When it comes to brick-and-mortar retail footprints in the U.S., it’s becoming harder and harder to compete with Dollar General.
The franchise, which started with a lone store in Springfield, Kentucky, way back in 1955, recently opened its 20,000th location in Alice, Texas, according to a news release.
In the third quarter of 2023 alone, 260 new locations opened, helping push the franchise’s sales up 2.4% to almost $10 billion, according to an earnings call reported on by the convenience store website C-Store Dive.
Dollar General has additional plans to open another 800 new stores this year as well as remodel 1,500 locations.
Todd Vasos, the company’s CEO, said on the call that the company sees “12,000 opportunities” to add new retail locations in the continental U.S.
alone.
“We have always prided ourselves on being very quick and first to market to capture the majority and release the oversized portion of those 12,000 opportunities. So nothing yet stands in the way of that,” Vasos said on the call, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript.
Dollar General’s 20,000 locations outpace many rival retailers. The corporate entity that owns Dollar Tree and Family Dollar boast about 16,600 stores total. Meanwhile, Walmart clocks in at 5,200 stores and Target has less than 2,000.