Dive Brief:
- Mississippi-based c-store retailer Sprint Mart has opened its largest convenience store to date — a 16,000 square-foot location in Vance, Alabama, a company spokesperson confirmed.
- The Vance location also features a new sit-down restaurant concept — Sadie’s Diner — inside the store.
- Sprint Mart joins several other c-store chains scaling up the size of some of their locations, including QuikTrip, Casey’s General Stores and RaceTrac, which are all dipping their toes into larger travel centers.
Dive Insight:
Professional drivers are one of the focuses for this new Sprint Mart, said Herb Hargraves, chief operating officer for Victory Marketing, the company that owns Sprint Mart, in an email.
The 16,000-square-foot store is “the first of it’s kind for Sprint Mart,” Hargreaves said. He noted that the chain’s 104 locations have been built in a variety of formats, from “center island marketers” — where the c-store is under the canopy with the fuel pumps — to this new flagship location.
“This property in particular has a very robust food offering with hot and cold grab and go food options made fresh daily by Sadie’s Diner, an expanded Chix Chicken offering, a larger beer cave and three self-checkouts,” Hargraves said.
Sadie’s features a number of diner mainstays on its menus. Its 24-hour breakfast offering includes eggs, meat and sides, omelets, sandwiches and wraps. The lunch and dinner menu features fried chicken, salads, sandwiches like the BLT or Philly cheesesteak and popular diner fare like meatloaf, pork chops and pot roast.
“This is the first [restaurant] of this scale for Sprint Mart,” Hargraves said. “We do have our own proprietary QSR options available Chix Chicken and soon to be launched Sprintzoni Pizza.”
The store had its soft opening last week, the spokesperson said.
Sprint Mart isn’t the only convenience retailer exploring fresh food concepts. In August, Parkland revealed its Bites On the Run foodservice program, which it’s piloting in Montreal. TravelCenters of America, which already developed its Iron Skillet and Country Pride restaurants, added Fork and Compass earlier this year.
Ridgeland, Mississippi-based Sprint Mart has more than 100 locations in Mississippi and Alabama. In addition to its proprietary foodservice options, the company also offers Finish Line fountain drinks and Freeze Zone slushies.
