MADISON, Wis. -- Kwik Trip Inc. has announced that it will open a 6,500-square-foot convenience store in the ground level of Varsity Quarters, a six-story, 129-bed apartment building under construction near the University of Wisconsin-Madison, Wis., said a report by The Wisconsin State Journal.
The store, which will not offer gasoline, is slated to open along with the housing on Aug. 15, Steve Wrobel, a Kwik Trip spokesperson, told CSP Daily News. "This will one of 30 new stores we build this year," added director of real estate Hans Zietlow.
The La Crosse, Wis.-based c-store traditional stores near the campuses of UW-La Crosse, UW-Stout and Minnesota State University in Mankato, but those stores, and every other store in the approximately 450-store chain, offer fuel.
"We have experience with stores that are located near a campus, but this is taking it up another level with the student population of Madison and the foot traffic it will generate," Wrobel told the newspaper. "It's going to be an exciting opportunity for us. We have not built them in an environment like that."
The new campus Kwik Trip will offer a wide range of groceries, hot and prepared food, bakery items and a beer cave. A yogurt bar will allow customers to make their own parfaits, Samantha Brady, property manager for Varsity Quarters, told the paper.
Click here to view the full Wisconsin State Journal report.
The opening follows a similar move by Sheetz Inc. in West Virginia. The Altoona, Pa.-based c-store chain announced plans in March to open a "first-of-its-kind" grocery store location at University Place, a new student apartment and retail complex under construction at West Virginia University (WVU) in Morgantown. The company said it may expand the concept to other college towns. The housing community and market are set to open in fall 2014. The 15,000 square-foot restaurant and grocery store, which will be open to nonstudents, will be built on the ground floor of University Place in Sunnyside. It will not offer fuel.
Kwik Trip is a family-owned business that owns more than 400 c-stores, travel centers and other outlets in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. It operates stores in Minnesota and Wisconsin as Kwik Trip, and in Iowa as Kwik Star.
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