Dive Brief:
- Five Sinclair Oil-branded convenience stores in the Cedar Rapids, Iowa, area have abruptly closed less than a year after being sold and rebranded, according to a Sept. 14 report by the Corridor Business Journal.
- These locations are owned by Brew Oil, which operates around 20 convenience stores in northwest Iowa, according to the report. Each store has a paper on its front door indicating it’s permanently closed. All inventory has also been removed.
- It remains unclear why these locations — all of which were formerly under the EG-America owned Kwik Shop banner — have closed. Neither Brew Oil nor Sinclair responded by press time to inquiries for details on these shuttered stores.
Dive Insight:
On Jan. 6 of this year, three of these stores — located at 1001 1st Avenue, 4201 Center Point Road and 3301 J Street — were sold for a combined total of around $1.1 million, according to the Cedar Rapids assessor’s records. Five days later, those same locations were flipped for over $3.3 million, records show.
Sale records could not be immediately found for the other two stores, located at 2904 Center Point Road and 300 Blairs Ferry Road, according to the Corridor Business Journal.
Some of these locations in recent weeks were selling fuel for as low as $2.49 per gallon, according to the Journal. The report notes that all five locations were rebranded from Kwik Shop to Sinclair “just months ago.”
Brew Oil is based in Storm Lake, Iowa. The retailer uses Sinclair’s Dinopay mobile app and the Brew Rewards platform for all of its locations, according to the retailer’s website.
Salt Lake City, Utah-based Sinclair Oil has more than 1,600 independent branded and licensed fuel stations in the U.S., according to its website.
