Dollar General outpaces Walmart in store traffic growth, report says

Dollar General’s traffic momentum is not just a corporate bragging point. If shoppers are choosing the chain more often than Walmart for in-person trips, store teams can expect the kind of day-to-day pressure that comes with more bodies in the building: faster-moving shelves, more recovery work, and more demands to keep the front end and aisles looking ready for the next wave of customers.

Placer.ai data showed Dollar General and Costco were outpacing Walmart in physical store traffic growth, a sign that value-focused formats are still pulling shoppers into stores as they look for cheaper, closer options. In a consolidating brick-and-mortar market, Placer.ai identified Walmart, Target, Costco Wholesale and Dollar General as the chains capturing a growing share of visits. For Dollar General, that matters because its stores are built around quick, repetitive trips for food, health and wellness products, cleaning and laundry supplies, self-care and beauty items, and seasonal décor.

The chain said it had 20,893 stores across the United States and Mexico as of January 30, 2026, and its fiscal 2025 annual-report materials said it added 589 new openings during the year. That scale makes traffic changes feel immediate at store level. A steady stream of shoppers can lift sales, but it also means more carts to ring up, more baskets to sort, and more time spent on basics that keep stores shoppable, from endcaps to cooler doors to checkout lanes.

The traffic picture has not been uniformly strong. Dollar General’s first-quarter 2025 results showed same-store sales up 2.4% even as customer traffic fell 0.3%, with average transaction amount up 2.7%. More recently, industry coverage citing NACS said Dollar General posted mid- to high-single-digit same-store traffic gains between September 2025 and January 2026, suggesting the chain may have regained some momentum after a softer stretch.

That matters inside stores that have already faced pressure from lean staffing and limited labor hours. Dollar General’s late-2024 store portfolio optimization review also signaled that some locations could be closed or re-bannering, which can leave remaining stores to absorb more volume with the same or only slightly better support. Higher traffic can help justify more hours and better scheduling, but it can just as easily turn into heavier expectations if staffing does not keep up.

Walmart still brings enormous scale, saying about 270 million customers and members visit its stores and websites each week globally. Dollar General’s traffic gains stand out because they are happening against that backdrop, not in a vacuum. The company also said on May 5, 2026, that it planned to release first-quarter 2026 financial results on June 2, a next checkpoint for whether the traffic gains are translating into stronger store performance or simply more pressure on the floor.