Alimentation Couche-Tard on Thursday announced plans to open 60 new stores in Wisconsin at a grand opening of its third new-build in the state.

The new stores are part of Couche-Tard's focus on new construction and the Circle K Fuel brand, which were mentioned in an investor presentation late last year. The company intends to build 500 stores within five years, most in North America, it said in a news release Thursday.

The latest store in Green Bay is 5,200 square feet and has 16 dispensers offering Circle K Fuel and a car wash offering Circle K's Unlimited Car Wash Club. The store also offers Circle K's proprietary food service program, Fresh Food Fast, with a variety of prepared hot food options.

"We've been very pleased by the community response to our first two stores in Ledgeview and Ashwaubenon since they opened last year," said Gary Brant, vice president of operations, Circle K Northern Tier Business Unit, in the announcement.

A Circle K spokesman wrote OPIS in an email that the latest store opening is the third new store in the Green Bay-Appleton area. Those three Circle K stores are part of 30 Wisconsin stores Couche-Tard operates, but the rest of the sites are branded Holiday. Some additional Wisconsin sites are operated by franchisees under the Holiday brand.

"We do plan to grow both our company-operated and franchisee-operated store presence in Wisconsin," the spokesman said.

Like the Green Bay store, Circle K's other two new stores in Ledgeview and Ashwaubenon offer car washes. "Car washes are part of our overall growth strategy and are made on a site-by-site basis," the email said.

The news release said Couche-Tard has "identified numerous sites for development" and "continues to actively scout locations throughout the state."

In last year's investor presentation, Couche-Tard said it planned to build 500 stores in five years and identified 1,000 sites for future growth, most of them new construction. The company said it completed 40 new stores in the first half of the fiscal year ending Oct. 15 and had more than 100 sites in the construction pipeline. Couche-Tard also said it is targeting 75% of its spending on new-builds and 25% on raze-and-rebuilds or relocations.

In Wisconsin, Holiday ranks seventh in-store brand market share by fleet sales at 3.31% and is retailing gasoline about a half-cent above market, according to OPIS MarketSharePro. The other top six Wisconsin brands by store brand market share are Kwik Trip (45.28%), BP (11.10%), Mobil (8.85%), Shell (7.22%), Speedway (4.02%) and Citgo (3.64%), the OPIS figures show.


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--Reporting by Donna Harris, dharris@opisnet.com; Editing by Michael Kelly,

mkelly@opisnet.com


(END) Dow Jones Newswires

01-29-24 1002ET