Dollar General is celebrating its grand opening beginning 8 a.m. today at 405 E. King St.
The first 50 shoppers in the store will receive a $10 Dollar General gift card, and the first 200 shoppers will receive a Dollar General tote bag, among other giveaways.
The store is also offering free prizes and special deals.
“Dollar General is committed to delivering a pleasant shopping experience that includes a convenient location, a wide assortment of merchandise and great prices on quality products,” said Gayle Aertker, Dollar General’s senior vice president of real estate and store development. “We hope our Kinston customers will enjoy shopping at Dollar General’s new location.”
Dollar General stores offer name brands, as well as private brands, of food, housewares, seasonal items, cleaning supplies, basic apparel and health and beauty products.
The layout is designed to make shopping simple for customers. Seasonal products are displayed in the center of the store, signage for product categories is easily recognizable and coolers are accessed at the front of the store.
The planned store generated some disapproval by some community members who said it would never work on East King Street near a low-income neighborhood, according to Wayne Malone, a local commercial real estate agent. There was also soil contamination to deal with.
Neither of these obstacles stopped Malone, who expressed confidence in an April 21 story in The Free Press that the store would be successful.
A typical Dollar General store employs about six to 10 people. For information on joining the Dollar General team, visit careers at dollargeneral.com.
Dollar General supports the communities it serves. Customers interested in learning how to read, speak English or get a General Education Diploma, or GED, can pick up a brochure at the cash register with a postage-paid reply card that can be mailed in for a referral to a local organization that offers free literacy services.
For more information about the Dollar General Literacy Foundation and its grant programs, visit dgliteracy.com.
Margaret Fisher can be reached at 252-559-1082 or Margaret.Fisher@Kinston.com. Follow her on Twitter @MargaretFishr.