Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire Behind Dollar General's Strategy to Dominate Rural America

Their website says they're in 46 states. Idaho is one of the other 4. Family Dollar is the big one in this area.

I call them a Mini Walmart. Convenient and has basics. I pass five of them and two Walmarts on the way to the hunt club. Haven't been in a Family Dollar or Dollar Tree any time in the past several years. They have a retail model that works. Built one near the house last year and the parking lot always has cars. Mom and Pops have to offer something other than the basics or they are gone.

40 miles over a 5,000 ft pass, to Wal o' China mart, this community is very happy with Dollar General, and hoping they do expand into fresh food. Prices are very very good compared to the anal intrusion of a tiny regional grocery chain store here that has been gouging us for forty years.

We’ve had a couple pop around here in the last two years. I find them pretty convenient.

If you go to their website, look at the store locator. They ask which format you want - Dollar General, Fedex, Redbox, Amerigas, and others. I don't know if that means they're part of the same company or if they just have some kind of agreement.

Their Clover Valley store brand stuff is usually pretty decent, about on the level of the generic store brand stuff from groceries. But their block cheddar cheese sucks. Kroger or Walmart store brand cheese is better.

They occasionally get weird flavors of candy that no one else sells. Their orange creamsicle M&Ms are the best example and are actually pretty good.

Like Richard Sear's plan.

There's a Dollar General store within less than 10 miles N-S-E-W of me, plus one Family Dollar. All stock most common major brands of dry and canned food, dairy products, frozen foods, some automotive products, snacks, housewares, greeting cards, toys, clothing, etc., etc., as well as their own DG store brands. A couple of the DGs stock some basic fresh fruit and veggies. A big Dollar General Market in a nearby town stocks all and more of the above plus fresh prepackaged meat and does one heck of a good business. Parking lot is almost always full on most afternoons and especially weekends.

Printed DG receipts have a $5 off $25 pretax purchase coupon on Saturdays, plus each week offer varying assortment of what they call online "Digital" coupons on different products, often amounting to some pretty health discounts.

(Local DG store is also a no charge FedEx package drop-off site.)

Family Dollar was bought out by Dollar Tree a few years back and closed or sold off a bunch of FD stores. They changed a few into DT stores and a few into combo DT/FD stores. The one local FD store is in a nice big new building, plenty of parking, cleaner and better organized than the DG store but overall a bit more expensive on same products than the local DG store. The DG and FD stores here are just a few blocks apart but the DG outsells the FD store by a good bit.

We used to have a couple of local "mom and pop" stores here. Both were privately owned but actually part of a franchised regional grocery chain they bought most stock through. Their prices kept getting more and more expensive, outdated products, etc., so little by little most locals opted to just buy daily essentials from them and do the bulk of their major grocery shopping in one of four nearby larger towns eventually leading them to close their doors.

Our DG SUCKS!

It's hardly ever open due to lack of staffing. The aisles are full of chidt that needs to be put away. You can't find someone to ring you up unless you turn mountain goat and crawl over a ton of [bleep] to find some overworked/underpaid trailer park princess buried in product trying clear an aisle. They built two more in crappier towns 9 miles in either direction that are WAY nicer and better staffed. As someone else said, it must depend on the manager and if that is the case, this "manager" needs to be gone yesterday.

One of the contractors DG uses to put up new buildings told me their business model was to catch them before they got to Walmart.

They bought one of those neighborhood Walmart stores with gas pumps, they keep gas about .20 cheaper than the Arab c stores.

They are all over the place around here.

I saw my first Dollar General in North Dakota.It looked like it was about the biggest building in town . Where I live there is a Family Dollar.

I think it is visited quite often from the looks of the number of cars in the parking lot.

I have never been in it but my wife has a couple times & and she thinks it is okay.

Interesting video. Can't stand the scratchy schreechy voice of the expert gal only could listen to half of it.

The local Dollar General had toilet paper when no one else did.

[quote=irfubar]What the hell is a "dollar general" [quote]
Dollar General, Walmart's worst nightmare next to Amazon.

I’m sure they are taking some of Walleyworld’s business. Damn, I hate that!

The nearest DG in town is HORRIBLE. Always a wreck. Always empty shelves. Always with new stock in boxes in the aisles where you can't get around (and sitting there with no one putting it up). Been that way for years. Most of the others around here are quite nice. One, though, has had problems not even being able to stay open because they can't get anyone to work there.

Much needed in biden's America.......

They dedicate one entire aisle to Halloween, Easter, Ballentimes Day candy.

Hard to score, once a year stuff.

Stock up, stash in the freezer


Diabetics stay away for your own good.

It’s impossible for mom and pop stores to compete on price, with the economy of scale that these chains have. Maybe they can compete on service or relationships, but that’s about it.