As we work to provide everyday low prices and meet our customers’ affordability needs, we remain focused on enhancing our margins through inventory shrink and damage reduction initiatives, as well as pricing and markdown optimization, effective category management and inventory reduction efforts, distribution and transportation efficiencies, private brands penetration and global sourcing. Several of our strategic and other sales-driving initiatives are also designed to capture growth opportunities and are discussed in more detail below.
We have continued to experience significantly higher inventory shrink. Although we continue to take actions designed to reduce shrink, we anticipate it will continue to materially pressure our financial results in 2024. To address shrink challenges, as well as to enhance the overall customer and associate experience in our stores, we continue to implement and refine our self-checkout strategy, including limiting self-checkout to transactions of five items or fewer, and converted some or all self-checkout registers to assisted checkout options in approximately 12,000 stores. Further, we have invested in retail labor as discussed below and we are implementing plans designed to improve store manager turnover rates.
We continue to implement and invest in certain strategic initiatives that we believe will help drive profitable sales growth with both new and existing customers and capture long-term growth opportunities. Such opportunities include providing our customers with a variety of shopping access points and even greater value and convenience by leveraging and developing digital tools and technology, such as our Dollar General app, which contains a variety of tools to enhance the in-store shopping experience. Additionally, our partnership with a third-party delivery service is available in the majority of our stores, and we continue to grow our DG Media Network, which is our platform for connecting brand partners with our customers to drive even greater value for each.
Further, we are continuing to evaluate and evolve the pOpshelf concept, including expanding at a more measured pace in the softer discretionary sales environment, and have converted certain pOpshelf stores to Dollar General stores. pOpshelf is a unique retail concept focused on categories such as seasonal and home décor, health and beauty, home cleaning supplies, and party and entertainment goods. At the end of the first quarter of 2024, we operated 221 standalone pOpshelf stores.
Our “DG Fresh” initiative, a self-distribution model for frozen and refrigerated products that is designed to reduce product costs, enhance item assortment, improve our in-stock position, and enhance sales, has positively contributed to our sales and gross margin performance since we completed the initial rollout in 2021. Moving forward, we plan to focus on additional optimization of the distribution footprint and product assortment within DG Fresh with the goal to further drive profitable sales growth.
We also remain focused on capturing growth opportunities. In the first quarter of 2024, we opened a total of 197 new stores, remodeled 463 stores, and relocated 21 stores. We have increased the total number of planned real estate projects in fiscal 2024 to 2,435, which reflects a planned decrease in new store openings and a planned increase in store remodels. We now plan to open approximately 730 new stores (including any new pOpshelf stores or stores in Mexico), remodel approximately 1,620 stores, and relocate approximately 85 stores.
We expect store format innovation to allow us to capture additional growth opportunities within our existing markets as we continue to utilize the most productive of our various Dollar General store formats based on the specific market opportunity. We are using two larger format stores (approximately 8,500 square feet and 9,500 square feet, respectively), and consistent with 2023, expect the 8,500 square foot format, along with our existing Dollar General Plus format of a similar size, to continue as our base prototypes for the majority of new stores in 2024. The larger formats allow for expanded high-capacity-cooler counts, an extended queue line, and a broader product assortment, including an enhanced non-consumable offering, a larger health and beauty section, and produce in select stores.
We have established a position as a low-cost operator, always seeking ways to reduce or control costs that do not affect our customers’ shopping experiences. We plan to continue enhancing this position over time while employing ongoing cost discipline to reduce certain expenses as a percentage of sales. Nonetheless, we seek to maintain flexibility to invest in the business as necessary to enhance our long-term competitiveness and profitability. From time to time, our strategic initiatives, including without limitation those discussed above, have required and may continue to require us to incur upfront expenses for which there may not be an immediate return in terms of sales or enhanced profitability.