A major component of Matthew Simonsen’s job as senior vice president of real estate and development at Dollar General is determining the location of future stores. As a growing retailer with more stores than any other in the U.S., Simonsen and his team are proud of the role they play in helping DG make a positive impact on the customers and communities it serves throughout the country.
“My team and I have a strong passion in making sure every store matters. When we add, remodel or relocate a store, we understand how our presence can have a big impact on our customers and communities. We take that responsibility very seriously. That’s why our customer is at the center of everything we do here at Dollar General,” Simonsen says. “That’s what gets me up every day to come to work, knowing that we can make a meaningful difference. And we do.”
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One way Simonsen knows DG is a difference maker is the number of invites arriving from around the country from people asking for a store to be built in their community.
Take, for example, Shellman, Ga., a quiet town in the southwest corner of the state near the Alabama border with 1,100 residents and an economy dependent on agriculture, forestry and light manufacturing. A few years ago, two Georgia state lawmakers sent a bipartisan letter to DG asking whether there was any chance the retailer might consider putting a store in the rural Georgia community.
“Opening the store in Shellman is the essence of what makes us so great, because we are now able to bring all the solutions that Dollar General offers to fill the needs and wants for a community that really needs them,” Simonsen says. “In a lot of communities, residents may have to otherwise drive considerable distances to access essentials. That can equate to time and resources they may not have. When every dollar matters and DG can offer a solution to help customers, create jobs and generate tax revenue, it’s a big deal and incredibly humbling to know our team had a hand in helping our neighbors.”
Simonsen directs a “world-class team” that expects to execute more than 4,500 real estate projects this year as of the third quarter 2024 earnings reported on December 5, 2024. Disciplines Simonsen oversees include construction, lease administration, real estate, market planning, design and engineering, as well as oversight of Mi Súper Dollar General stores in Mexico.
“We look at site selection on where we put stores and what we do with our stores from an overall asset strategy,” he says.
Among Simonsen’s current initiatives are Project Elevate and Project Renovate, cross-functional efforts across the business intended to revitalize DG stores and help drive growth. Project Elevate involves relatively light upgrades to store fixtures and layouts, while Project Renovate delivers significant updates leading to refreshed stores.
“It’s a holistic company approach, so it has involvement across merchandising, fixturing, supply chain and operations. It’s probably the most cross-functional effort of my DG career,” he says. “My role is leading the selection process for the [projects] to do every year and then working with internal partners on their execution. We’re currently on schedule to update about 20% of our store base in terms of the two programs this year.”
Many of the more extensive upgrades include the addition of high-capacity coolers that increase shelf availability and expand the product mix. Cooler expansion has also complemented the company’s DG Fresh network, a supply chain transformation that began in 2019 to bring the distribution of fresh and frozen foods in-house.
While it is not part of the DG Fresh network, the company’s expansion of fresh produce offerings is equally impactful to customers. “We now have more than 7,000 stores with fresh produce, and that journey only started a few years ago,” Simonsen says. “Numerous communities reach out and ask for us to bring produce and help add healthier food options for them. We have a wonderful merchandising team that works with produce suppliers to try to help make that possible.”
Data collected and experience gained from thousands of real estate projects a year over a sustained period also allows Dollar General to experiment with new formats that can serve new customers and communities as part of its test-and-learn strategy. DG Market is an example of a format that has evolved since the Dollar General Market introduction in 2003.
“What’s been impressive about Dollar General’s evolution is we’ve now found a way to take the market concept — with meat and produce offerings but still a lot of the traditional Dollar General product offerings — and miniaturize that to a smaller format,” Simonsen says. “We’re going to continue trying to figure out the right format and the right product offering for every unique community we serve. We still see runway for growth with approximately 75% of Americans living within five miles of a Dollar General. All the while, we continue to evolve our store formats so we can choose the most relevant and meaningful format.”
“When I started in 2013, we had 10,000 stores, and we have over 20,000 stores now. Through my nearly 13-year journey at Dollar General, I’ve had the privilege of being involved with different formats and various evolutions throughout the company,” Simonsen says. “One example is being at our 20,000th store opening in Alice, Texas, to see the unveiling of our newest DG Market format. It was great to see the community turn out and the impact on the community of what we do every day.”
For Simonsen, Dollar General’s explicitly stated mission of Serving Others also applies to everyone he interacts with every day.
“The purest way to describe my passion around our mission to serve others is supporting others in reaching their fullest potential, their career goals and their development, because I love to see people grow and succeed,” he says.
