With new downtown Dollar General, Des Moines will have four convenience stores on three blocks

Depending on a worker's lunchtime standards, downtown Des Moines dining will be more convenient in 2020.

Dollar General Corp. will open one of its new neighborhood-market-style DGX shops in the Equitable Building at the beginning of the year. Construction workers are renovating the 5,700-square-foot space, located around the corner from Potbelly Sandwich Shop.

Although most Dollar Generals are in suburban and rural communities, the company opens DGX stores in downtown business districts. They are smaller and feature inexpensive grab-and-go items, such as sandwiches and sodas.

"DGX Des Moines is specially designed to meet the unique needs of customers (who are) living, working and visiting vibrant metropolitan city centers, providing positive benefits to the areas it serves with an affordable retail option in a modern retail format," company spokeswoman Angela Petkovic told the Des Moines Register in an email Monday. She added that the company hopes to open the store by Feb. 1.

DGX Des Moines will be on the same block as Kum & Go's first standalone convenience store, scheduled to open in March in the Edna M. Griffin Building at 319 Seventh St. Company President Tanner Krause said in October that the store will focus on "healthy and better-for-you products."

DGX Des Moines will also sit across Sixth Avenue from Lzaza Food & Snacks, a skywalk convenience store on the second floor of the Bank of America building. One more block to the east, The Marketplace offers similar products on the second floor of Capital Square.

A faster fast food 

Jim Hertel, senior vice president of Inmar Analytics, who tracks convenience stores, said supply and demand will be at play, but that generally speaking, business districts can support a convenience store on just about every block these days.

Hertel said expansion from companies like Dollar General and Kum & Go reflects a societal change in how people consume. Workers are abandoning traditional lunches, grabbing quick items they can eat at their desks. 

"People are eating more smaller meals these days," he said. "They want to get them in a portable form, a type of desktop dining. 'I don't want a full lunch. I don't want to eat it with a knife and a fork. I don't want something sloppy that will get everywhere. I will just graze on it.'"

Dollar General launched its first DGX in Nashville in November 2016 and has added six other locations, including in Cleveland and Omaha, Nebraska. Petkovic said the company aims to add another 20 locations in fiscal year 2020, which starts Feb. 1.

Dollar General, already with 15,600 stores, hopes the DGX shops will create a new revenue stream with a new clientele. Hertel said he visited the Nashville shop and was intrigued by the business' potential. The shop was a couple of blocks from the Vanderbilt University campus and drew a mix of students and shoppers from low-income neighborhoods. 

Compared with a traditional Dollar General, the store aims its products at smaller families. It doesn't offer as many items in large quantities, such as six-roll packages of paper towels — staples that shoppers in less of a hurry can pick up at the downtown Hy-Vee supermarket or nearby Walgreens.

In addition to quick food and drinks, Petkovic said, DGX sells pet food and toys, cleaning supplies, home decor, electronics, beauty products and electronics.

In some categories, such as deodorant, the DGX offered more varieties than most dollar stores, Hertel said.

"It was an interesting mix," he said. "You could do pantry shopping, but you could also get a soft drink or a slushy-type drink. It's a quick in and out."

John Strong, an economics and finance professor at William & Mary, said DGX stores are similar to bodegas and the Walgreens and CVS pharmacies in major metros such as Chicago and New York City. In big cities, while the stores' pharmacies fill prescriptions, they drive a lot of revenue through food and merchandise sales.

Strong said the DGX stores offer less expensive merchandise and that shopping there can be faster than at other convenience stores with Dollar General's DG Go! app. On a smartphone, shoppers can scan items' bar codes to keep count of the total cost and — in some stores — pay through the phone rather than wait in line.

Strong said the expansion into Des Moines signals that Dollar General executives are satisfied by what they have seen from the shop in other cities.

"The company thinks it has a good base model," he said in an email. "DG has always been pretty good at adapting to local markets, and so I'm sure there'll be some of that as well as they learn about Des Moines and its micro-market."

Tyler Jett covers jobs and the economy for the Register. Contact him at 515-284-8215 and tjett@registermedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @LetsJett.

Your support makes work like this possible. Subscribe at DesMoinesRegister.com/Deal.