Major Chain With Hundreds of New England Stores is Closing

Can we go a day or even a week without hearing about a popular chain store or restaurant shuttering for good? I guess not.

According to CBS News, Dollar Tree, which also owns the Family Dollar chain of stores, is closing nearly 1,000 of them. The good news is that it will happen over a handful of years, so we can still grab those dollar deals and cheap buys.

When I searched to see how many Dollar Trees and Family Dollars we have around Maine, New Hampshire, Massachusetts, and New England as a whole, I lost count. We have hundreds.

According to CBS News, 600 of the Family Dollar stores will shutter around the country by July 2024, with around 370 Family Dollar and 30 Dollar Tree chains closing over the next few years.

These discount stores that have saved money for so many people lost $1.7 billion in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to CBS News. With the trend of shopping around for deals growing, it's not as easy for the dollar store concept to compete.

Over recent years, rates of shopping around have increased, and we believe that they will only increase further in the years ahead as other chains like Walmart, Aldi and Dollar General continue to expand. Against this backdrop, Family Dollar does not want to invest in markets where it cannot win and is not particularly profitable.

As always, the next question is, will it be your favorite Dollar Store or Family Dollar that closes down? As expected, according to USA Today, Dollar Tree hasn't shared when and which stores will close, nor if certain states or regions will see a bigger impact.

According to Wikipedia, Dollar Tree has 15,115 stores throughout the lower 48 states and Canada (8,00 of which are Family Dollar stores, according to Wikipedia). So based on those numbers, there will still be plenty of stores around.

Sounds like we'll still see plenty around New England, unless we're the only region affected, which seems unlikely.