Jeff Owen
Chief Operating Officer at Dollar General
Thank you, John. Let me take the next few minutes to update you on our operating priorities and strategic initiatives. Our first operating priority is driving profitable sales growth. The team continues to drive strong execution against a robust portfolio of growth initiatives. Let me take you through some of our more recent highlights. Starting with our non-consumables initiative or NCI. The NCI offering was available in more than 8,800 stores at the end of Q2, and we continue to be very pleased with the strong sales and margin performance we are seeing across our NCI store base. In fact this performance is contributing to an incremental 1% to 2.5% total comp sales increase in NCI stores and a meaningful improvement in gross margin rate as compared to stores without the NCI offering. Overall, we remain on track to expand this offering to a total of more than 11,000 stores by year-end, including over 2,100 stores in our light version, with the goal of completing the rollout of NCI across nearly the entire chain by year-end 2022.
Moving to our newer store concept, pOpshelf, which further builds on our success in learnings with NCI. POpshelf aims to engage customers by offering a fun, affordable and differentiated treasure hunt experience, delivered through continually refreshed merchandise, a differentiated in-store experience and exceptional value with the vast majority of our items priced at $5 or less. During the quarter we opened eight new pOpshelf locations, bringing the total number of stores to 16, including four conversions of a traditional Dollar General store into our pOpshelf concept. And while still early, we remain extremely pleased with our results, which continue to exceed our expectations for both sales and gross margin. We also recently opened our first two store-within-a-store concepts, which incorporates a smaller footprint pOpshelf shop into one of our larger Dollar General market stores, and we are encouraged by the initial results including positive reaction from customers. For 2021, we remain on track to have a total of up to 50 pOpshelf locations by year-end as well as up to an additional 25 store-within-a-store concepts as we continue to lay the foundation for future growth. Overall, we remain very excited about the significant and incremental growth opportunities we see available for this unique and differentiated concept.
Turning now to DG Fresh, which is a strategic multiphase shift to self-distribution of frozen and refrigerated goods. I'm very pleased to report that during the quarter, we completed the initial rollout of DG Fresh across the entire chain and are now delivering to more than 17,500 stores from 12 facilities. This important milestone is a direct reflection of the hard work and dedication of the team and I want to thank them for their incredible execution over the past 2.5 years. Notably the rollout was completed about six months ahead of our initial rollout schedule. As a reminder, the primary objective of DG Fresh is to reduce product costs on our frozen and refrigerated items and we continue to be very pleased with the savings we are seeing. In fact DG Fresh continues to be the largest contributor to the gross margin benefit we are realizing from higher inventory markups and we expect additional benefits going forward as we continue to optimize our network and further leverage our scale.
Another important goal of DG Fresh is to increase sales in these categories, and we are pleased with the success we are seeing on this front, driven by higher overall in-stock levels and the introduction of additional products, including both national and private brands. For example, we recently introduced about 25 new and exclusive items under the Armor [Phonetic] brand, as we continue to optimize our assortment, while further differentiating our product offering from others. And while produce was not included in our initial rollout plans, we believe DG Fresh provides a potential path to accelerating our produce offering in up to 10,000 stores over time as we look to further capitalize on our extensive self-distribution capabilities.
Moving to our cooler expansion program, which continues to be our most impactful merchandising initiative. During the first half, we added more than 34,000 cooler doors across our store base and remain on track to install approximately 65,000 cooler doors this year. Notably, the majority of these doors will be in high capacity coolers, creating additional opportunities to drive higher on-shelf availability and deliver an even wider product selection, all enabled by DG Fresh. In addition to the gross margin benefits associated with NCI and DG Fresh, we continue to pursue other gross margin enhancing opportunities, including improvements in private brand sales, global sourcing, supply chain efficiencies and shrink.
Our second priority is capturing growth opportunities. Our proven high-return low-risk real estate model continues to be a core strength of our business. In the second quarter, we completed a total of 772 real estate projects, including 270 new stores, 477 remodels and 25 relocations. For the full year, we remain on track to open 1,050 new stores, remodel 1,750 stores and relocate 100 stores. In addition, we now have produce in more than 1,500 stores with plans to expand this offering to a total of more than 2,000 stores by year end.
As a reminder, we recently made key changes to our development strategy, including establishing our larger 8,500 square foot format as our base prototype for nearly all new stores going forward. We're especially pleased with the sales productivity of this larger format, as average sales per square foot continue to trend well above an average traditional store. In total, we expect to have nearly 2,000 stores in this format by the end of the year, as we look to further enhance our value and convenience proposition particularly in rural America.
Next our digital initiative, which is an important complement to our brick and mortar footprint, as we continue to deploy and leverage technology to further enhance convenience and access for customers. Our efforts remain centered around building engagement across our digital properties including our mobile app, which continues to grow in popularity. In fact, we ended Q2 with nearly 4 million monthly active users on the app, a 28% increase over prior year. Importantly, as we continue to drive higher levels of digital engagement, our DG Media Network, which we launched in 2018 has become an increasingly more relevant platform for connecting our brand partners with our customers. Of note, during the first half, the number of campaigns on our platform increased 65% compared to the prior year period, and we are very excited about the growth potential of this business as we look to further enhance the value proposition for both our customers and brand partners. Overall our strategy consists of building a digital ecosystem specifically tailored to provide our customers with an even more convenient frictionless and personalized shopping experience, and we are pleased with the growing engagement we are seeing across our digital properties.
Our third operating priority is to leverage and reinforce our position as a low-cost operator. We have a clear and defined process to control spending, which continues to govern our disciplined approach to spending decisions. This zero-based budgeting approach internally branded as Save to Serve, keeps the customer at the center of all we do, while reinforcing our cost control mindset. Our Fast Track initiative is a great example of this approach, where our goals include increasing labor productivity in our stores, enhancing customer convenience and further improving on-shelf availability. The first phase of Fast Track consisted of optimizing our rolltainers in case pack sizes, resulting in the more efficient stocking of our stores. The second component of Fast Track is self checkout, which provides customers with another flexible and convenient checkout solution, while also driving greater efficiencies for our store associates. Self checkout was available in approximately 4,300 stores at the end of Q2, and we continue to be pleased with our results, including customer adoption rates and higher overall satisfaction scores in stores that include this offering. Our plans consist of a broader rollout this year and we remain focused on introducing self checkout into the vast majority of our stores by the end of 2022 as we look to further extend our position as an innovative leader in small-box discount retail. Our underlying principles are to keep the business simple, but move quickly to capture growth opportunities, while controlling expenses and always seeking to be a low-cost operator.
Our fourth operating priority is investing in our diverse teams through development, empowerment and inclusion. As a growing retailer, we continue to create new jobs in the communities we serve. As evidenced, we recently launched a national hiring event with the goal of hiring up to an additional 50,000 employees by Labor Day, and I am pleased to note that we are on track to meet our goal. We believe the opportunity to start and develop a career with a growing and purpose-driven company is a unique competitive advantage and remains our greatest currency in attracting and retaining talent, and because over 75% of our store associates at or above the lead sales associate position were internally placed, employees who joined Dollar General know, they have an opportunity to grow their career with us. We also continue to innovate on the development opportunities we can offer our teams, including continued expansion of our private fleet and those associated with DG Fresh as well as pOpshelf.
Importantly, we believe these efforts continue to yield positive results across our store base, as evidenced by a robust internal promotion pipeline in staffing above traditional levels. We also held our annual leadership meeting earlier this month, resulting in a rich and virtual development experience for more than 1,500 leaders of our company. This is one of my favorite events every year and I was once again inspired by the incredible talent and dedication of our people.
In closing, I am proud of our team's performance as we continue to advance our operating priorities and strategic initiatives. Overall, we are very pleased with our position as we head into the back half of the year. And I'm excited about the significant growth opportunities ahead. I want to offer my sincere thanks to each of our more than 159,000 employees across the company for their unwavering commitment to fulfilling our mission of serving others.
With that, operator, we would now like to open the lines for questions.
