77-year-old convenience store chain closing all stores after sale

Earlier this year, the famed Kum and Go marque disappeared from the satellite of convenience stores, adjacent though its erstwhile proprietor thought that wasn't the plan.

When erstwhile Kum & Go CEO Kyle Krause and his household made the woody to merchantability their concatenation to Maverik, they had been led to judge that their iconic marque sanction would beryllium kept.

During the talks to merchantability the chain, Maverik “communicated to maine that they intended to tally some brands,” Krause told the Des Moines Register.

That was not what happened, arsenic Maverik spent the 18 months aft the woody closed taking the Kum & Go marque disconnected its stores and replacing it with its ain branding. Nothing successful the declaration prevented that from happening, but Krause, whose begetter founded the Kum & Go Brand successful 1959, did not expect it to happen.

“It’s their decision,” Krause told the paper of Maverik’s determination to get escaped of Kum & Go. “They tin take what they do... But surely talking to them, their intent anterior to the merchantability was to support some brands.”

Now, without arsenic overmuch fanfare oregon nostalgia, owed to the quality of the brand, different convenience store concatenation sanction volition soon disappear.

Although it's surely not arsenic well-known arsenic bigger chains similar Wawa oregon Sheetz, Freedom Oil has a heavy past and made its people connected parts of the United States.

"Freedom Oil was founded successful 1948 and grew from a fewer vicinity stores into a web of 27 locations passim Illinois and Florida. The merchantability was a bittersweet infinitesimal remembering the travel arsenic to however the institution had grown from a mates of convenience stores to its present-day level," said third-generation household subordinate Mike Owens successful a property release.

The Owens household connected Dec. 9 closed connected the merchantability of its 27-store concatenation to Mizpah Ventures LLC, a Chicago-based institution that operates convenience stores and substance wholesale businesses successful Illinois and Wisconsin, according to Owens, who had served arsenic the president of his family's business.

All of the chain's stores volition close, driblet the Freedom Oil branding, and beryllium reopened nether the Mizpah name.

Terry Monroe, president of American Business Brokers & Advisors, based successful Fort Myers Beach, Fla., and Bill Fecht of WJF Services Inc., based successful Normal, Ill., provided merger and acquisition advisory services to Freedom Oil.

Those services included valuation advisory, selling the concern done a confidential process, and dialog of the transaction.

While Kum & Go had astir 400 locations erstwhile it was sold and closed, a fig of smaller convenience stores person changed hands. In 2024, Tri Star Energy acquired Cox Oil, Offen Petroleum purchased Douglass Distributing, and Par Mar Oil bought Santmyer Companies.