QuikTrip is growing so quickly, it had its choice of five new-store openings this week to celebrate its 1,000th retail location. On Wednesday, it celebrated the milestone at a media event at its new convenience store in Converse, Texas.
The new store is set to open to customers Thursday along with four other new QuikTrip stores located in Surprise and Tolleson, Arizona, Macon, Georgia, and Thornton, Colorado, said Aisha Jefferson-Smith, QuikTrip’s corporate communications manager. The company has opened 26 stores in 17 markets since Jan. 1, she said.
“We’re just honored to reach this milestone and excited to celebrate this achievement with our customers in the San Antonio area,” Jefferson-Smith said Wednesday, referring to the Converse opening.
To commemorate opening 1,000 stores, the company is giving away free limited-edition digital collectibles. The non-fungible tokens, NFTs, feature avatars wearing red QT shirts. They’re available on OpenSea, an online NFT marketplace.
On Saturday, QuikTrip will celebrate the milestone in Converse with an event for the community, featuring a disc jockey, an inflatable obstacle course, balloons, face painting and other activities for children.
“I just left their media event [and it's a] beautiful store. We’re looking forward to having it open in the community. We’re excited to have them join Converse,” said Elan Vallender, executive director of the Converse Economic Development Corp.
The new location in Converse includes a 4,900-square-foot store with nine gasoline pumps, Jefferson-Smith said. The site doesn’t have an electric-vehicle (EV) charger.
The store floorplan is a newly designed Generation 3S with a QT Kitchens, offering an expanded fresh-to-order foodservice menu, including pulled beef and hardwood-smoked barbecue sandwiches, breakfast tacos, pizza, soft pretzels, premium specialty drinks and QuikShakes. It also offers freshly made grab-and-go sandwiches, salads and wraps. Its line of QT “snackles” includes freshly brewed coffee and QTea, pizza by the slice and roller grill items. Its doughnuts and pastries are made fresh daily, Jefferson-Smith said.
“Texas is a big barbecue state, so it’s great we have our brisket sandwiches available,” she said.
The store also features state-of-the-art security, she said. It will employ 20 to 25 employees.
Out of a workforce of 28,000, QuikTrip has 5,000 employees in Texas, a fast-growing market for the company with 235 stores, Jefferson-Smith said. The company has been recognized for its workplace practices and employee benefits, including tuition reimbursement, health-care insurance, 401(k) retirement plan and advancement opportunities.
Location, Location
The company prefers to build new stores instead of acquiring existing sites because it is selective about its locations. “We have an amazing real estate team. Our growth strategy here at QuikTrip, we plan it out really well,” Jefferson-Smith said. “Our real estate team does a lot of research on locations. They do a really great job on picking out locations.”
Converse is growing because of its proximity to San Antonio, Vallender said.
“Converse has had land available and is very friendly to development. We’ve had quite a bit of residential growth. That’s continuing to boom. That’s our primary driver,” Vallender said. “In the last Census, the population crested 30,000,” he said. In 2010, the population was about 13,500.
The diverse community’s population is 25.9% Caucasian, 25.9% Hispanic and 22.5% Black, according to the Converse Economic Development Corp. The median household income is $72,911.
Many residents work in San Antonio, which is easy accessed via Interstate 10 and the 1604 Loop, Vallender said.
Busy Intersection
The site was ideal for a new QuikTrip. “It’s a really busy intersection. We are very particular where we go. We do a great deal of research before we select a location. The city council members said this was a really busy intersection and the traffic flow was great,” Jefferson-Smith said.
Converse is adjacent to Randolph Air Force Base, part of Joint Base San Antonio, which brings people into Converse. “They provide quite a lot of business,” Vallender said. The city’s day-time population is 23,150, according to the U.S. Census Bureau’s American Community Survey.
San Antonio was also the site of QuikTrip’s 800th store opening in April 2019. In four years, the company has opened 400 stores.
- QuikTrip is No. 10 on CSP’s 2022 Top 202 ranking of U.S. convenience-store chains by store count. Look for the 2023 Top 202 in the June issue of CSP magazine.
The company started in 1958 when Burt Holmes and Chester Cadieux opened a small grocery store in Tulsa, Oklahoma. Four years later, QuikTrip became profitable. It grew by opening new stores in Oklahoma and then in 1968, it began expanding to other states. In 1971, it merged with Shopeze and expanded into Wichita, Kansas. Cadieux’s son Chet Cadieux III is chairman and CEO of the $11 billion company.
Store Openings
Unlike many c-store chains that grow by acquiring other companies or their locations, QuikTrip has primarily grown by building new stores.
Here’s a timeline of QuikTrip’s growth:
- 1971: 100th store
- 1978: 200th store in Raytown, Missouri
- 1992: 300th store in Sand Springs, Oklahoma
- 2002: 400th store in Tempe, Arizona
- 2008: 500th store in Broken Arrow, Oklahoma
- 2012: 600th store in Claremore, Oklahoma
- 2014: 700th store in Overland, Missouri
- 2019: 800th store in San Antonio, Texas
- 2021: 900th store in Corsicana, Texas
- 2023: 1,000th store in Converse, Texas