Sprint Mart has opened its largest convenience store yet, which includes its new sit-down restaurant Sadie’s Diner. The 16,000-square-foot location in Vance, Alabama, sits off of Interstate-20/59 and across from a Mercedes-Benz manufacturing facility, Matt Bogue said.
Bogue, who is vice president of The Dutch Group, which partially owns Sprint Mart c-stores, said this project has been about five years in the making.
“We believe that there was a need in that area for a robust food offering,” he told CSP Daily News. “We’ve been doing our traditional, grab-and-go fried chicken and catfish program that we do ourselves… But we felt like this location needed something extra.”
The Sprint Mart c-store is connected to Sadie’s Diner, the name a nod to Mercedes-Benz, Bogue said. The store and restaurant aim to serve customers coming off the highway—Vance is located in between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham, Alabama—as well as the large population of manufacturing workers in the area, he said.
The Sprint Mart side has a similar offering to its other c-store locations, including its proprietary grab-and-go fried chicken and catfish program Chix and its Sprintzoni Pizza. Its forecourt features 12 pumps and there are five lanes of diesel in the back.
What’s different about this c-store from other Sprint Marts is it will have a grab-and-go section with hot and cold food from adjoining Sadie’s. It will sell items like cakes, pies, grilled chicken salad, sandwiches and more that come from Sadie’s kitchen, Bogue said.
- Victory Marketing/Sprint Mart is No. 72 on CSP’s2023 Top 202 ranking of U.S. c-store chains by store count.
The restaurant, which can be accessed through the c-store, features a continuous bar that snakes through the restaurant, as well as tables to seat up to four people, he said. Paragon Solutions helped design the space, which Bogue describes as a beautiful restaurant with a clean feel.
For breakfast, diner guests can find house specialties like biscuits and gravy, a smothered pork chop biscuit and a breakfast bowl. Lunch and dinner options include traditional Southern meat-and-three plates, with options from a country fried steak to grilled chicken and more. Salads, sandwiches, a soup of the day and fried chicken are also available for lunch and dinner, and the restaurant has its own bakery for desserts.
Lowered pass-through windows allow diners to see into the kitchen: “There’s a confidence level in looking into a clean kitchen and seeing somebody cook your food,” Bogue said.
One of the challenges in opening the store was the number of employees it takes to run it—about 100 between the restaurant and c-store, he said. They started with hiring the first employee, a general manager with a background in restaurants, about three years ago, Bogue said.
So far, results from the c-store, which has been open for about three weeks, have “exceeded expectations,” Bogue said. Sadie’s Diner will open to the public Nov. 8.
“We’re going to evaluate the performance of this one and see how it goes,” he said. “And if it’s successful, we’ll consider trying this concept at other places.”
Morris Petroleum and The Dutch Group jointly own 103 Sprint Mart convenience stores in Alabama, Louisiana and Mississippi through Victory Marketing LLC, based in Ridgeland, Mississippi. The companies also are involved in other businesses, including fuel distributor Victory Energy. Besides operating and supplying fuel to its own stores, the company is a jobber for about another 70 dealer sites.
