ATLANTA -- QuikTrip Corp. opened a convenience store in downtown Atlanta, the company’s only operating nonfuel location, on June 23 in the bottom floor of the Viewpoint building.
Why did the chain open a c-store without fuel now? “We wanted to get into some areas of town where we couldn’t put gasoline,” Chuck Barton, QuikTrip’s vice president of marketing, told the Atlanta Journal-Constitution.
The city is one of three of the chain’s largest market, and “hit all the bells we were looking for” in a test market city, he said. The concept targets city-dwellers looking for a convenient option for food and household items.
The store includes the chain’s QT Kitchens foodservice concept. It will feature the food and beverages offered at other QuikTrip locations, but also will be the first QuikTrip to feature made-to-order toasted subs, the report said.
At approximately 3,500 square feet, “it’s going to be a much smaller store” than the chain’s typical new “Gen3” c-store, Mike Thornbrugh, QuikTrip’s manager of public and government affairs, told CSP Daily News in March, when the company announced the store. The company’s new stores are typically 5,800 square feet.
“We started the business without gas. We didn’t add gas until 1971,” Thornbrugh said. “About 35 or 40 years ago, we had a store downtown on Main Street in Tulsa that was a nongas store. But it has been closed for a while. So we’re going back to see what happens.”
QuikTrip is a privately held convenience-store and gasoline marketer based in Tulsa, Okla. Founded in 1958, it has grown to a more than $11 billion company with approximately 700 locations in 11 states.
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