Dollar store locations in the USEscape room locations in the US
Dollar Generals opening across rural America and escape rooms opening in suburban strip malls, both expanding in the same decade. Two retail formats with very different prices and very similar real-estate footprints. The country's empty storefronts found two competing tenants.
Dollar Tree and Dollar General opened thousands of locations across this window, with the dollar-store category growing from about 27,000 to over 38,000 stores. US escape-room locations grew from about a hundred in 2014 to over 2,000 by 2023 as the format went from novelty to standard family-entertainment offering. Both lines are stories of a particular kind of American real estate: roughly 1,500-square-foot retail boxes with low rent in second-tier locations, perfect for both formats. The same vacant strip-mall units welcomed both.
Empty retail space attracts whichever tenant has the most growth pressure. Two unrelated formats, identical lease.
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