Most of us like to root for the underdog, I think, and in that respect it has been fun to watch Dollar General take market share away from retail giant Wal-Mart. In December I read Associated Press and Dow Jones Newswire articles about Dollar General’s third-quarter income jumping 69%, revenue in stores open at least a year rising 4.2% and that the discount store chain had raised its earnings target for the year for a third time. What’s more, Dollar General plans to open 625 more stores and hire some 6,000 more workers in 2011, says an early January AP report. A lot of us have been looking for bargains recently, haven’t we? That news came on the heels of a late November article by The Packer’s business editor Bruce Blythe about Wal-Mart reporting its sixth consecutive quarterly sales decline. There is no chip on my shoulder about Wal-Mart. In fact, last year my household raised some eyebrows when we shopped an amazing Wal-Mart discount on sweet potatoes and heaved 120 pounds of them into a cart to take home. That was enough to carry the two of us far into spring. We do like sweet potatoes. Goodlettesville, Tenn.-based Dollar General has 9,200 stores. They are smaller stores than your normal Wal-Mart. The ones I know are pretty cluttered little stores, with not much in the way of perishables. Some milk, I guess, but mostly cleaning supplies and dry goods. I get cat food there because it is reliably cheaper than even Wal-Mart, and the store is smaller and easier to get in and get out. I have bought shampoo there and wrapping paper. But produce? I can’t imagine it. However, some of the mavericks leading Dollar General have imagined it. In fact, Supermarket News reports the discount chain plans to expand its Dollar General Markets concept, which offers a wider variety of groceries and perishables and has a 17,000-square-foot average footprint compared to the typical 7,000-square-foot Dollar General store. Dollar General Market was launched in 2003, but the company was bought in 2007 and now the new owners are giving the 57-store concept another look. A lot of companies are trying new ideas, like flinging spaghetti against the wall to see if it is cooked. I expect this spaghetti to slide down the wall. A lot of you can tell them better than I can that it is one thing to make deals on cat food, shampoo and gift wrap, but selling produce and other perishables requires a whole new skill set. There is more labor, more expense for store equipment and more shrink. And I would be disgusted to find produce in the Dollar General stores I have seen. Dollar General will have to reinvent itself in order to succeed in selling more meat, dairy and produce.

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