Retail Watchers

veteran+ wrote: ↑October 8th, 2024, 9:43 am

SamSpade wrote: ↑October 7th, 2024, 3:08 pm

storewanderer wrote: ↑October 5th, 2024, 1:00 am It is unfortunate what we have out west. Absolutely pathetic situation really.

I hate literally all our convenience stores. I never go to them, except if I'm desperate for a coffee I might hit 7-Eleven rarely.
I do like how the Portland, Ore. area operator Plaid Pantry has pivoted over the past decade to offer more local products and continue to reward their loyal customers. But, they still have Farmers Bros for coffee (gag) and a limited Pepsi fountain (bleh).

Every time I go back to the intermountain west, it's so nice to finally be back in Maverik country.

I feel the same way regarding MY area.

The convenience store mergers have screwed things up in CA. Valero Corner Store had a new store program that was going aggressively- they pulled out of CA transferring their sites to 7-Eleven prior to selling their entire company to Circle K. They didn't build any new sites in CA but they were looking for sites in CA when they exited. Speedway was aggressively looking for new sites in CA and I expect would have opened numerous new stations in CA as well as taken over/rebuilt numerous older stations in CA, but they only did 3 new builds/rebuilds in CA before the purchase by 7-Eleven occurred. The situation with Arco being controlled by Marathon in SoCal but BP in NorCal has hindered AM PM badly in SoCal but AM PM is re-emerging in NorCal thanks to BP building new corporate operated sites and some franchisees also opening new build sites. Kroger slowly was growing with a new Quik Stop every so often in NorCal but of course this EG Group has done nothing on that front (I guess at this point we can be happy they still operate the stores in CA and didn't sell out to 7-Eleven like too many other parties).

Up in NorCal, BP is building brand new corporate operated AM PM sites. They are very very nice sites. I just am not very impressed with the AM PM offer, it doesn't do much for me. No unsweetened dispensed drink options beyond hot coffee. They have signs with a price for a cup of ice (sign doesn't specify size) but the locations play games and say that price is only for the smallest cup. Prices vary widely by location and they charge sales tax on the pre-discounted prices on fountain drinks/icee products so for instance that 32oz drink that is on sale for 0.79 but has a regular price of 1.99 they charge sales tax based on the 1.99. Never seen any other c-store do this on fountain drinks. I've also had multiple locations charge an incorrect percentage of sales tax for their location (they have corrected this on future visits when I've contacted their corporate office about it).

It seems like Chevron has stopped opening new corporate operated new build stations in California... I wonder if ultimately they will flip the entire corporate operated group of stations to Jacksons. Those are highly highly profitable stations and Chevron owns most of the real estate.

I expect Maverik to creep further into OR and WA. I expect expansion along the I-5 Corridor.

We will see how much further Maverik goes in CA. They just opened Rocklin. This adds to already open Oroville, Anderson, and West Sacramento. They are just about to open in El Centro, Desert Hot Springs, and Victorville. I am not sure if Maverik is deliberately picking total .... locations in CA (Rocklin one is a nice area though)... or this is just coincidental.

Maverik does have some stores in the Spokane and Tri-Cities metro areas and I could see them eventually reaching Yakima, Ellensburg or possibly even Cle Elum at some point, but at this point I just don't think they would be able to find much suitable real estate for their purposes in the urban Puget Sound area since their stores tend to have larger footprints than most west coast convenience stores, and aside from their core of stores in Utah it seems like they are focused more on highway adjacent locations anyway. And if Maverik couldn't find the real estate there's no way someone like a QuikTrip/Sheetz/Wawa would be able to find the even bigger sites they typically operate out of.

I suppose a wildcard in all this could be if someone like Casey's General Store ever starts expanding west since they seem to operate in some of the smaller locations, but aside from what seems like a fairly random expansion into Eastern Tennessee (taking over what looks mostly like stores that Gate sold off; the ones in this area all became Circle Ks) they seem to be content to just stick to the Midwest.

Brian Lutz wrote: ↑October 9th, 2024, 1:13 pm Maverik does have some stores in the Spokane and Tri-Cities metro areas and I could see them eventually reaching Yakima, Ellensburg or possibly even Cle Elum at some point, but at this point I just don't think they would be able to find much suitable real estate for their purposes in the urban Puget Sound area since their stores tend to have larger footprints than most west coast convenience stores, and aside from their core of stores in Utah it seems like they are focused more on highway adjacent locations anyway. And if Maverik couldn't find the real estate there's no way someone like a QuikTrip/Sheetz/Wawa would be able to find the even bigger sites they typically operate out of.

I suppose a wildcard in all this could be if someone like Casey's General Store ever starts expanding west since they seem to operate in some of the smaller locations, but aside from what seems like a fairly random expansion into Eastern Tennessee (taking over what looks mostly like stores that Gate sold off; the ones in this area all became Circle Ks) they seem to be content to just stick to the Midwest.

Casey's is nothing to get excited about at all. I'm not even sure they would make it out west with their pricing. Their prices are worse than 7-Eleven or AM PM... I could not believe the prices they were charging in Des Moines. It explained why they had so few customers while the various Quik Trip and Kwik Star locations were packed with customers.

Casey's store offer is rather similar to Maverik but they do it in a much smaller footprint at an even higher price. I think Casey's executes better than Maverik does. Maverik has some real execution problems.

I wouldn't be surprised to see Casey's try to move west and potentially even buy out Maverik if they find the larger sites appealing to them to run. But I'm not sure they will. I've seen some examples where Casey's actually dumps large sites they get as part of acquisitions. Maverik may have built a chain of incompatible stores that cannot be merged with one of the larger chains- which may be a good thing as it does keep a competitor around.