Dive Brief:
- Jacksons Food Stores has acquired Redwood Oil Company, operator of the Redwood Market convenience store chain in Northern California, Todd Michael, Jacksons’ senior vice president of merchandising, marketing and procurement, confirmed to C-Store Dive.
- The stores extend from Santa Rosa to Crescent City, near the border with Oregon. The deal nearly doubles Idaho-based Jacksons’ c-store count in California from about 30 to 54 locations.
- Most of the stores feature a full-service kitchen and made-to-order offerings, which was the driving force of the acquisition for Jacksons, Michael said. He added that this is the retailer’s first foray into made-to-order foodservice.
Dive Insight:
Redwood’s c-store network includes 23 locations under its Redwood Market banner and one ExtraMile-branded site, Michael said. Jacksons will add the ExtraMile by Jacksons signage to the latter location, while temporarily renaming the Redwood Market stores to Redwoods by Jacksons while it decides on long-term branding for the stores, Michael added.
When asked why the company isn’t immediately rebranding the Redwood Market sites to Jacksons Food Stores, Michael said these locations have built strong brand recognition over the years.
“We want to make sure that we're doing the right thing with the branding and the people that have been supporting those stores over the years and in all those towns,” Michael said.
Jacksons began converting the stores on Aug. 18 and expects to finish the integrations on Aug. 27, Michael said. Besides the renames, this process includes adding many of Jacksons’ products and systems to the stores, notably its Let’s Go rewards platform, Michael said.
The star of the show is Redwood’s made-to-order Aztec Grill program, which is available in 16 stores and features customizable burritos and bowls, fajitas, quesadillas, nachos, tortas and taco platters across both a.m. and p.m. dayparts. Michael said the plan is to bring Aztec Grill to many of Jacksons’ stores, which number more than 300 across eight states.
Michael said that Aztec Grill signage outside the Redwood Market stores will remain on the buildings once the conversions are complete.
“It's going to be a great test to learn and see what parts of that program we can move into some of our other sites inside the network,” Michael said. “There's definitely components of Aztec Grill that we could probably put into certain stores in our network pretty fast.”
It’s unclear why Redwood Oil, which was founded in the early 1970s, decided to sell the business. A spokesperson from the company did not respond by press time when asked for this information.
Michael emphasized that Jacksons is happy to be expanding its network further into California, notably the small towns that Redwood has operated in for decades.
“We're really excited to get into those communities we haven’t been before and continue to grow our brand,” he said. “We're picking up a great group of associates, and many of their people are staying on, and so we're really excited about the team.”
