The Dollar General Family is Working Hard to Serve Yours
Mar 18, 2020
For more than 80 years, Dollar General has been guided by our mission of Serving Others, and now is no different. We understand these are unprecedented times, and we continue to actively work to serve our customers and the communities we proudly call home. We would like to share all that we are doing to prioritize the safety of our employees and customers, while continuing to provide the value and convenience that our customers need even more right now.
Stores
In keeping with our mission, we feel a responsibility to continue providing our customers with their everyday essentials in our convenient, small box stores and at great values. During these trying times, our dedicated store teams are going above and beyond to serve our communities and truly embody our mission of Serving Others.
With approximately 75 percent of the American population within five miles of a Dollar General, we feel a responsibility to remain open and in-stock for all of our customers, many of whom live in areas that are not served by other retailers. We believe that our customers are relying on Dollar General now more than ever to provide them with their everyday essentials, including food, cleaning supplies, paper products, over-the-counter medicines, hygiene products, baby items and more. Our ability to operate as normally as possible under these circumstances is critical to many customers in our communities and is why we currently plan to continue operating our 16,200+ stores across the country to fulfill our customers’ needs.
In keeping with this commitment, we have also implemented new changes to support our customers:
- Senior Store Hours: On March 17, we began senior store hours, which are designed to allow some of our most vulnerable neighbors the ability to shop during the first hour that our stores are open to avoid busier and more crowded shopping periods. For customers who can wait an hour, we strongly encourage you to plan your shopping accordingly to help support our at-risk customers.
- Earlier Closing Times: Although stores will open at normal hours, we will continue closing an hour early for the time being to allow employees to clean stores, restock shelves and care for their own well-being.
- Product Limitations: In an effort to ensure all customers have the products they need, we are suggesting a limit on paper products, hand sanitizer and wipes to three per customer.
Employees
I would like to give an overwhelmingly heartfelt THANK YOU to all of our employees. Our mission of Serving Others is the lifeblood of our business and culture, and our employees continue to demonstrate its strength. Our team is united every day to serve our customers, and it is so encouraging to see our team ban together, particularly in times like these.
For our employees, we are committed to providing a safe, healthful working and shopping environment. We are communicating with our employees on a regular basis to remind them of steps to help contain or avoid the spread of the COVID-19 virus, as well as steps they should take if they experience symptoms or have been in touch with someone who has tested positive for COVID-19.
We have established protocols for how employees are to respond to both direct and indirect exposure to the virus in all of our stores and facilities and continue to update those as the situation unfolds. However, any employee that is forced to remain at home due to a confirmed case or exposure to an immediate family member, individual they care for or intimate partner will be paid for regularly-scheduled hours during that time. We have also halted all domestic and international air travel and conference attendance.
Hiring Opportunities
For any individual whose job has been temporarily impacted by the effect of COVID-19, we currently have a number of full and part time positions available across our stores, distribution centers and private fleet network. We welcome anyone interested in furthering our mission of Serving Others to find available opportunities and apply online by clicking here.
Distribution
We understand how essential our supply chain and distribution network are to ensure products are on-shelf for our customers during these times. We are also aware that certain items are in short supply across some of our stores, as it is across all of retail. We are actively working with our vendor community to order additional supplies and receive them at our distribution centers and stores. We greatly appreciate our customers’ ongoing patience as we work to best meet their needs.
Task Force and Monitoring
We continue to actively monitor the impact of COVID-19 (also known as the coronavirus) across our organization while following guidance from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC), the World Health Organization, U.S. Department of State and local health authorities. A cross-functional task force is diligently working to guide our practices and responses to promote employee and customer safety. As this situation continues to rapidly evolve, we plan to adjust recommendations as warranted based on information from government and health care resources.
Sincerely,
Todd Vasos
Dollar General CEO
*The article is updated as of the release date. All content is subject to change without notice as a result of new or updated information or changes in Company policies and procedures.