Family Dollar will close nearly 1,000 stores as inflation cuts into the discount retailer’s profits, CNN is reporting.

Dollar Tree, which owns Family Dollar, missed market expectations for holiday-quarter sales and profit on Wednesday, Reuters reports. Shares of the company fell 14% before the bell after it also projected 2024 sales and profit below expectations.

A discount chain that caters to lower-income customers, Family Dollar will close 600 locations in the first half of 2024 and another 370 stores over the next several years as those leases expire, according to CNN.

The retailer hasn’t announced which stores will close.

Dollar Tree, which bought Family Dollar in 2015 for $8.5 billion, also said it will close 30 stores as leases expire.

Dollar stores have struggled following a shift in consumer spending to lower-margin essentials from higher-margin discretionary goods, according to Reuters. They also face stiff competition from rivals such as Walmart and Chinese e-commerce platform Temu.

Also, Family Dollar stores have been plagued by health and safety concerns for employees and workers, CNN reports.

The retailer was fined this year for violating product safety standards after selling items that were stocked in a rat-infested warehouse. The $41.6 million fine was “the largest-ever monetary criminal penalty in a food safety case,” the Justice Department said.

More: Family Dollar’s rat-infested warehouse, damaged products, lead to $41.6 million fine

Family Dollar, Dollar Tree locations in Ohio

Dollar Tree has more than 200 locations in Ohio, including multiple stores in Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Toledo.

Family Dollar has more than 450 Ohio stores, according to data scraping sites like ScrapeHero and Smartscrapers. It also has multiple locations in large cities such as Akron, Canton, Cincinnati, Cleveland, Columbus, Dayton and Toledo.

Ohio is No. 3 in the nation for Family Dollar stores, behind Florida (about 570) and Texas (more than 1,100).

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Dollar Tree to start selling some items for more than $1

The pandemic has caused prices to soar in just about every industry, and Dollar Tree has felt the effects of it as well.

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Family Dollar, Dollar Tree undergoing ‘store portfolio optimization review’

During the fourth quarter of fiscal year 2023, the discount chain announced it had initiated a comprehensive store portfolio optimization review to “identify stores for closure, relocation, or re-bannering based on an evaluation of current market conditions and individual store performance, among other factors.”

That review was used to determine 600 Family Dollar stores would be closed in the first half of 2024.

Another 370 Family Dollar and 30 Dollar Tree stores will be closed over the next several years at the end of each store’s current lease term.