BreakTime Corner Market LLC (BTCM)—also known as “Braketime”—is acquiring 23 Loaf ‘N Jug convenience stores, 14 in North Dakota and nine in Montana, from EG America LLC, according to a report by the Grand Forks Herald.
All employees are staying with the stores, said Bret Sullivan, regional operations director for Houston-based BTCM, who is overseeing the transition. Customers will start seeing new signage and other “cosmetic” changes at the stores by the end of June, the report said.
BTCM was going to take over in early May, but the transition was delayed over the total, undisclosed purchase price, Sullivan told the Herald.
BTCM did not respond to CSP’s request for comment on the transaction. EG America, Westborough, Massachusetts, declined CSP’s request for comment on the deal.
There will not be a lot of changes inside the store, but the company does plan on expanding the locations’ product mix, Sullivan said.
“Loaf 'N Jug is kind of restrictive at the store level because they want their stores to be the exact same,” he told the newspaper. “We don’t operate that way, so you get a little more variety of what we sell.”
The company will give store managers more latitude in what they can do at the stores, Sullivan said.
“They’re older stores, but they are in pretty good shape,” he added. “That’s kind of the niche we’ve been working in the last few years.”
With the acquisitions, BTCM will own about 175 convenience stores nationwide, according to a separate report by Fargo, North Dakota, news outlet KFGO.
The Houston-based company that would become BTCM bought its first convenience store in Houston in 1999. Established as BTCM in 2004, it has emerged as a multifaceted enterprise specializing in the operation and management of gas stations, convenience stores, retail shopping centers, office buildings and the acquisition of land for retail development.
In 2022, BTCM acquired 48 CEFCO c-stores from Temple, Texas-based Fikes Wholesale Inc.
Founded in 2001 by the Issa Family, Blackburn, U.K.-based EG Group is a gasoline forecourt and retail convenience operator with more than 6,200 sites across the United Kingdom and Ireland, Europe, the United States and Australia. In 2018, EG Group established itself in the United States as EG America by acquiring Kroger’s 762-site c-store network, which included the Turkey Hill, Loaf 'N Jug, Kwik Shop, Tom Thumb and Quik Stop banners. It acquired TravelCenters of America’s Minit Mart convenience-store business in 2018. The portfolio included 225 c-stores. And in 2019, among other acquisitions, EG Group acquired Cumberland Farms and its nearly 660 c-stores in the Northeast and Florida.
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