Consolidate and Integrate: Parkland USA Accelerates Expansion, Rebranding

CALGARY, Alberta — Parkland USA completed its first U.S. conversion of a store to the On the Run convenience-store brand at the end of May, signaling the fast-growing retailer and marketer’s goal of becoming one of the industry’s premier unit consolidators.

Over the past decade or more, the company’s Canadian supplier and petroleum marketer parent Parkland Corp. has systematically assembled an impressive portfolio of company-owned c-stores and dealer sites in the United States. With its latest acquisition of Idaho-based Conrad & Bischoff completed in early April, Parkland USA has added 17 KJ’s Super Stores in Idaho, Wyoming and Utah, and the Calgary, Alberta-based parent company now owns 98 retail outlets and has 396 dealer sites in the United States.

Through a series of consist small- and medium-sized purchases, Parkland is a global empire in the making. The company operates in 23 countries. It has retail, commercial and wholesale assets across Canada and the United States, as well as in the Caribbean and Central and South America. In Canada, it is the largest independent fuels retailer and second largest c-store operator with 650 retail outlets and more than 1,830 dealer sites.

• Parkland USA is No. 121 inCSP's 2020 Top 202 ranking of U.S. c-store chains by store count.

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Parkland’s merger-and-acquisitions strategy is different than many consolidators, according to Doug Haugh, president of Parkland USA.

• Click here for a Talks From the Top session with Haugh for Winsight's CRU Community.

“We look at the whole downstream portfolio and not just the c-stores,” he tells CSP. “We love running stores; we love growing them. It’s the biggest single part of our business. But it isn’t the only part of our business. We have great scale and capabilities in lubricants and specialty products.”

While most c-store-industry consolidators look at building larger retail chains, Parkland is “playing to its strengths,” Haugh says, and looking at a “deeper part of the market,” businesses that are also involved in trucking, distribution, warehousing, “businesses that we’re good at and that we can bring some synergies to and grow.”

Parkland entered the United States in 2014 with the acquisition of more than 20 Superpumper stations in North Dakota. Parkland USA has operations in 13 mostly Western states under several retail brands. While Superpumper is the most common brand, with almost 30 locations, others include Casey’s Corner, ConoMart Super Stores, KB Oil, Harts Gas & Food and Eagle Stops. Until recently, the company’s strategy has been to keep the acquired brands to leverage their community equity. But that strategy is changing.

The company opened a U.S. office in early 2019 in Charleston, S.C., to spearhead marketing and sales development in the United States.

Then in late 2020, Parkland acquired the license for the exclusive use of the On the Run retail trademark in most of the United States, positioning the company to expand and to create a unified North American c-store brand, Ian White, senior vice president of strategic marketing and innovation for Parkland, said when the deal was announced.

“On the Run is an established retail brand that we can quickly and efficiently scale by leveraging the capabilities we have established in the Canadian market,” he said.

Exxon Mobil Corp., Houston, developed and uses the On the Run brand at Exxon and Mobil stations in the United States, as well as internationally. Laval, Quebec-based Couche-Tard acquired the On the Run trademark and franchise network in the United States in 2009, and Parkland acquired it in Canada in 2016. ExxonMobil retains full ownership in the rest of the world.

Moving forward, Parkland will rebrand many but not all of its existing U.S. c-stores and incorporate the On the Run brand into newly developed sites, which it says creates stronger acquisition potential. It will be able to capture efficiencies through common brand collateral, product assortments, private-label and operational continuity. The move also supports the growth of the company’s dealer business by providing an enhanced, bundled offer that combines a leading c-store brand with multiple forecourt fuel brands, the company says.

“The On the Run retail brand provides a solid platform for our continued U.S. growth,” says Haugh.

That growth, for the near future, will generally come in three primary regions of the U.S. “There’s Texas, … the Rockies, up and down the whole spine of the Rockies is growing like crazy, and the Southeast,” Hough says. “Most of the other markets are flat and down.”

Parkland’s first completed On the Run conversion wrapped up at the end of May in Bismarck, N.D. The store had not been upgraded in at least 10 years, says Haugh. “It’s a really good site in terms of location. … It’s a high-volume site with [great] inside traffic, but it’s tired. It hasn’t had much investment other than just maintenance and upkeep in many years.”

The company replaced the underground storage tanks and installed a completely new forecourt. “It’s not a complete raze and rebuilding, but it’s about as close as you can get without tearing it down. And a completely new imaging package on top of all the infrastructure that’s going in,” he says.

“We’ve got a lot of sites like that. They’re performing well because they’ve got what I call ‘good bone structure.’ They’re on the right corner, they’ve got the right location, the right ingress/egress, they’re competitively positioned well in terms of the other offers in their neighborhood, [so] they deserve some investment this time to get to the next level,” he says. “It makes it easy to spend the money because the payback is really strong.”

Parkland has 27 On the Run upgrades budgeted for this year in the U.S., but Haugh says that pace could accelerate if all goes well. In Canada, the pace is 50 to 100 sites a year. “We want to have the majority of our current stores done certainly by the end of next year. Obviously, COVID slowed all of this down; now we’re cranking everything back up. Now that we’ve started, we’ll move pretty fast,” Haugh says.

Parkland has made an ambitious series of U.S. acquisitions that have built up its portfolio incrementally to nearly 100 company-owned convenience-store locations and approximately 400 dealer sites.

2021

Conrad & Bischoff Inc.: 17 company-owned and two leased c-stores in Idaho, Wyoming and Utah under the KJ’s Super Stores brand, as well as 39 dealer sites

2020

Story Distributing Co.:  12 company-owned Casey’s Corner Convenience Stores in Montana and 40 dealer locations

Carter Oil Co.: One travel center in Flagstaff, Ariz., plus wholesale operations

Sevier Valley Oil Co.:  Includes seven Eagle Stop c-stores in Utah and Colorado, Ekker Eateries and GJE Enterprises, as well as more than 20 dealer sites

ConoMart Super Stores:  7 sites in Montana from GM Petroleum

2019

Ken Bettridge Distributing Inc.:  nine company-owned c-stores in Utah

2018

Missouri Valley Petroleum Inc.:  six c-stores in North Dakota and 19 branded dealers

Rhinehart Oil Co. Inc.:  nine Harts Gas & Food c-stores and fuel distribution in Utah, Colorado, Wyoming and New Mexico.

2016

7-Eleven/CST Brands:  two truckstops and one c-store in Wyoming

2014

SPF Energy Inc.:  24 c-stores in North Dakota, Minnesota and Montana under the Superpumper and SPF brands