Dollar General expands store refresh push as renovation projects gain recognition

A remodeled Dollar General store changes the workday long before shoppers notice new fixtures. For store associates, Project Renovate and Project Elevate mean more planogram changes, more aisle resets, tighter product adjacencies and extra attention to freight, recovery and replenishment as the new layout takes shape.

Dollar General said both initiatives launched in December 2024 and were led by its real estate team and market planning team. Project Renovate covers full remodels of mature stores, while Project Elevate targets stores earlier in their lifecycle with partial remodels that touch about 80% of the store footprint, including category refreshes, physical asset investments and planogram reflows. The work earned the Path to Purchase Institute’s 2025 Omnishopper Award in the In-Store Marketing: Store/Aisle Reinvention category, a sign that the company’s aisle-level changes are becoming part of its operating model rather than a one-time refresh.

The remodel push matters because Dollar General’s footprint is built for convenience retail in smaller communities. The company says about 80% of its stores serve markets with 20,000 or fewer residents, and roughly 75% of Americans live within five miles of a Dollar General store. In practice, that means the success of a remodel is judged not by the design boards but by whether customers can find basics faster, whether seasonal sets stay organized, and whether a smaller team can keep traffic moving without turning every shift into a recovery project.

Dollar General has also linked the remodels to sales performance. In later earnings commentary, the company said Project Renovate stores are targeted for about 6% annualized comparable-sales lift, while Project Elevate stores are targeted for about 3%. Dollar General said customer surveys showed both programs improved customer sentiment by more than 100 basis points after remodeling, a metric that suggests the company expects layout changes to drive both traffic and basket behavior.

The scale is sizable. Dollar General’s 2025 real-estate plan included about 4,885 projects overall, with 575 new U.S. store openings, 2,000 full remodels, 2,250 Project Elevate remodels and 45 relocations. The chain said it served more than 20,800 stores across 48 U.S. states and five cities in Mexico in fiscal 2025, underscoring how much of its growth strategy now depends on store-level execution, not just price. Founded in 1939 and still rooted in Goodlettsville, Tennessee, the company is betting that sharper layouts can do more of the heavy lifting for a format already stretched by thin staffing and constant stocking demands.