TULSA, Okla. — QuikTrip Corp. has reopened the six Tulsa, Okla., convenience stores that it closed ahead of President Trump’s rally on June 20, spokesperson Mike Thornbrugh told CSP Daily News.
“All stores are reopened,” he said.” QuikTrip made the decision to temporarily close some locations in the Tulsa downtown, because of possible safety concerns for our employees and customers ahead of all the weekend activity.”
Protests targeting the event did not materialize and the rally at the BOK Center did not attract as many attendees as expected, according to multiple reports.
QuikTrip officials still believe they made the right decision to close the stores temporarily even though concerns about collateral property damage did not materialize, Thornbrugh told the Tulsa World.
The company expected the affected stores, which were boarded up with plywood, to be fully operational by Tuesday, said the report. In order to reopen them, the company needed to check the stores for cleanliness, inventory levels and to make sure all equipment was working properly, it said.
“There were just way too many unknowns, and because of the unknowns we made the best decision that we could,” Thornbrugh told the newspaper. “Clearly there was a pattern that was going on across the nation,” he said, referring to the property damage and looting indirectly related to the protests over the killing of George Floyd, an unarmed black man, by a police officer on May 25 in Minneapolis. “Whether that was going to be applicable to Tulsa, we didn’t know,” he said.
Tulsa-based QuikTrip operates approximately 820 convenience stores in 11 states. It is No. 11 on CSP’s 2020 Top 202 ranking of c-store chains by number of company-owned retail outlets.
Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.