DG Market
Opened: June 2023
Previous Tenants: Drug Fair > Dollar General
Location: 11 River Rd, North Arlington, NJ
Photographed: June 15, 2023 and July 2, 2023
It's time for The Market Report's first DG Market! This is a newish grocery-focused format from Dollar General, adding produce, meat, and some other food items in an expanded grocery department. While I didn't really know what to expect going in, I was sorely disappointed. I thought this was the discount grocer division of the Dollar General chain -- something comparable to Save-A-Lot -- but really it's a dollar store with a slightly larger food department. There are a few others in New Jersey, but the 14,000 square foot DG Market in North Arlington -- just across the river from
Belleville -- is the latest to open.
I first visited on June 15, 2023 to find the store in the conversion process from Dollar General to DG Market, which as we'll see was a limited remodel. I returned on Sunday to check out the store's interior after hearing it reopened.
We enter to produce, meat, cold cuts, dairy, frozen foods, and cold drinks in the first aisle, with the grocery items mostly in the first two aisles. The rest of the store is a standard Dollar General, which I wasn't expecting.
As we see, the selection of perishables here is mostly limited to these two cases, so I wouldn't say they're revolutionizing the way DG stores are run. Instead, it's just a little add-on.
Like Business Insider, I found myself confused about just who Dollar General thinks will be shopping here. I suppose the most likely candidate is seniors and others who don't drive or have trouble traveling farther to a supermarket, such as Foodtown (a mile east), Food Depot (linked above, half a mile northwest), or
Pueblo (a mile west).
Here we see some of the frozen foods and the dry goods on the back wall. The store's walls are mostly green and gray, fitting with the Market color scheme more than the traditional yellow DG color scheme.
And, of course, there are aisles and aisles of the usual dollar store general merchandise. Like the Business Insider article linked above, I found myself without a compelling reason to return to this or any other DG Market, unless it truly was a last resort. Otherwise? I'll stick to supermarkets. Then again, I don't spend much time in Dollar Generals as it is. Anyhow, there used to be a supermarket just north of here, and that's up next on
Grocery Archaeology!
Maybe sort of surprising that they are doing these in a place like this, with so many other options not that far away?
ReplyDeleteSeems it would be much more beneficial in some of their small town locations, where it may be a 15-30 minute drive to an actual supermarket - people there would be far more happy to have a store like this to offer them some options when they simply don't want to (or can't) travel to the larger stores.
I agree, although I suppose if we consider it more of an addition to the existing operation (dollar store + produce and some grocery, rather than produce and some grocery with some homegoods INSTEAD of dollar store) it makes a little more sense, but I'm still not 100% sure why this location was chosen. Was it prompted by the closure of Corrado's just next door? I'm also not familiar with the population in this neighborhood, but I do think most people who live near this store drive and can get to a larger full supermarket. It's a very suburban neighborhood, not a dense inner city at all, where we might expect to see more people who don't drive.
DeleteDG Market has actually been around for a while, the first such location opening in 2003. The older DG Market stores from the 2000's and early 2010's were much larger than this, coming in around 25,000-30,000 square feet (and were a common reuse for the dead Food Lion stores around Florida). The DG Market closest to me occupies three-quarters of a former Publix, and you can see photos of it here: https://myfloridaretail.blogspot.com/search/label/Publix%20%23124
ReplyDeleteRecently, with Dollar General using DG Market as a cheap rebrand for regular stores, the older 20,000+ sqft. stores have begun conversions into DG Market + Popshelf locations. While the original larger grocery section remained in-tact, the general merchandise side got rearranged to add a full-size Popshelf, with the remainder of the store being fill-in merchandise for what Popshelf doesn't usually carry (such as automotive, hardware, clothing, etc.) These larger stores still feel more complete than the location you featured today, and are more justifiably a "Dollar General Supercenter".
Ah, thanks for the background on this! And thanks for linking the DG Market post on MFR, I remember reading that a long time ago and then promptly forgetting that I had heard anything about DG Market. I like the phrasing of Dollar General Supercenter, and that's exactly what the location you covered looks like. This, meanwhile, feels just like a dollar store with an oversized grocery department. I've been in stores like that in New York City, I want to say ABC Superstores? And there are probably other places I've seen things like this, but I was expecting more of a discount supermarket. Interesting stuff though!
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