ATLANTA --This spring or early summer, QuikTrip Corp. will open a convenience store without gasoline in midtown Atlanta at the corner of Peachtree and 6th Street, reported Atlanta Tomorrow’s News Today.
At approximately 3,500 square feet, “it’s going to be a much smaller store” that the chain’s typical new “Gen3” c-store, Mike Thornbrugh, QuikTrip’s manager of public and government affairs, confirmed for CSP Daily News. The company’s new stores are typically 5,800 square feet.
“It’s really kind of a test to see if it’s going to work or not.”
Although smaller, this new location “is going to have everything we do now” in the larger stores in terms of product mix, he said. There will just be less of it. It will offer foodservice
“It has really been a part of a long-term strategy, but it has got has be the right place at the right time with the right demographics,” he added.
The first QuikTrip opened in 1958 in Tulsa, Okla.
“We started the business without gas. We didn’t add gas until 1971,” he said. “About 35 or 40 years ago, we had a store downtown on Main Street in Tulsa that was a non-gas store. But it has been closed for a while. So we’re going back to see what happens.”
This will be the only currently operating site without gas.
“We’re cognizant that the world is changing again, and we’re cognizant that a lot of people are choosing to move back into the cities,” Thornbrugh said. “We think that’s probably going to continue. This gives us the opportunity, at least in one location, to see whether or not we can take it to other places.”
QuikTrip is a privately held convenience-store and gasoline marketer with headquarters in Tulsa, Okla. Founded in 1958, it has grown to a more than $11-billion company with approximately 700 stores in 11 states.
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