crockett

B&M = Brick and Mortar - ie actual store fronts.

Something I've noticed while traveling around is it's not McDonald's that are in every town be it big or small, but rather Dollar Stores.

Be it Dollar General, Dollar Tree or Family Dollar they each are growing toward matching the number of locations McDonald's has in the US. I never really thought about it before as they were just a common thing I was used to seeing, however it seems time and time again, I roll through a town that is too small to gain the attention of any larger retailers or even fast food chains, but they always have a Dollar Store of some sort.

I looked up the numbers..

McDonalds to use as a comparison in the US has roughly 14k locations and world wide 34k


Dollar General 11k+ in the US in 2013 they opened 650 new stores and celebrated their 24th year of consecutive growth.

Family Dollar over 8k locations in US and plans to triple that number. In 2013 they opened 500 new stores.

Dollar Tree as smaller competitor has about 5k stores in US but seems to be growing steadily.

Now the deal is when you go through these rural towns these stores always have customers because they are often the only game in town. The thing is these stores in the middle of nowhere also tend to have some of the highest sales numbers because they are the only game in town.

Just something to think about, even in a retail world dominated by Walmart and other large retailers, these little throw back to a dime store have created a profitable niche.