Dive Brief:
- QuikTrip will open a store in Lansing, Illinois — a suburb about 25 miles south of Chicago — next June and plans for two additional sites to hit the Chicago market moving forward, according to a report from the Chicago Business Journal.
- The stores will be QuikTrip’s first locations in the Chicago area, bringing its total number of stores in Illinois to eight.
- QuikTrip’s expansion to Chicago comes a month after Circle K revealed plans to open its first fuel-less, smaller-format c-stores in downtown Chicago, a market that has historically been dominated by 7-Eleven.
Dive Insight:
All three QuikTrip sites to arrive in Chicago are currently under construction, Aisha Jefferson-Smith, corporate communications manager for QuikTrip, told the Chicago Business Journal. Besides the store in Lansing, another is being built in Bellwood, a suburb about 14 miles west of Chicago. The location of the third was not disclosed.
The QuikTrip coming to Lansing will replace a Kmart that closed six years ago, according to the report. The space is more than five acres in size and will have 79 parking spaces for customers and employees and 17 spaces for truck drivers, Jefferson-Smith said.
Once built, QuikTrip will have eight stores throughout Illinois. The other five are located in Godfrey Township, Bethalto, Edwardsville and Granite City — all near the Illinois border with St. Louis.
QuikTrip’s Chicago expansion comes at the heels of Circle K’s announcement to bring its “urban” store format to the city’s downtown area. Circle K opened its first urban store at the end of August, and currently lists eight stores as “coming soon” to the area.
While Circle K already operated a number of traditional stores with fuel in downtown Chicago, the company saw an opportunity to secure spaces for its urban format stores as the city’s real estate market evolved, said Chris Barnes, director of communications for Circle K, in an interview.
“Our offerings and programs there are tailored there to meet the needs of walk-in customers who live, shop and work in that area,” he said.
