Hy-Vee Gas

Midwestern grocery chain Hy-Vee Supermarkets operates 126 Hy-Vee Gas convenience stores with fuel in the parking lots of its grocery stores. The company has a total of 235 grocery stores in eight states. It plans to add up to 16 more Hy-Vee Gas locations in 2015, as well as open a few new grocery stores. A new grocery store and adjoining Hy-Vee c-store opened in 2014 in Springfield, Ill., with an investment $20.8 million in the newest location.

Based in West Des Moines, Iowa, the chain began as a small general store in 1930 in Beaconsfield, Iowa. Today, the company is owned by its employees and has annual sales of nearly $8 billion and employs more than 56,000 people. Hy-Vee ranks among the top 20 supermarket chains in the United States.

The adjacent convenience stores/gas stations have been added as a strategy to meet more customer needs at a single location and capture more market share. Sites are selected based on available real estate, locations on streets with significant traffic and proximity to other gas station/c-store competitors. The company says Hy-Vee Gas will be a standard offering at all future Hy-Vee Supermarkets, space permitting.

Hy-Vee has built gas station/c-stores in every state it serves except Wisconsin, where the chain has only one grocery store. Iowa has the most Hy-Vee Gas locations, followed by Missouri and Nebraska.