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EndGame Macro
Dollar General Is Expanding Again And That Should Make You Think…

This is a huge signal to me. Dollar General announcing 450 new stores for 2026 isn’t the kind of expansion you see when the consumer is strong, it’s the kind you see when a company expects a larger share of the country to be shopping at the bottom rung. You don’t build hundreds of ultra discount locations because the middle class is thriving; you build them because more households are about to trade down.

During 2008–09, when unemployment rose and real wages slipped, dollar stores were one of the only retail formats expanding aggressively. They picked up foot traffic from stressed shoppers, pulled in new customer segments who were being squeezed, and kept growing even after the recession technically ended because the habits stuck. The dollar store decade wasn’t born out of prosperity, it was born out of strain.

So when Dollar General is closing a small number of weak locations but still rolling out 400–500 new ones, mostly in rural and lower income areas, it’s not a flex of confidence in a booming economy. It’s a quiet admission about where they believe the consumer is headed with more price sensitivity, more budget stress, more communities where the only reliable business model is selling the cheapest version of everyday life. Expansion on this scale is a macro signal and it’s telling you the market for bargain priced necessities is still growing.
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