Limited Assortment Grocery Store Site Selection Criteria

Limited assortment grocery store site selection criteria splits into three profiles: premium specialty (Trader Joe's, $112,018 median 3 mile income), growth discount (ALDI, Lidl, and Grocery Outlet, $78,640 to $107,189), and value (Save-A-Lot and Ruler Foods, $58,481 to $60,735). Education is Trader Joe's tell: 44.3% of residents in its median trade area hold an associate degree or higher, against 21% to 36% for the other five brands.

If you're a broker or tenant rep trying to work out which grocer fits a site, or which sites fit a grocer, published expansion criteria only get you so far. Discount grocery store site selection criteria are easier to judge when you can see what the stores actually look like, so this article uses Sites USA REGIS Online merchant location data (2026) to compare 4,712 stores across ALDI, Lidl, Trader Joe's, Grocery Outlet, Save-A-Lot, and Ruler Foods.

Which Discount Grocery Chains Are Expanding? Growth Since 2021

ALDI, Grocery Outlet, Trader Joe's, and Lidl have all added stores since 2021, led by ALDI at an aggressive 584 new locations. Ruler Foods is flat, and Save-A-Lot has lost 435 stores.

Recent growth tells a more useful story than lifetime growth. 2026 is the standout so far: ALDI has continued their growth with 203 new stores, their strongest single year since 2018, Trader Joe's has grown more this year than ever before as well, with 40 new locations being opened, and Lidl's 18 new locations is their best since 2021. Save-A-Lot's constriction of 93 stores is their strongest change since 2021. Weighted by store count, the six brands grew about 11.8% since 2021. A simple average of the brand growth rates is 22.8%, but Lidl's +89.4% off a small base pulls it up.

Where Limited Assortment Grocers Operate: A State by State Void Analysis

A void analysis shows which brands are missing from a market. REGIS Online has a void analysis tool that does this for any market, and the map below shows the same idea for all 50 states. Let's start by looking at which states have the most density of limited assortment grocers.

California has the most by a wide margin, with 600 stores across three of the six brands. Florida is next at 390, followed by Ohio (297), Illinois (285), Pennsylvania (277), and New York (259). Hover over any state on the map to see which brands are there and how many stores each has.

Each brand has its own footprint. ALDI is in 39 states, so you'll see it almost everywhere. Lidl is the opposite: about three-quarters of its stores sit in five East Coast and Southeast states. Grocery Outlet is even more concentrated, with about 91% of its stores in California, Washington, Oregon, Idaho, and Pennsylvania.

The empty spots are where it gets interesting. Texas has 154 stores from only two brands for roughly 31.7 million people, and Lidl has no stores in Florida, Illinois, Ohio, Michigan, or Texas. No state has all six brands, and Alaska, Hawaii, Montana, and Wyoming have none of them.

So what does this mean if you're representing a site? A gap on the map isn't a reason to rule a site out. It shows which of these grocers aren't in your state, which makes them worth a call if the site fits their profile. The next section lays out what each profile looks like, so you can check a trade area against it before you pick up the phone. And if you're deciding who to call first, start with ALDI, Grocery Outlet, Trader Joe's, and Lidl, the four brands that have added stores since 2021.

Limited Assortment Grocery Store Site Selection Criteria: How Trade Areas Compare

This analysis uses a 3 mile radius around each store and reports medians, because dense urban stores pull averages up (Lidl's average 3 mile population is 143,855, against a median of 78,975).

Trader Joe's site selection criteria: education is the tell

Income alone doesn't set Trader Joe's apart from Lidl, whose median trade-area income is within about $5,000 of Trader Joe's. Education does. In Trader Joe's median trade area, 44.3% of residents hold an associate degree or higher, and 64% of its stores sit in trade areas where at least 40% do. The same share is 36% for Lidl, 20% for ALDI, 16% for Grocery Outlet, and under 3% for Save-A-Lot and Ruler Foods. Only 9% of Trader Joe's stores sit below 30%, against 49% for ALDI.

The rest of the profile is dense and affluent: a median 100,686 residents within 3 miles, nearly double ALDI's 51,009, and about 99% of stores with at least 25,000 residents. Mobile data, which counts customer visits to a store from mobile device data, puts its stores at an average 46,461 visits per month, the highest of the six.

ALDI site selection criteria, and how Lidl and Grocery Outlet compare

ALDI sites across the income range: a $78,640 median, with 35% of stores in trade areas below $70,000 and 24% above $100,000. Its median trade area has 51,009 residents, and its stores average 30,554 mobile visits per month.

Lidl's trade areas look more like Trader Joe's than ALDI's: a $107,189 median income, 35.8% with an associate degree or higher, and 78,975 residents. Its stores average 34,293 visits per month. Lidl's Mid-Atlantic and Southeast footprint complicates that comparison, since incomes there run high.

Grocery Outlet sits between them, with a $91,763 median income, 69,240 residents, and 29,605 visits per month. Its footprint is mostly West Coast, so its numbers reflect those markets.

Save-A-Lot and Ruler Foods: the value tier

Save-A-Lot and Ruler Foods operate in small, lower-income trade areas: median populations of 25,075 and 20,369, and median incomes of $58,481 and $60,735. About 83% of Save-A-Lot stores and 76% of Ruler Foods stores sit in trade areas below $70,000, and half of Save-A-Lot's stores and 57% of Ruler Foods' have fewer than 25,000 residents within 3 miles. Their stores average 28,795 visits per month and 32,807 respectively.

What all limited assortment brands share

One variable they all share is daytime to resident ratio. Daytime population for all six brands sits between .84 and 1.01 for all brands, across the whole nation, showing that daytime population is not the telltale demographic variable for these brands.

How Much Traffic and How Many Visits Do These Sites Carry?

Five of the six brands draw 28,795 to 34,293 mobile visits per store per month, and Trader Joe's draws 46,461. That's a gap of about 1.6x, much tighter than the five-fold gap we found among chicken brands in our chicken restaurant site selection criteria analysis.

Two terms to keep straight here. Average daily traffic (ADT) counts the vehicles passing a site on the adjacent road. Mobile visits count customer visits to the store, measured from mobile device data. A busy road doesn't always mean a busy store, and Save-A-Lot is the clearest example.

Save-A-Lot draws 28,795 visits on roads carrying about 62% of ALDI's average traffic, which suggests it sites for neighborhood access more than corridor visibility. Visits also vary by market: Trader Joe's averages 40,690 in Los Angeles and 53,944 in Chicago, and ALDI averages 25,020 in Los Angeles and 33,504 in Cleveland. Benchmark a site against its own market for the best match.

Best Co-Tenants for a Limited Assortment Grocery Store

Starbucks and Dollar General do the most sorting. Starbucks is present at 69% to 95% of the four growing brands' locations and 39% of Ruler Foods', and Save-A-Lot falls below the 30% threshold. Dollar General is present at 74% of both Save-A-Lot and Ruler Foods locations, against 34% of ALDI's.

Trader Joe's lifestyle and service tenants (Sephora, ULTA, European Wax Center, Club Pilates) fit its education profile, and 36% of Lidl's locations have an ALDI present. Eleven co-tenants, including McDonald's, Subway, Taco Bell, CVS, and Walgreens, appear at 30% or more for all six brands, mostly due to their huge store counts. Regional brands like Chevron (Grocery Outlet 62%) and Dunkin' (Lidl 70%) reflect where a chain operates, not its format.

Know Which Grocer Fits Your Site Before You Make the Call

The pattern across these six brands is clear. Trader Joe's wants education and a large trade area, and Lidl follows it closely on income. ALDI and Grocery Outlet cover the middle of the market, and Save-A-Lot and Ruler Foods stay in smaller, lower-income trade areas. Add the recent growth, with ALDI, Grocery Outlet, Trader Joe's, and Lidl expanding and Save-A-Lot shrinking, and you can narrow the list of grocers worth calling for a given site.

You don't have to piece it together from separate sources. REGIS Online puts the demographics, traffic counts, mobile visits, co-tenants, and void analysis for any site in one place, so you can see which of these grocers fit and which are missing from your market. See it for yourself on a live demonstration with one of our team members!

Last Modified November 6, 2026