It’s a valid point. I would say there are two hypotheses - one is that running fulfillment out of those stores is cost effective. The other is that online ordering is a required customer experience to compete with Amazon despite it being less cost effective.

I think we’re seeing the death of retail, not its transformation. Retail still hold all of this real estate, so they’re trying to make a go of it, but drop shipping from centralized fulfillment centers with robotics and fit-to-purpose infrastructure and technology is going to beat Instacart and gig-economy serfs on a cost basis.

The only reason DG might try to turn a store into a mini-fulfillment center is to liquidate it’s inventory as cheaply as possible and then shutter the place. They are reporting themselves that their customers are literally running out of money. More than likely, when their customers can’t buy, they’ll just shutter the store and pay a Big Lots to just liquidate all the inventory.

All these shops are sitting on dying commercial real estate. That whole market is falling apart. In the end, it’s just gonna be bankruptcy proceedings and consolidations, because no one can make your local dollar general into a fulfillment center without a major capital investment and that’s highly unlikely to turn a profit.