OCALA, Fla. -- For the second time in two weeks, Kwik King Food Stores sold a large chunk of its stores this past week, as reported in a CSP Daily News Flash on Friday. After announcing the sale of 19 Kwik King sites on January 7, owners Bill Tuck and Ralph Pressley sold 22 of the remaining 24 stores to Ocala, Fla.-based Shreeji Bapa Krupa. The purchase was finalized Wednesday.
"This deal was a really good fit for us," V.M. Patel, a co-owner of Shreeji Bapa Krupa, told the Star-Banner. "This will help us grow as a company."
Patel said the 22 stores will be changed from Kwik Kings [image-nocss] to “Quick Kings.” Each station will use BP, Chevron or Mobil gasoline. Patel also owns Universal Mortgage and Financial Consultants Inc., based in Orlando, Fla.
Kwik King Food Stores recently sold eight stores to Diamond Oil and 11 to entrepreneur Sam Patidar, and they will sell Diamond Oil gasoline. Each of those sites sold for between $750,000 and $1.5 million, according to records at the Marion County Clerk of Court, as cited by the newspaper.
Patidar, who owns five other convenience stores in the county, said he would rename his 11 Kwik Kings to "Qwik Kings."
The sales leave Kwik King, which at one time held 50 Florida-based locations, with two stores, Tuck, president of Kwik King, previously told CSP Daily News. Tuck said he and Pressley had an agreement in place last November to sell the entire company to a single acquirer, but the deal fell through. Tuck said the two partners then opted to parcel out the company in four unique "clusters" ranging in size from six to 22 stores.
In the meantime, Diamond Oil has ambitious plans for the Kwik King stores, Jay Patel, Diamond Oil's CEO, said. "We surveyed these retail units and selected eight locations we believed represent the best potential for growth. They are all high-traffic units that sit on prime real estate, and this will enable us to significantly enhance fuel and inside sales," said Patel.
Patel said converting units from branded to the Diamond Oil proprietary mark enables his retail units to compete on equal footing with the larger fuel providers in the local market. "Our success with both our own stores and our dealers continues to validate our profit enhancement strategy," said Patel. "Pricing continues to be the determinant factor in driving volume. By providing dealers with competitively price unbranded fuel, we have, in many cases, been able to increase their fuel sales four times higher per month."
Tuck and Presley, who bought Kwik King Food Stores in 1998, plan to exit the retail environment once the last two locations are sold. "The whole climate of the convenience-store industry is changing," Tuck told the Star-Banner earlier this month. "It's really tough today to deal with the big oil companies."
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