Todd Vasos is handing JJ Fleeman a stronger Dollar General – and a company increasingly dependent on the same consumables and grocery traffic that define traditional supermarkets.
Dollar General (NYSE: DG) is not a supermarket. But the company Todd Vasos will hand to incoming CEO JJ Fleeman on Jan. 1 increasingly looks like a grocery company hiding inside a dollar-store model.
Dollar General reported second-quarter net sales of $11.29 billion, up 5.2% from a year earlier, while same-store sales increased 3.5%. Customer traffic rose 2%, while the average transaction amount increased 1.5%. The company also reported its sixth consecutive quarter of positive comparable sales across all four of its merchandising categories and its fifth consecutive quarter of customer traffic growth.
The biggest piece of the business continues to be consumables – the category that includes food and other everyday necessities. Consumables generated $9.26 billion in the quarter, representing roughly 82% of Dollar General’s total sales, and increased 5% from the prior year. Through the first six months of fiscal 2026, consumables sales were $18.16 billion, up 4%.
There is an important caveat: Dollar General does not separately disclose grocery or food sales, so it would be inaccurate to say that grocery sales specifically grew 5%. Consumables includes more than food.
But the broader evidence points in the same direction.
Dollar General has spent years increasing its presence in food and fresh products. The company has brought fresh produce to more than 7,000 stores and built DG Fresh, its self-distribution operation for perishables. Dollar General has even described its fresh-produce footprint as giving it more points of distribution than any other grocery retailer in the country.
That makes the 5% growth in consumables particularly significant. Consumables are already the economic center of the business, and the category is growing faster than the company’s overall sales base.
It also comes as consumers continue to look for value.
Dollar General said its second-quarter results reflected the importance of its combination of value and convenience, while outside reporting pointed to consumers increasingly seeking lower-cost essentials as inflation and fuel costs put pressure on household budgets.
The company is leaning further into that proposition. Dollar General said its $1 merchandise business grew 16% during the quarter, far outpacing the company’s 3.5% same-store sales growth, and it plans to expand the assortment substantially. The strategy is particularly relevant to food and everyday consumables, where a low absolute price can drive frequent visits and repeat purchases.
So Vasos is not simply leaving Fleeman a healthy dollar-store chain.
He is leaving him a retailer with more than 21,000 stores, a rapidly growing consumables business, an established fresh-food infrastructure and a customer base increasingly using the stores for everyday needs.
And that brings the succession into sharper focus.
Fleeman is not coming to Dollar General from outside retail. He spent more than 35 years inside Ahold Delhaize companies, beginning his career with Food Lion and eventually becoming CEO of Ahold Delhaize USA. Along the way, he held leadership roles spanning strategy, marketing, merchandising, operations, digital, loyalty and business development. He also led Peapod Digital Labs, where he helped build Ahold Delhaize USA’s proprietary e-commerce platform and omnichannel strategy.
As CEO of Ahold Delhaize USA from 2023 through June 2026, Fleeman was responsible for a portfolio that included Food Lion, Giant Food, The GIANT Company, Hannaford and Stop & Shop.
Under his leadership, the company continued rolling out its unified digital platform and achieved fully allocated e-commerce profitability in the first half of 2025. Fleeman also inherited the difficult task of improving Stop & Shop’s performance in the intensely competitive Northeast grocery market.
It’s been reported by many outlets – Food Trade News included – that Fleeman seemed hampered from execution as a typical CEO by the Ahold Delhaize Board of Directors. His grocery background gives the Dollar General succession an intriguing dimension.
Vasos has spent his latest tenure reinforcing Dollar General’s retail fundamentals and strengthening the company’s value proposition. The results suggest that work is producing a more stable business. In the second quarter, operating profit rose 29.2% to $769.2 million, while net income increased 33.8% to $550.3 million. Dollar General also raised its full-year sales and same-store-sales guidance.
Fleeman, meanwhile, brings something different: decades of experience running grocery businesses where merchandising, fresh food, loyalty, omnichannel shopping and customer frequency are central to the model.
That could become increasingly important as Dollar General’s competitive position evolves.
The company does not need to become a supermarket. In fact, trying to replicate a conventional supermarket would probably undermine the very characteristics that have made Dollar General successful: small stores, proximity, convenience and a sharply defined value proposition.
But there is an opportunity to become something more powerful – a highly convenient neighborhood grocery and consumables destination for customers who do not necessarily want to make a weekly trip to a traditional supermarket.
The data suggests Dollar General is already moving in that direction.
Consumables now account for more than four-fifths of sales. That business grew 5% in the second quarter, while customer traffic increased 2%. Fresh produce is in thousands of stores. The company is expanding its ultra-value assortment. And the retailer continues to add and remodel stores, with roughly 4,730 real estate projects planned for fiscal 2026.
The question for Fleeman is therefore not whether Dollar General should become a grocery retailer. It already is one, at least in part. The bigger question is how far it can take that position without losing the economics and convenience that distinguish it from a supermarket.
That may be the most consequential piece of the company Vasos is handing over. He is leaving Fleeman a Dollar General that is profitable, growing traffic, expanding its consumables business and increasingly participating in the grocery economy.
And he is handing it to a CEO who has spent essentially his entire professional life learning how grocery works.