Giant Eagle Convenience Divison

Giant Eagle’s strategic acquisition of the Ricker’s convenience-store chain in Indiana helped this division of the grocery-store chain jump more than 10 spots on the Top 202 list. The deal, which surprised many in the industry, added 56 stores in Indiana to the company’s store count.

The retailer opened the first GetGo Cafe + Market in the Indianapolis area in October 2015. There are now seven GetGo locations in central Indiana. The Ricker’s acquisition provides Giant Eagle with additional scale in the Indiana market as well as opportunities to leverage the strength of both the GetGo and Ricker’s brands, it said.

Pittsburgh-based Giant Eagle operates 175 corporate and 54 independently owned and operated supermarkets in Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland and Indiana. It has approximately 220 GetGo c-stores in several states.

Source: Convenience Digital Resource Library, Technomic. For benchmarking purposes, store counts are year-end 2018.