How Dollar General Sees Leverage in 11,000 Empty US Locations
While many retail rivals retrench, Dollar General eyes 11,000 shuttered sites across the continental US for expansion. The company plans to open 450 new stores in 2026—down from 575 in 2025—even as it holds a pipeline of untapped locations left vacant by rite aid and other drugstores. But this isn’t a standard growth story—it’s a calculated play on real estate arbitrage and competitor inertia.
Dollar General CEO Todd Vasos says the company “won’t get all” those 11,000 empty locations, yet calls this a core reason for bullishness. The real leverage comes from rivals halting store openings, leaving distribution gaps that Dollar General can fill without the traditional rush or excessive spend. “Our competition today is really not opening a lot of stores,” he noted on a recent earnings call.
Contrary to Growth Panic, Expansion Is About Selective Constraint Repositioning
Conventional wisdom treats store openings as a frantic race, pushing chains to multiply locations relentlessly. This view ignores how Dollar General manages leverage by identifying when the market constraint shifts—from customer access to competitor absence. Rather than chasing saturation, the company recalibrates focus to absorbing competitor vacancies, a profound example of constraint-driven strategy.
This system-level perspective reframes how to think about retail growth. Dollar General capitalizes on the fact that drugstores like Rite Aid shutter thousands of locations, forcing competitors to face a choice: aggressively expand or conserve capital. Dollar General chooses the latter, acquiring exclusivity in prime locations without the typical greenfield investment rush.
Leveraging Real Estate Availability to Lower Expansion Barriers
Identifying 11,000 potential stores means Dollar General has a distinct inventory of real estate alternatives at hand. Unlike competitors who face a scarcity-driven bidding war on new sites, Dollar General leverages competitor shutdowns to sidestep this constraint.
This drops the upfront acquisition hurdle from expensive new builds or leases to repurposing proven retail footprints. Plus, with over 20,000 existing stores, the company’s logistics and supply chain systems are already designed to scale efficiently into these locations—turning a costly market entry into a modular expansion sequence.
Unlike rivals such as Family Dollar, which have struggled to balance new openings with closures, Dollar General executes this pipeline with a deliberate pace—slowing store additions while future-proofing growth. This is system leverage in action: scaling without linear cost increases.
Why This Matters for Operators Considering Expansion Under New Constraints
The core constraint in US retail has shifted from finding new customers to securing high-potential locations vacated by others. Dollar General’s approach highlights the advantage of systematic market scanning and patient deployment rather than rapid rollout.
Retailers watching this play must contemplate how to embed real-time environmental tracking into growth decisions, transforming competitor exits into advantage. This isn’t just about opening stores—it’s about gaining durable position in evolving landscapes.
“Expansion without urgency reduces capital waste and increases site quality,” Vasos signals. Other chains ignoring competitor location vacuums will find themselves out-leveraged over time.
Related Tools & Resources
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Frequently Asked Questions
How many new stores does Dollar General plan to open in 2026?
Dollar General plans to open 450 new stores in 2026, which is a decrease from 575 new stores planned in 2025.
What is the significance of the 11,000 empty US locations for Dollar General?
The 11,000 empty locations represent shuttered sites across the continental US from competitors like Rite Aid. Dollar General sees these as strategic opportunities to expand by filling distribution gaps left by rivals who are not aggressively opening new stores.
How does Dollar General's expansion strategy differ from typical retail growth?
Unlike frantic expansion strategies, Dollar General takes a selective and constraint-driven approach by absorbing competitor vacancies and repurposing existing retail footprints instead of building new stores. This allows for lower upfront costs and more efficient scaling.
Why is real estate arbitrage important to Dollar General's growth?
Dollar General uses real estate arbitrage by taking advantage of competitor shutdowns to repurpose existing retail locations. This reduces acquisition costs compared to new builds or leases and leverages proven retail footprints to expand efficiently.
How does Dollar General's supply chain support its expansion?
With over 20,000 existing stores, Dollar General’s logistics and supply chain systems are well-designed to scale into new locations seamlessly, turning expansion into a modular and efficient process.
What challenges do competitors like Family Dollar face compared to Dollar General?
Family Dollar struggles to balance new store openings with closures, whereas Dollar General executes expansions deliberately with a slower pace, avoiding rapid openings that can increase costs and reduce site quality.
What is the core constraint in US retail expansion according to Dollar General?
The core constraint has shifted from acquiring new customers to securing high-potential locations vacated by competitors, allowing Dollar General to focus on opportunistic expansions instead of saturated markets.
How can other retailers learn from Dollar General’s expansion approach?
Other retailers can benefit by embedding real-time environmental tracking to monitor competitor exits and strategically deploy resources to fill market gaps without rushing expansions, thereby improving site quality and reducing capital waste.