Dive Brief:
- Alimentation Couche-Tard, the parent company of Circle K convenience stores, is acquiring the 45-location Big Red Stores convenience store chain, according to a Monday press release. The acquisition is expected to close in the first half of 2023.
- Big Red Stores’ entire footprint is in Arkansas, and many of its large-format stores are co-branded with QSRs like Baskin Robbins, Dairy Queen, McDonalds and Burger King.
- All of the locations included in the merger are company owned and company operated, with all but one of them also sitting on land owned by the company.
Dive Insight:
Big Red Stores is the c-store arm of retail firm Summerwood Partners, which also owns two Family Market grocery stores in Malvern and Shannon Hills, Arkansas.
The company was founded in 1997 by brothers Doug and David Hendrix, who have grown Big Red mainly through opening new sites, with most of its stores located in the surrounding Little Rock, Arkansas region. They opened the 40th Big Red location in July 2019.
Summerwood Partners has been one of the more financially successful private businesses in Little Rock in recent years. It saw the fifth-largest revenue jump of all businesses in the area between 2020 and 2021, according to the Arkansas Business Journal.
For Couche-Tard, this marks its first acquisition since it agreed to acquire 65 sites from True Blue Car Wash in December 2022. Prior to that, Couche-Tard’s last acquisition was the 19-site purchase of Pic Quik c-stores in New Mexico in December 2021.
Acquiring Big Red Stores bolsters Couche-Tard’s presence in Arkansas, where it already has a decent footprint with around 20 locations in the Little Rock area. One of its biggest competitors in the area will be El Dorado, Arkansas-based Murphy USA, which has numerous locations in Little Rock, as well.
Although Couche-Tard did not comment on whether or not the acquired Big Red locations will be converted to Circle K stores, the company’s COO, Alex Miller, said it’s “looking forward to bringing the Circle K experience to new customers” in the area, according to the announcement.
“Doug and David built an exceptional network of stores and people, and we believe our values are congruent with the culture they've spent a quarter-century building,” Miller said.
The announcement also indicated Couche-Tard plans to expand foodservice options at the Big Red locations, noting the “ample space” that the brand’s large-format stores offer.
Laval, Quebec-based Couche-Tard operates more than 9,000 c-stores in North America — including over 7,000 in the U.S. — under the Circle K, Holiday Stationstores and Couche-Tard banners. It is the second-largest c-store company in the continent behind 7-Eleven.
