The Top 10 Retailers Expanding In The US Right Now

Jun 06, 2025 • 15 min read

Top 10 Fastest-Growing U.S. Retailers by Store Count (2024–2025)

1. Dollar General – Opened ~980 new stores. The chain crossed the 20,000-store milestone and continues to grow aggressively, particularly in rural and underserved areas, even amid flat comps.
2. Dollar Tree – Opened ~525 new stores under its Dollar Tree banner. The company is converting shuttered 99 Cents Only and Family Dollar locations while planning further divestitures.
3. Chipotle – Opened 304 new U.S. restaurants. With same-store sales growth of 7.4% and strong revenue per unit, the burrito chain is expanding faster than at any point in its history.
4. Jersey Mike’s – Estimated 300–350 new stores in 2024. The privately held sandwich chain is on track for over 400 openings next year, driven by high AUVs and successful franchising.
5. Five Below – Added 227 net new stores. Despite some mid-year softness in comps, the brand’s store count grew 15% year-over-year and shows signs of stabilized traffic.
6. Raising Cane’s – Opened 118 new restaurants. The fast-growing chicken finger chain has publicly stated its ambition to reach $10 billion in sales by 2030, and real estate deals are accelerating.
7. Ross Dress for Less/dd’s Discounts – Opened 89 new stores in 2024. With consistent low-double-digit ROIs on new locations, Ross continues to backfill high-growth states.
8. Burlington – Opened 100 new stores. With smaller-format designs and strong comps (+6% in the most recent quarter), Burlington is expanding into both new and returning markets.
9. Dutch Bros – Opened ~165 new U.S. locations. The Oregon-based drive-thru coffee chain surpassed 1,000 stores and posted 4.7% comp growth in Q1 2025.
10. Barnes & Noble – Opened 57 new bookstores. In a stunning reversal, the chain is growing for the first time in over a decade, tapping into social media-driven demand for in-person book discovery.

Major chains collectively opened more than 5,600 U.S. stores in 2023, adding roughly 90 million square feet of new retail space. This surge spans dollar stores, discount apparel outlets, big-box retailers and fast-food restaurants, as companies capitalize on consumers’ hunger for value and convenience. It’s a stark turnabout from the “retail apocalypse” narratives of recent years, and it has executives bullish – albeit cautiously – on brick-and-mortar growth even as economic clouds gather. “We continue to see very strong demand for our stores,” one retail CEO remarked, echoing a sentiment that physical locations remain key to winning customers in 2025.

Dollar stores are leading the charge. Dollar General alone added nearly 1,000 net new stores in the last 12 months, pushing its total footprint above 20,000 locations – an unmatched density in U.S. retail. The Tennessee-based discounter has blanketed rural America and suburbs with small-box outlets offering everything from cereal to socks at rock-bottom prices. Even after announcing plans to close 96 underperforming stores in urban markets, Dollar General still intends to open 725 more locations in the coming year, expecting to end 2025 with about 600 additional stores overall. Its closest rival, Dollar Tree, is also in expansion mode. The company opened 525 new Dollar Tree stores in the past fiscal year, focusing on its namesake banner while it prepares to divest the slower-growing Family Dollar chain. Together the two dollar-store giants now operate roughly 30,000 U.S. locations. This massive growth has come with only modest sales gains at existing stores – CenterCheck retail analytics indicate Dollar General’s same-store sales rose just 1.4% last year – suggesting these chains are stretching into ever more neighborhoods to compensate for thin per-store growth. Still, their strategy is clear: when customers won’t travel far for cheap essentials, you simply build stores practically in their backyards.

Off-price retailers are also racing ahead. Burlington Stores, an off-price apparel and home goods chain, opened 100 new locations across the country in 2024, betting that consumers’ hunt for name-brand bargains will endure through economic uncertainty. “It’s a dynamic time right now, and off-price is a good place to be in retail because consumers want the best value,” said Chris Miller, Burlington’s group senior vice president of marketing and strategy. The company has been shrinking its store format – new Burlington stores are about 20,000 square feet, roughly one-third the size of its older outlets – to backfill vacant urban storefronts and former big-box sites with smaller, more efficient locations. Rival Ross Stores is not far behind. It added 89 new Ross Dress for Less and dd’s Discounts stores in 2024, expanding into states like Minnesota and New York as well as deepening its presence in Sun Belt markets. Ross now operates over 2,200 stores and sees room for thousands more in the coming years. Crucially, shoppers are following: Burlington’s comparable sales jumped 6% in the latest quarter of 2024, and Ross notched a 3% same-store sales gain for the full year. Those solid numbers suggest bargain-hunters are flocking to the new stores rather than cannibalizing existing ones – so far, at least. Off-price retail tends to thrive when the economy softens, and these companies are seizing the moment to grab market share and real estate while it’s available.

Select big-box and specialty chains are expanding, too, albeit more selectively. Warehouse-club giant Costco, for instance, opened around two dozen new U.S. warehouses over the past year, a steady if not spectacular pace reflecting its already-saturated footprint. Home-improvement and farm-oriented retailers are likewise growing: Tractor Supply Co., which caters to rural and suburban DIYers, opened 80 new stores in 2024 and plans around 90 more in 2025. And in the specialty discount segment, few are growing faster than Five Below. The teen-focused variety store chain – known for toys, tech gadgets and candy priced at around $5 – expanded its store count by roughly 15% last year. Five Below opened 227 net new stores in fiscal 2024, reaching 1,771 locations across 44 states. The company has an ambitious goal to roughly double in size to 3,500 stores by 2030, and it’s been opportunistic in fueling that growth. When Party City went bankrupt and shuttered locations, Five Below swooped in to snap up 44 of those empty store leases to convert into new Five Below outlets. “We’re very disciplined in how we expand, but we see a lot of opportunity,” CEO Joel Anderson told analysts earlier this year. Industry observers note that even international players want in on America’s discount boom: Japan’s Daiso, for example, is accelerating its U.S. expansion with plans to open 100 new dollar-format stores in 2025, a massive increase for a brand that until recently had only a toehold on the West Coast. The message is unmistakable – from big boxes to niche upstarts, many retailers smell opportunity in the physical space that others vacated.

The restaurant sector is experiencing its own gold rush in new locations. Fast-casual and quick-service dining chains, flush with cash from strong pandemic recovery sales, are building at a pace the industry hasn’t seen in years. Chipotle Mexican Grill, for one, opened 304 new restaurants in 2024 – the most it has ever added in a single year – bringing its total to nearly 3,500 outlets. The burrito chain’s revenue climbed almost 15% to $11.3 billion on the back of those new units, boosting profitability to record levels. Chipotle plans to open as many as 345 more locations in 2025, including an increasing number of drive-thru “Chipotlane” formats to capture suburban commuters. In the chicken sandwich wars, privately held Chick-fil-A remains in a league of its own: its system-wide sales eclipsed $22 billion in 2024, an astonishing figure driven by industry-leading unit volumes and a methodical march into new regions of the country. While Chick-fil-A keeps its expansion numbers close to the vest, it has been steadily opening restaurants from coast to coast – including breaking ground internationally – often drawing fervent crowds on opening day. Upstart competitors are expanding aggressively as well. Louisiana-based Raising Cane’s, a once regional brand famed for its crispy chicken fingers, opened 118 new restaurants across the U.S. in 2024. “We want this momentum to continue,” founder and CEO Todd Graves said of Cane’s rapid growth, as he set a goal to reach $10 billion in sales by 2030. Even legacy fast-food giants are getting back into build-out mode: McDonald’s has been adding new units after years of holding flat, and Taco Bell is debuting futuristic drive-thru-only locations aimed at digital customers. Coffee colossus Starbucks, for its part, continues to open hundreds of U.S. stores annually – often with smaller footprints or pick-up only designs – although it recently signaled plans to slow its expansion pace in 2025 to refocus on improving existing cafes after several quarters of sales plateauing. The overall picture in food service is one of expansion everywhere you look, as chains scramble to capture new pockets of demand (and new stomachs to feed) before the field grows even more crowded.

Perhaps the most unexpected retail resurgence is happening in bookstores. A decade ago, pundits had all but written off large bookstore chains, yet Barnes & Noble is in the midst of a brick-and-mortar renaissance. The company opened 57 new stores in 2024 – after years of stagnant store count – and has announced plans to open more than 60 in 2025. Many of these stores mark returns to markets B&N had previously abandoned. In Washington, D.C.’s Georgetown neighborhood, for example, Barnes & Noble recently unveiled a new bookstore in the same space it vacated years prior. “We are very happy to return to Naperville, where for 25 years we were a community staple,” CEO James Daunt said in a statement celebrating a new store opening in Illinois. “Our longtime booksellers are as eager to be back in town as they are to welcome customers into their brand-new Naperville Barnes & Noble”. Under Daunt – a veteran bookseller who revamped the chain by granting stores more local autonomy and charm – Barnes & Noble has seen sales climb and profitability improve, allowing it to reinvest in growth. Its resurgence comes as the U.S. book retail industry consolidates: with former rival Borders long gone and several indie chains faltering during the pandemic, Barnes & Noble now faces less competition in many areas. The chain is taking advantage of reasonable rents and second-generation storefronts left behind by struggling retailers in order to replant its flag. Other niche formats are cautiously expanding as well: pet supply retailers, craft and hobby chains, even certain regional department stores have all scouted opportunities to open new locations in pockets of the country where competitors have retrenched. It turns out that even in the digital age, there can be new life for old retail concepts when managed with the right strategy.

All this growth raises an inevitable question: how long can it last? The current frenzy of store openings is in part a product of the past decade’s disruptions. The shakeout of weaker retailers – from bankrupt department store chains to failed specialty shops – has freed up a glut of vacant storefronts and favorable lease terms, giving expanding companies a rare chance to grab prime locations. (Five Below’s opportunistic takeover of former Party City stores is a case in point.) Consumer behavior has also tilted back toward physical shopping as pandemic habits recede, rewarding retailers that invest in more convenient store formats and locations. Yet there are growing signs that expansion is starting to outpace underlying performance. Industry analysts point out that for some chains, sales at existing stores are growing much more slowly than total sales – a potential red flag that new units are simply spreading the same dollars thinner. CenterCheck data shows that overall U.S. retail foot traffic and same-store sales growth began to decelerate in late 2024, even as new store openings continued at a rapid clip. And not every growth story is guaranteed a happy ending: Starbucks’ recent decision to tap the brakes on its U.S. store rollout in order to “bring back customers” to existing cafes underscores the risks of expanding too fast without resolving underlying issues. Likewise, Dollar General’s move to close some urban stores while forging ahead in other areas is a reminder that even the most aggressive retailers must occasionally retrench and optimize. For now, however, the expansion trend shows few signs of slowing in the aggregate. America’s shopping landscape is being rapidly remade – with more dollar stores, more discount fashion outlets, more restaurants, and even more bookstores dotting the map. The coming year will test whether this brick-and-mortar boom is built on solid foundations or if the retail industry’s reach is extending a bit beyond its grasp. The optimism in boardrooms is palpable, but so is the understanding that today’s growth darlings will need to prove their new stores can deliver sustainable sales tomorrow. The result is a confident yet watchful retail sector – one cutting ribbons at a pace not seen in years, while keeping a careful eye on the durability of the economic and consumer trends that made all those grand openings possible.