No. of Recommendations: 4
Another excellent post, Lear. Thank you for sharing your ideas with this board.
I appreciate your historical analysis, as well as your links to additional complementary info.
One factor that I didnt see you mention, and one that Ive been thinking about with regard to DG - is population growth / decline in rural and non-metro regions of the US, where I assume DG does most of its business. At least those are the areas we keep hearing about in the context of - lots of small town where there is just a gas station and a DG FD or DLTR.
First of all - I'd love to know the distribution of DG stores by urban / rural or finer distinctions like metro, metro adjacent, rural..
https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/rural-urban...Here are a couple of things I was able to find that are relevant to this discussion; if folks have better sources please do share.
Here is a link to a website providing info - supposedly from the World Bank but perhaps from US census population estimator - suggesting small declines in rural population over the last few years
https://www.macrotrends.net/countries/USA/united-s...Here is another source suggesting recent growth in non-metro areas - post covid...but whether this has or will reverse is a ?
https://carsey.unh.edu/publication/snapshot/recent... 