Dive Brief:
- Coborn’s, a grocery, convenience and wholesale company, has sold 14 Holiday Stationstores franchise locations back to the parent company, Coborn’s Senior Vice President of Marketing and Communications Dennis Host confirmed through email.
- The sale, which closed on Nov. 7, includes all of the company’s Holiday Stationstores, which were concentrated in central Minnesota, Host said.
- The sale of these Holiday Stationstores locations finalized on the same day that Casey’s announced it had bought 22 stores in Texas, continuing what has been a busy year for c-store M&A.
Dive Insight:
Coborn’s will continue operating its non-franchised convenience stores under the Little Duke’s banner, as well as its grocery stores, liquor stores and pharmacies.
“Holiday will continue to accept and redeem our MORE Fuel Rewards at these locations,” Host said. “Any other potential changes within the locations will be based on Holiday’s playbook for their convenience/fuel centers.”
More Fuel Rewards allows customers to earn 1 cent in rewards for every $10 spent on qualifying purchases at Coborn’s, Cash Wise or Marketplace Foods Stores, and apply those rewards as fuel discounts.
Coborn’s acquired the properties in 2006, according to St. Cloud Live. Holiday Stationstores was acquired by Alimentation Couche-Tard in 2017 and has more than 500 locations in 10 states.
With this divestiture, Coborn’s joins grocery chains like Kroger and Schnuck Markets in selling off convenience store locations. Grocers that still have a sizable c-store business, like Hy-Vee and Giant Eagle, use those smaller locations to help drive customer loyalty, test out new initiatives, and more.
The convenience retail space has seen a flurry of M&A deals throughout 2023, both large and small. BP purchased TravelCenters of America’s 280 travel centers in May for $1.3 billion, and Maverik doubled its size by acquiring Kum & Go. More recently, Casey’s bought 22 Lone Star Food Stores locations and Petroleum Marketing Group acquired 10 locations from Springer Eubank Company.
Laval, Quebec-based Couche-Tard operates more than 5,700 c-stores in the U.S. It is the second-largest c-store company in North America behind 7-Eleven.
