SHEBOYGAN, Wis. -- QMart is the latest acquisition of TravelCenters of America, which will rebrand the 17 convenience stores purchased from the retail arm of fuel and lubricants distributor and transporter Quality State Oil Co. Inc. to its Minit Mart c-store brand.
As reported in a McLane/CSP Daily News Flash, the Sheboygan, Wis.-based chain announced on its website that “QMart has been sold” and that the stores would close at noon on March 30 and reopen on March 31 as Minit Marts.
The first QMart opened in 1979 before new locations began opening in the mid-1980s.
"It was just a good time to put the 17 stores in the hands of a larger operator," Greg Bultman, president of Quality State Oil, told The Sheboygan Press.
He said that Quality State Oil and its 50 employees will remain in Sheboygan and that part of the operation is otherwise not affected by the sale. TravelCenters of America has hired all of QMart’s approximately 120 employees as part of the sale agreement, said the report.
Sources told CSP Daily News that TravelCenters of America initiated the deal and that the Qmart rewards program will continue as a Minit Mart rewards program.
Convenience Retailing University (CRU) honored QMart in 2014 for its RFID keychain-fob loyalty program that rewards consumers with coupons, discounts on gasoline and free products.
TravelCenters of America has been on a convenience-store acquisition spree.
The company began this expansion when it purchased 31 Minit Mart stores in the Bowling Green, Ky., area in 2013. During first-quarter 2015, it acquired 26 convenience stores in three separate transactions including 19 Best Oil Little Stores in March 2015, mostly in Minnesota. In May 2015, it acquired 19 convenience stores principally in Kansas and Missouri from Overland Park, Kansas-based Gas-Mart USA. It acquired 33 c-stores in Illinois with the purchase of Gardner, Ill.-based MKM Oil Co.’s Fast N Fresh chain.
During the company’s second-quarter 2015 earnings call in August 2015, CEO Thomas O’Brien said that TravelCenters of America agreed to acquire 123 additional convenience stores in six separate transactions through the end of the year.
Among these were seven Stop-A-Sec convenience stores in Wisconsin from Luck, Wis.-based Seck Enterprises and 10 c-stores in Ohio that it acquired in December from Stop’n Go of Medina Inc., Medina, Ohio.
“Our convenience-store portfolio will have grown from 34 locations principally in one state at the beginning of the year to over 200 locations in 11 principally Midwest states,” said O’Brien at the time.
In early January 2016, the company acquired of four Meiners’ Market c-stores in Kansas and Missouri from Meiners Corp.
In February, it acquired five TD Pete’s c-stores in northeastern Illinois from the Bradley, Ill.-based compnay.
TravelCenters of America is rebranding all of the convenience stores it has been acquiring to its Minit Mart brand, as well as the c-stores at its travel centers.
Westlake, Ohio-based TravelCenters of America operates 253 full-service travel centers in 43 states and Canada, principally under the TA and Petro Stopping Centers travel center brands. The company also operates more than 200 convenience stores, principally under the Minit Mart brand, in 11 states.
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