Pa’s General Store ain’t coming back.
Now if the people who run Aldi in the US had any sense, they would start building stores in smaller towns as an alternative to the DGs

Exactly THIS. People can crap on DG all they want, but they are pretty much vital in many rural areas where the next alternative is maybe a gas station mini mart or driving 10-20+ miles to a larger town.
However, it seems the company is greatly overextending itself and should slow down on expansion until they get their current operations in check.

The number of <2,000 population towns (which previously did not attract major retailers of any kind- not even a supermarket) that Dollar General has opened in spans across the US. These towns had NOTHING else for people to shop at.

People may say the stores are lousy, messy, unpredictable hours, poorly run, whatever, but dealing with that is a lot better (and cheaper) than driving 30 miles away to the next town that has more major retailers. And if we are talking things like environmental footprint and all of that, putting stores closer to where people live absolutely benefits the environment...

Not sure why some posters here are so down on this chain... especially when they don't live out in the middle of nowhere and even have to shop there...

Yes operations are sloppy, wages are low, standards are low, but they pack a good mix of items into a small space and price it at levels affordable for the areas. With their weekly $5 off $25 Saturday coupon and digital coupons you can do very well on price at Dollar General.

[HCal]

The number of <2,000 population towns (which previously did not attract major retailers of any kind- not even a supermarket) that Dollar General has opened in spans across the US. These towns had NOTHING else for people to shop at.

People may say the stores are lousy, messy, unpredictable hours, poorly run, whatever, but dealing with that is a lot better (and cheaper) than driving 30 miles away to the next town that has more major retailers. And if we are talking things like environmental footprint and all of that, putting stores closer to where people live absolutely benefits the environment...

Not sure why some posters here are so down on this chain... especially when they don't live out in the middle of nowhere and even have to shop there...

Yes operations are sloppy, wages are low, standards are low, but they pack a good mix of items into a small space and price it at levels affordable for the areas. With their weekly $5 off $25 Saturday coupon and digital coupons you can do very well on price at Dollar General.

Completely agree. We can criticize them for putting mom-and-pop retailers out of business, but what's done is done. If DG leaves town, the 80-year-old family run supermarket that shut down during the recession is not coming back. And Aldi is not coming to town either. They are a global company, and rural America with its poverty and shrinking population isn't exactly an attractive market compared to Europe or China.

[storewanderer]

Completely agree. We can criticize them for putting mom-and-pop retailers out of business, but what's done is done. If DG leaves town, the 80-year-old family run supermarket that shut down during the recession is not coming back. And Aldi is not coming to town either. They are a global company, and rural America with its poverty and shrinking population isn't exactly an attractive market compared to Europe or China.

Dollar General's "growth" format requires them to build build build because those stores don't grow as much over time as a typical new retail store does due to lack of growth/declining populations in many cases. There is a place, a demand, for a store, yes, in these towns, but there isn't much money to be made in any one town. So you get to 20,000 stores or whatever and still have to keep growing it. And Dollar General's pricing enables it to sell a lot more things to people in that town than the 80 year old independent grocer did and also Dollar General carries a far wider merchandise mix for instance kitchen gadgets, sheets, towels, and seasonal items like Halloween Costumes/Christmas items- that independent grocer did not handle any of those categories. Dollar General being there brings items to these very small remote locations that were not previously available there.

In my observation quite a few of the mom and pop retailers were put out of business before Dollar General came to town.

Also I have no qualms when I see a Dollar General take significant share in a 4,000 population town from an overpriced chain grocer or even a regional chain running an outdated facility with absurdly high pricing in said small town. Also the addition of Dollar General+chain/regional grocer gives the people of that town additional stores to ad shop and adds competition to their market (as long as the grocer can stay afloat which usually with that population it still can).

[veteran+]

This problem is way more complicated than anyone has posited.

"Not sure why some posters here are so down on this chain... especially when they don't live out in the middle of nowhere and even have to shop there..."

I will continue to disparage this format because it is an awful solution to an exigent problem. It is not even a real solution.

The bigger picture (with these types of stores) is still putrid.

[Brian Lutz]

I've posted on other threads about how terrible the local Dollar General is (TL;DR version: You only have about a 50% chance of the store actually being open if you visit during regular business hours.) It's basically the only store within a 5 mile radius of my house (there's a Lowes grocery a little further out which is nice but also rather expensive, and a Food Lion a little further than that which is very average but also fairly expensive) but I have no idea how they manage to actually stay in business with the way they run the place.