Dan Caplinger

is going to put Dollar General on the top 10 list of a lot of retail chains worldwide for the number of locations.

It's got some great deals on things that people need more and more in ways that seemingly defy inflation and price pressures.

It's become the go-to place for a number of things that I get on a regular basis.

This from somebody who, three or four years ago, I wouldn't have set foot in that store, but it just makes economic sense now.

I think your skepticism is warranted by the fact that investors totally agreed with you in 2023 and 2024.

The bout of inflation in 2021 and 2022, it caused some problems at Dollar General.

They had some inventory issues, they had difficulty getting the inventory that they needed to keep consumers coming in the doors.

But what happened was Todd Vasos, who had been CEO, had stepped down in 2022.

He came back in 2023 and he basically said, look, what we were starting to do was not the right approach.

And so what he did instead was to reemphasize expansion while also looking at ways to manage inventory in a way that would be receptive to what consumers were needing.

And in many cases, that involved working with manufacturers,

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.