90 Years, Two Product Lines, One Bet: Why Jolly Pets Picked a Food Distributor to Push Dog ToysHollywood Feed Just Opened Its Eighth South Carolina Store. The Consensus Says Growth. The Math Says Defense.Gimborn Spent Years Buying Its Plant-Based Litter From Someone Else. That Just Changed.West Lebanon Feed Just Doubled Its Internal Share Value in Three Years. Here's the ESOP Math.200 Foam Formulations, 3 Layers, One Bet: Can Lesure Sell Engineering Over Aesthetics?Elanco Just Published a Sustainability Report. The Channel Squeeze Is in the Fine Print.Carnivore Meat Company Just Hired Someone Who Built Sales Teams at Open Farm. The Pattern Isn't New.A $28 Recipe Deck Tests Whether Pet Stores Can Sell Cocktail Napkins90 Years, Two Product Lines, One Bet: Why Jolly Pets Picked a Food Distributor to Push Dog ToysHollywood Feed Just Opened Its Eighth South Carolina Store. The Consensus Says Growth. The Math Says Defense.Gimborn Spent Years Buying Its Plant-Based Litter From Someone Else. That Just Changed.West Lebanon Feed Just Doubled Its Internal Share Value in Three Years. Here's the ESOP Math.200 Foam Formulations, 3 Layers, One Bet: Can Lesure Sell Engineering Over Aesthetics?Elanco Just Published a Sustainability Report. The Channel Squeeze Is in the Fine Print.Carnivore Meat Company Just Hired Someone Who Built Sales Teams at Open Farm. The Pattern Isn't New.A $28 Recipe Deck Tests Whether Pet Stores Can Sell Cocktail Napkins
On the ShelfBy The PetRetailNews Desk3 min readJuly 31, 2026
Hollywood Feed Just Opened Its Eighth South Carolina Store. The Consensus Says Growth. The Math Says Defense.
Eight stores in one state isn't expansion. It's density. And density is a different play with a different risk.
Hollywood Feed opens its Columbia, South Carolina location August 1 at 4345 Fort Jackson Boulevard.
The consensus: this is a growth story
The press release frames it that way. "Hollywood Feed continues to grow," says president Shawn McGhee. "We're intentional about expanding into communities that value exceptional service." Columbia is vibrant, growing, the right demographic. The new 5,500-square-foot store gets two self-wash stations, free curbside pickup, same-day delivery on orders over $59. Standard Hollywood Feed build-out, standard Hollywood Feed pitch.
The trade reads it as expansion. Another pin in the map. Hollywood Feed now operates more than 175 locations across 19 states, and South Carolina gets store number eight: Aiken, Charleston, Indian Land, Lexington, Mount Pleasant, Simpsonville, Summerville, and now Columbia.
That reading is incomplete.
What the store count actually measures
Eight stores in one state is not expansion. It is density. Hollywood Feed has built seven existing stores in South Carolina and is now adding Columbia, that is a chain building multiple locations in the same state, not spreading thinly across new markets.
Density plays raise questions the growth narrative does not answer. The source does not give us Hollywood Feed's comp store sales, their revenue per location, or their density targets. What it does give us: the company has been named to Newsweek's list of America's Best Retailers, ranking No. 1 in the pet care category, consistently wins consumer choice awards in the markets it serves, and has more than 1,400 employees. That scale suggests they are building deliberately, not opportunistically.
Hollywood Feed benefits. The growth story plays well in the press release and in the markets where they operate. "We're expanding" reads better than "we're fortifying."
The independent retailer in a secondary South Carolina market benefits from believing the growth story too, because it buys time. If this is just Hollywood Feed getting bigger, the competitive pressure stays abstract. If this is Hollywood Feed building density in markets where they already operate, the question becomes whether your store is in one of those markets or near one.
Our read: density is expensive until it pays for itself, and the timeline matters
Hollywood Feed is building eight stores in one state. That is a choice that costs more upfront than spreading those eight stores across eight states. The payoff comes if the density creates advantages that justify the cost, brand recognition, operational efficiency, market coverage that makes it harder for others to enter.
The risk: the stores compete with each other for the same customers, and the cost of building all eight exceeds the revenue they generate collectively. The other risk: a competitor enters the same state anyway, and the density does not prevent it.
We will know which one this was when Hollywood Feed reports results in South Carolina, or when they stop opening new locations there. If they keep building, the density play is working. If they pause, the math did not support it.
For the independent operator in a market Hollywood Feed has entered or is entering: the thing to decide now is whether you go niche, stock the brands Hollywood Feed will not carry, serve the customer Hollywood Feed's model does not reach, or whether you go deeper on service and make the register experience worth the drive past their location. Waiting to see what happens means you are deciding by default, and the default is you compete on the same assortment at a scale disadvantage.
The Columbia store opens August 1. The density math plays out over the next stretch. Watch whether Hollywood Feed opens a ninth South Carolina location, and watch what the independent stores in those markets do between now and then.
Get the next issue in your inbox. Free, weekly, no fluff.