No. of Recommendations: 3
North Carolina is probably at or beyond saturation point -- no state other than Texas has materially more stores (about 1100). A few have more stores per capita (Alabama, Kentucky), but not many.
The (approximate) state by state traffic growth year over year is a decent proxy for where DG is still expanding at a decent clip (e.g., western states, the northeast):
https://www.placer.ai/chains/dollar-general (scroll down for map)
Mexico also appears to be going ahead (up to 7 stores), albeit at a slower clip than first anticipated. Popshelf not so much -- frozen at 231 stores. I suspect the 10 or so Popshelf to DG conversions early this year were a trial balloon, and they're considering scrapping the popshelf concept altogether, with conversions to DG as appropriate.
Stores by state as March 1 (3 in Mexico), per annual report:
Alabama 941 Nebraska 152
Arizona 138 Nevada 22
Arkansas 556 New Hampshire 45
California 260 New Jersey 193
Colorado 76 New Mexico 133
Connecticut 95 New York 597
Delaware 51 North Carolina 1,076
Florida 1,061 North Dakota 71
Georgia 1,098 Ohio 1,007
Idaho 7 Oklahoma 550
Illinois 698 Oregon 86
Indiana 695 Pennsylvania 957
Iowa 328 Rhode Island 24
Kansas 275 South Carolina 666
Kentucky 751 South Dakota 78
Louisiana 671 Tennessee 998
Maine 71 Texas 1,889
Maryland 177 Utah 11
Massachusetts 56 Vermont 41
Michigan 736 Virginia 492
Minnesota 211 Washington 42
Mississippi 657 West Virginia 303
Missouri 670 Wisconsin 283
Montana 4 Wyoming 20
The conspicuous "6 mile" marker in your data seems to suggest that they're probably attempting to stay 5+ miles away, leading to a lot of stores 5-6 miles out. Just a theory. Hard to do much better when 90% of Americans live within 10 miles of a Wal-Mart.
