Dollar General 'Food First'

Dollar General has now expanded their store brands to over 600 different products. They are installing more refrigerated cases in their stores, more than 65,000 refrigerated cases that they added more produce to their stores. But at the same time, what's really interesting to me is they're not making as much money, because they made more money off of non-food products and now about 80% of what Dollar General sells is food products. 

Sally: Yes, and I think it's really interesting in their announcement that they say that they are not a grocer, even though they are interested in becoming more of a grocer, adding all of these different products. What I'm wondering is what products will be sacrificed in the store to make room for all of these coolers and 65,000 cooler doors that they are hoping to install for their fresh initiative and, you know, all of these other expanded food products that they're adding to their private label. 

Phil: Yes, something's got to come off the shelves, no question about it. And also, when we look at store brands in general, the unit sales, and that's important to note unit sales versus dollar sales because prices have gone up. So you know, you can always say, oh yeah, prices are up about 18%, but unit sales for store brands are up to 20.5% share, which is the highest that it's ever been, and I think we're going to continue to see that.