ALTOONA, Pa. -- Sheetz Inc. has come a long way since Bob Sheetz opened the first Sheetz Kwik Shopper in 1952 in Altoona, Pa., said The Altoona Mirror. In 2010, revenues for the convenience retailer were $4.9 billion. The chain now has 394 stores and expects to reach the 500 mark in the next few years, the report said.
"We will hit 400 in August, and if plans go well, three years later, we will hit 500," Joe Sheetz, executive vice president, told the newspaper.
More than half (211) of the chain's stores are in Pennsylvania, but the company is expanding rapidly [image-nocss] in both North Carolina and West Virginia, said the report.
"Our No. 1 market is North Carolina. We have two full-time people who are based there to look for real estate; they are looking at this market inside and out," Sheetz said.
He said 40% of the new stores the corporation is opening in the next couple of years will open in North Carolina. "We hope to build 10 per year in North Carolina; we think that is a good pace for us," he told the paper.
Steve Augustine, Sheetz director of real estate for the South, told the Mirror that the corporation is opening seven new stores this year and has 10 more in various stages of permitting approvals.
Sheetz made the decision to move into North Carolina in 2002 and opened its first store in Walkertown, near Winston-Salem, in 2004.
"We picked North Carolina because it has one of the fastest growing populations in the country and the weather is mild most of the year. You also get a lot of long-distance commuters," Sheetz said.
Sheetz is focusing on two corridors in North Carolina: a triangle of Winston-Salem, Greensboro and High Point and an extended triangle which includes Raleigh-Durham, Rocky Mount and Greenville.
It is also is expanding into new areas of West Virginia--primarily the Charleston and Huntington markets.
"In the Charleston-Huntington market we have four stores open now, and we are working on about five or six other locations in that market in various stages of permitting and approval," Errin Hensley, Sheetz real estate site selector for West Virginia, told the paper.
Sheetz has been in the northern part of the state for years in locations such as Morgantown, Martinsburg and Berkeley Springs.
"We were thinking we were missing some of the biggest populated areas of the state; that is why we jumped here [Charleston]. We were not in the larger metropolitan areas of the state," Hensley added. "We are looking in West Virginia to open four or five a year over the next several years."
Click herefor previous CSP Daily News coverage of Sheetz and its expansion plans.
As Sheetz expands so does its revenues; 75% of Sheetz revenues come from gasoline sales, but not 75% of the profit. "The national average [for profit] is 15 cents a gallon; we make less than that because we price aggressively," Sheetz said. "People come in to buy gas, but we hope that is not the only thing they want. We hope to get them inside the store."
Revenues inside the stores have grown at a nice clip, he added.
"We are not severely affected by the recession because the stuff we sell is not expensive and part of people's everyday lives. Rarely are people cutting out their daily paper, coffee and their sandwich at lunch. People trade down in the food market place, and they go to McDonald's or Sheetz. That helped us get through," Sheetz told the Mirror.
Altoona, Pa.-based Sheetz, a family-owned and -operated convenience store chain with more than $4.5 billion in revenue for 2010 and more than 13,500 employees, operates more than 390 convenience locations throughout Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina. It provides a menu of MTO subs, sandwiches and salads, which are ordered through touchscreen order point terminals. All Sheetz stores are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
For more details on Sheetz, look for the exclusive cover story on Sheetz in the August issue of CSP magazine.
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