Dollar General is borrowing a page from Costco and Marshalls, betting that the “treasure hunt” model can get shoppers to stick around, browse, and spend more instead of grabbing paper towels and leaving.
The strategy is showing up in the company’s numbers. The discount retailer reported fourth-quarter net sales of $10.9 billion, up 5.9%, while full-year sales rose 5.2% to $42.7 billion. Same-store sales grew 4.3% during the quarter.
Operating profit saw the most dramatic improvement, jumping 106.1% in the fourth quarter to $606.3 million and rising 28.6% for the full year to $2.2 billion.
Outgoing CEO Todd Vasos, who retires January 1, 2027, credited the turnaround to a renewed focus on the stores themselves.
“First, with the customer at the center of everything we do, we are focused on enhancing the customer experience. We believe we have a tremendous opportunity to gain additional market share with both new and existing customers as we look to drive trips with them both in-store and digitally,” he said during the company’s Q4 earnings call.
The Costco playbook
Costco and Marshalls built their whole business on the idea that you walk in for one thing and leave with five, drawn in by ever-changing merchandise you didn’t know you wanted. Dollar General is now copying that.
“We have reimagined our traditional store format by creating a new layout in response to what customers have told us they want from their shopping trip,” Vasos explained. “This new format is designed to be more open and inviting, resulting in greater browsing and treasure hunt shopping as customers are exposed to more categories as they navigate the store,” he added.
The early testing has gone well, with the company trying the format in some of its 2025 remodels and reporting a sales lift compared to standard remodels. A quick run for iced coffee can turn into a phone charger and a seasonal item on the way to the register. That’s the whole point of the design.
A rough public moment
The store improvements aren’t happening in a vacuum. Back in 2023, John Oliver spent a segment of Last Week Tonight (2014-Present) critiquing Dollar General regarding its store conditions and labor problems.
Oliver particularly zeroed in on a previous comment by Vasos in which the CEO said that the chain does “very good” in good economic times but “fabulous” in tougher ones.
Vasos never directly responded. The store investment that followed may or may not be connected, but the timing lines up. The uncomfortable truth in Vasos’s original comment is also just accurate. Dollar General tends to thrive when household budgets tighten.
The traffic data backs that up. According to Placer.ai, visits to Dollar General grew 4.9% year-over-year in Q3 2025, with Dollar Tree close behind at 4.3%. Plenty of big retailers have struggled to pull in lower-income shoppers lately. Dollar General hasn’t.
The store cleanup seems to be landing, too.
“While execution in stores can still be patchy, our channel checks suggest there has been a general uplift in standards, with fewer locations plagued by cluttered aisles or low staffing,” GlobalData Managing Director Neil Saunders told Axios.
Dollar General now runs approximately 20,388 locations across the US.
Sources: Business Wire, The Motley Fool, Axios, Placer.ai, The Street