In Murphy USA’s second-quarter 2025 earnings call Thursday, President and CEO Andrew Clyde gave an update on the company’s QuickChek convenience-store brand.
Clyde said that unlike many of the public quick-service restaurants (QSRs) reporting sales declines, average per store month food and beverage sales at QuickChek stores have been positive for the third straight quarter.
“Investing in traffic and transactions versus taking excessive price increases in the current environment will pay dividends later when food costs subside, resulting in both sales and margin growth going forward,” Clyde said, according to a transcript from AlphaSense.
- Murphy USA is No. 4 on CSP’s 2025 Top 202 ranking of U.S. convenience-store chains by store count.
However, Clyde also noted that when it came to non-fuel performance on existing stores, Murphy USA is about $20 million behind their expectations for 2028, which included $1.3 billion in projected EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation and amortization). This is a goal Murphy USA has included in its investor presentations since 2023, he said.
The largest driver of this, he said, was at QuickChek, where older, non-fuel stores have been impacted the most from the QSR value wars and food and beverage margins have been hampered by cost inflation and overall weakness in the Northeast traffic.
“As we look beyond 2028, these older non-fuel stores are coming off lease, and we would expect food margins to stabilize as we continue to drive traffic on our high-volume fuel stores,” he said.
When food costs abate, it’ll be easier to demonstrate high margin contribution, he said, because “we won’t have to go back and win back the customer because we’ve priced and gave them value during this period, so we didn’t lose them.”
Clyde also noted that mobile orders are up since QuickChek launched a new rewards program in November.
“At QuickChek, the revamped loyalty program has seen mobile orders double since the relaunch, and 35% of in-store pickup items included additional sales inside the store, averaging $7 per transaction,” Clyde said.
El Dorado, Arkansas-based Murphy USA operates one of the nation’s largest convenience-store chains, operating in 27 states, located primarily in the Southwest, Southeast, Midwest and Northeast, the majority of which are next to Walmart Supercenters. It acquired Whitehouse Station, New Jersey-based QuickChek in January 2021.
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