Dive Brief:
- BreakTime Corner Market (BTCM) has purchased 23 Loaf ‘N Jug convenience stores from EG America, confirmed Bret Sullivan, regional operations director for BTCM. These are the company’s first stores in either state.
- Nine of the stores are in Montana with the rest in North Dakota. The sites changed hands and closed briefly in May to install new point of sale and back office tech, but have since reopened and will be rebranded to BTCM’s banner Brake Time, according to reports.
- EG America has sold more than 100 stores since the start of 2023, along with engaging in a sale-leaseback deal with Realty Income Corporation in March 2023 that could include more than 400 sites.
Dive Insight:
EG Group, EG America’s parent company, has been engaging in cost-cutting measures to bring its debt under control. In addition to the sale-leaseback deal, which was worth about $1.5 billion, EG America sold 89 Minit Mart stores in two separate transactions to Casey’s General Stores, in addition to this deal with BTCM.
Internationally, it also sold the majority of its U.K. and Ireland c-stores to sister supermarket company Asda for nearly $3 billion and also sold its 218 KFC locations in the U.K. and Ireland.
Between these moves and refinancing some debt, the company says it has “fully addressed” all of its 2025 debt maturities. However, the company may sell additional assets in the coming months as well.
“2023 saw the Group action a number of significant strategic and refinancing objectives,” said Zuber Issa and Mohsin Issa, co-CEOs of the company, in its Q4 report in March. “We have strengthened the Group’s balance sheet and moved forward with our deleveraging programme, and remain committed to further deleveraging in the near to mid-term.”
Sullivan said that all employees were offered the chance to keep their jobs at the stores, and most of them chose to stay on.
Blackburn, U.K.-based EG Group currently has more than 5,500 c-stores across the U.S., Europe and Australia.
Houston-based BreakTime owns around 170 gas stations and convenience stores across the country in states like Texas, Maine, California and North Dakota.
