Dollar General, a favorite spot for household staples across the country, is expanding even further. The company announced plans Wednesday to build a new distribution center in Longview, Texas, that will create 400 jobs at full capacity. The facility, to be located around two hours east of Dallas by car, will serve around 1,000 locations in the southeast U.S. Dollar General’s announcement comes just a few weeks after the company pledged to open 900 new stores in 2018, its second year expanding at such a scale. After those locations open, over 75 percent of Americans will likely live within five miles of a Dollar General, CNN Money noted earlier this month. The company – which sells a typical drug store’s array of products from cleaning supplies to breakfast cereals – has grown in recent years largely thanks to low-income shoppers in rural areas that have been slow to recover from the economic downturn. Reports have indicated Dollar General is competing neck-and-neck with Wal-Mart for shoppers’ loyalty in some communities. “We are putting stores today [in areas] that perhaps five years ago were just on the cusp of probably not being our demographic,” the company’s CEO, Todd Vasos, told the Wall Street Journal in a piece published earlier this month, “and it has now turned to being our demographic.” The chain is wildly profitable, the Journal noted, reporting that Dollar General “yielded more than double the profit of Macy’s Inc. on less revenue during its most recent fiscal year.” The Longview distribution center will be the company’s 17th and the second in the Lone Star state, following a facility that opened in San Antonio in 2016. It is expected to break ground in early 2018. So far, the Tennessee-based discount retailer operates around 14,300 stores in 44 states. In a statement, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) said the state’s “dynamic and booming economy is attracting new businesses every day” and his administration is “honored to welcome Dollar General’s new distribution center to Longview as the latest example.”
