Dollar General doesn't really compete for markets. It looks for the ones that are already empty.

Hi,

Not sure if anyone here has looked at this on Google Maps, but there's a pattern with Dollar General that stands out.

Zoom into a small rural town. Under 5,000 people. A Walmart supercenter usually isn't there, the format needs a population base those towns don't have. National grocery chains tend to be absent too. What often shows up is a Dollar General.

More than 80% of their stores are in communities under 20,000 people. In a number of those markets it's one of the few national options within a reasonable distance. When a local grocery closes in a town that size it doesn't always get replaced. Dollar General tends to already be there or moves in relatively quickly.

The positioning seems built around low competitive pressure rather than high demand. Suburban markets have more volume but they come with Walmart, Kroger, Aldi, and Target all competing for the same locations. Dollar General mostly operated in different territory. Low real estate costs, limited alternatives for customers, small baskets around $15 but high visit frequency.

What makes it difficult to challenge now is probably the accumulation more than anything else. 20,000 rural leases built over a long period in markets that larger format chains structurally struggle to enter. The format gap seems to be the actual moat, not brand or price.

Worth noting the model isn't clean. Margins are thin, remote logistics are genuinely harder, and the documented impact on local independent grocers is a real tradeoff. Several towns have actively tried to block new Dollar General openings for that reason.

The strategic question I keep landing on is whether "enter markets nobody else is in" is more defensible long term than "compete well in attractive markets." Dollar General is reasonable evidence for the first option, but it took decades and a very specific format to make it work. Not obvious it generalizes easily.