Dan Caplinger

You've heard about shrinkflation, and you can see that at Dollar General, where oftentimes the price of an item won't change, but the size of the packaging will change.

That's obviously not necessarily perfectly consumer-friendly, but it is in many cases friendlier than what you're seeing at traditional grocery stores, where not only are they shrinking the packages, they're also charging a lot more for them.

And so, I think working with manufacturers on the goods that they are using, I think Dollar General has put itself in enough of a bargaining position where it can at least have some pricing power in dealing with suppliers, and to that extent, not have to pass through as much of cost increases as what you see at traditional grocery stores and retail stores.

I think that it is a situation where you're not quite to saturation yet.

There have been some places I've been, it's like, okay, there's a Dollar General on one end of town, there's a Dollar General on the other end of town.

They're like a mile apart.

Really?

But convenience is a factor.

And so the cost is low enough.

It doesn't cost that much to build a Dollar General store compared to a larger department store.

So they can push the boundaries of saturation in ways that other chains can't.

Emily, I'm always glad to hear new good ideas.

I think Rollins is a great business, largely hiding in plain sight.

Nobody wants to talk about pest control, but it is a necessity.

It's hard to see AI disruption there either.

Some protection against that, I think, is valuable.

I'm a Planet Fitness member.

As I said, it's interesting to look at that business from an investor perspective.

I will say this,

Dollar General stock has just about doubled in the past year.