CHARLOTTE, N.C. -- Carrying out its plan to aggressively expand into North Carolina and South Carolina, QuikTrip Corp. on Thursday announced the opening of a new convenience store in Charlotte, N.C., its 50th within its Carolinas Division, reported The Spartanburg Herald-Journal. And it is poised to open its 700th c-store chain-wide.
The Tulsa, Okla.-based c-store chain opened its first Carolina store in Boiling Springs, S.C., in Oct. 2011.
"For us, that type of growth has never happened in a new marketplace," Mike Thornbrugh, the company's manager of public and government affairs, told the newspaper. "It's phenomenal. And we're not done. It's ongoing."
Thornbrugh said it took QuikTrip a decade to hit the 50-store mark in Atlanta. The feat took seven years in the Dallas/Fort Worth area and six years in Arizona.
He said the Carolinas offered the company a "perfect storm" of city and county governments that were willing to work with them, as well as an eager and enthusiastic customer base.
"There's a lot of good competition out there," Thornbrugh said. "We're getting better and better. … This is a fantastic market. We're still building at lightning speed."
QuikTrip has another seven stores currently under construction in the region, said the report.
Privately held QuikTrip owns and operates nearly 700 convenience stores in 11 states: Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas. It is scheduled to open its 700th location chain-wide in Overland, Mo., on June 26, the company announced on Facebook. It will be tweeting about the store at the hashtag #QT700th.
Click here to read the full Spartanburg Herald-Journal report.
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