Rooted in Purpose, Scaling with Precision: How Milo’s Tea and Dollar General Are Building a Modern Growth Story

What happens when an 80-year-old beverage company with startup energy partners with a nearly 90-year-old retailer that is still finding new ways to innovate?

You get a growth story built on shared values, customer obsession, disciplined experimentation—and proof that retail media can influence far more than clicks.

In this SHeCOMMERCE Partner Spotlight episode, Cristina and Jacqui sit down with Mihira Rami, Vice President of Marketing at Milo’s Tea Company, and Natalie Ong, Head of Operations for the Dollar General Media Network, to explore how two deeply rooted Southern brands are working together to connect media, merchandising, customer insights, and leadership.

The episode also marks an exciting SHeCOMMERCE milestone: more than 50,000 podcast downloads, over 1,000 LinkedIn followers, and a growing global community of women and allies helping shape the future of commerce.

Two Heritage Brands with Startup Energy

Milo’s Tea and Dollar General may have been founded generations ago, but neither company is operating with an old-world mindset.

Milo’s began when Milo Carlton returned from World War II and opened a small Birmingham, Alabama, restaurant with his wife, Bea. Customers quickly fell in love with the restaurant’s freshly brewed sweet tea, creating the foundation for what would become a nationally distributed beverage brand.

Today, Milo’s is available in approximately 62,000 retail locations across all 50 states. The company has grown from selling 6.4 million cases annually a decade ago to approximately 61 million cases—while remaining committed to the same principles that shaped the original product: listening to customers, using high-quality natural ingredients, and never sacrificing taste.

Mihira describes Milo’s as an “80-year-old startup”: a third-generation, family- and woman-owned business that is scaling quickly without losing the authenticity that made consumers love it in the first place.

Dollar General brings a similarly powerful origin story. Founded with a mission to make shopping simple and affordable, the retailer has evolved from its early single-price concept into a network of approximately 21,000 stores. For many customers—particularly those in rural and small-town communities—Dollar General is the closest, most convenient, and sometimes only nearby destination for everyday essentials.

That commitment to accessibility continues through the Dollar General Media Network, where Natalie and her team focus on helping brands reach customers in relevant, useful ways that add to the shopping experience rather than disrupt it.

When Media Moves Beyond Marketing

One of the biggest lessons from this conversation is simple:

Retail media should not exist in a silo.

The Milo’s and Dollar General partnership demonstrates what becomes possible when media performance is connected to broader commercial decisions.

Together, the teams used Dollar General Media Network campaigns to introduce Milo’s products to high-intent shoppers during meaningful seasonal occasions, including Easter, summer grilling, tailgating, and the holidays. Promotions, coupons, onsite media, and other formats helped drive product discovery, trial, and repeat purchase.

But the campaigns did more than generate short-term engagement.

They created measurable proof of customer demand.

In 2025, programming supporting a new Milo’s item delivered the strongest incremental return the team had seen. That performance gave Dollar General’s merchandising team greater confidence in expanding the assortment and helped Milo’s secure additional listings, including its flavored lemonades.

The result was not simply a successful campaign. It was a repeatable growth playbook:

Test. Measure. Validate. Expand.

Media insights informed merchandising decisions. Merchandising expansion created new opportunities for customer discovery. And stronger distribution created a foundation for continued media investment.

That is true omnichannel growth—not simply using “omnichannel” as another word for online.

From Media to Shelf

Natalie explains that retail media networks have a unique opportunity to connect customer purchase behavior, media exposure, sales outcomes, and category insights.

When brands can understand whether campaigns are driving incremental sales, attracting new-to-brand customers, or re-engaging lapsed buyers, those insights become valuable far beyond the marketing department. They can help identify where demand is growing, which products deserve further investment, and where distribution or shelf presence should expand.

For a growing company like Milo’s, this creates the opportunity to have an outsized impact.

Dollar General’s first-party data and extensive presence across rural, small-town, and suburban America allow Milo’s to reach customers who can be difficult to engage through broader geographic targeting alone. At the same time, the partnership gives both organizations a clearer view of where customer demand exists and how to serve it more effectively.

It is stronger commercial decision-making.

It is expanded distribution.

It is growth that moves from media to shelf.

Leadership Without a Perfect Playbook

Behind every growth strategy are the leaders creating the conditions for it to work.

Mihira shares that her leadership style has become increasingly grounded in curiosity, empathy, and meeting people where they are. She also emphasizes the importance of giving yourself time to develop an authentic leadership style rather than trying to imitate what leadership is “supposed” to look like.

Her advice: try things on. Learn what works. Let go of what does not feel like you. And recognize when you need to scale yourself by surrounding yourself with the right people and resources.

Natalie reflects on beginning her career as the only woman on a Wall Street trading team and hearing that, between equally qualified male and female candidates, a colleague would choose the man because he would fit the culture better.

That experience stayed with her.

Today, she is intentional about building cultures where different perspectives are welcomed, questions are encouraged, and people feel empowered to speak up. While rigor, routines, and KPIs remain essential, she believes strong leadership also means valuing thoughtful effort, experimentation, and learning—not only celebrating outcomes.

Both leaders agree that the future of commerce will not come with a perfect playbook.

Retail media sits at the intersection of marketing, merchandising, data, technology, customer behavior, and operations. No one can be an expert in all of it.

The leaders who thrive will be those who can ask better questions, build teams with complementary strengths, create clear decision-making frameworks, and give people room to experiment, fail forward, and step into opportunities before they feel completely ready.

The Bigger Takeaway

Modern growth is not about abandoning your heritage in pursuit of scale.

It is about knowing which values must remain non-negotiable—and building the partnerships, capabilities, and leadership required to carry those values forward.

Milo’s and Dollar General show us what can happen when two organizations share a commitment to the customer, use data to create accountability, and treat retail media as a strategic business engine rather than an isolated marketing channel.

This is a story about growing distribution.

It is a story about connecting media and merchandising.

It is a story about women leading through change.

And above all, it is a reminder that sustainable growth is built by staying rooted in purpose, scaling with precision, investing in innovation, and bringing people along with you.

Mihira and Natalie close the conversation by taking the SHeCOMMERCE Pledge: to pay it forward, amplify women’s voices, champion allies, and help build a stronger, more inclusive future for commerce.

🎧 Tune in for an honest, strategic, and deeply human conversation about building brands, partnerships, careers, and the next generation of commerce leaders.

Bold Brands. Fierce Women. One Sisterhood.

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