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Re: Maverik to enter California

Posted: February 27th, 2021, 7:01 pm
by cjd
Interesting. All the Walmart gas stations around here are under the Murphy brand either in the Walmart parking lot or in an adjacent property. There's no convenience store but just a booth with a window where you can pay and buy drinks, snacks, motor oil, etc.

Re: Maverik to enter California

Posted: February 27th, 2021, 11:33 pm
by storewanderer
cjd wrote: February 27th, 2021, 7:01 pm Interesting. All the Walmart gas stations around here are under the Murphy brand either in the Walmart parking lot or in an adjacent property. There's no convenience store but just a booth with a window where you can pay and buy drinks, snacks, motor oil, etc.
Murphy is a business independent to Wal Mart and just leasing space in the parking lot. Up until a few years ago, Murphy had an agreement to build gas stations on Wal Mart lots in certain states and until recently built stations quite rapidly on Wal Mart lots.

Tesoro had the agreement for the other states (first branded as Mirastar, most later rebranded to USA Gasoline) but did not have good financial success and most of theirs are closed but there are still a few around. Tesoro did not open a new station on a Wal Mart parcel in more than 15 years. One of the last Mirastars Tesoro built was in Fort Morgan, CO and did have a small c-store but they did not go forward with the concept and that location closed sometime around 2017-2018 so it lasted a lot longer than most. Tesoro quit accepting Wal Mart credit cards and Wal Mart gift cards at its Wal Mart lot stations a decade ago but for some reason they are still a tenant at some locations despite at this point not having any synergy or connection to Wal Mart.

So a few years ago Wal Mart basically terminated future development with Murphy and said they would be building stations themself on their lots going forward but all the stations Murphy had built so far, Murphy would continue to operate. And Murphy would continue to partner with Wal Mart on gift card acceptance, credit card acceptance, etc. At the time Wal Mart said they were going to rapidly build stations. So far I have not seen many of these- there is the one in Boise mentioned here. There is of course one in Bentonville in front of a newer Neighborhood Market.

Re: Maverik to enter California

Posted: February 27th, 2021, 11:58 pm
by pseudo3d
storewanderer wrote: February 27th, 2021, 11:33 pm
cjd wrote: February 27th, 2021, 7:01 pm Interesting. All the Walmart gas stations around here are under the Murphy brand either in the Walmart parking lot or in an adjacent property. There's no convenience store but just a booth with a window where you can pay and buy drinks, snacks, motor oil, etc.
Murphy is a business independent to Wal Mart and just leasing space in the parking lot. Up until a few years ago, Murphy had an agreement to build gas stations on Wal Mart lots in certain states and until recently built stations quite rapidly on Wal Mart lots.

Tesoro had the agreement for the other states (first branded as Mirastar, most later rebranded to USA Gasoline) but did not have good financial success and most of theirs are closed but there are still a few around. Tesoro did not open a new station on a Wal Mart parcel in more than 15 years. One of the last Mirastars Tesoro built was in Fort Morgan, CO and did have a small c-store but they did not go forward with the concept and that location closed sometime around 2017-2018 so it lasted a lot longer than most. Tesoro quit accepting Wal Mart credit cards and Wal Mart gift cards at its Wal Mart lot stations a decade ago but for some reason they are still a tenant at some locations despite at this point not having any synergy or connection to Wal Mart.

So a few years ago Wal Mart basically terminated future development with Murphy and said they would be building stations themself on their lots going forward but all the stations Murphy had built so far, Murphy would continue to operate. And Murphy would continue to partner with Wal Mart on gift card acceptance, credit card acceptance, etc. At the time Wal Mart said they were going to rapidly build stations. So far I have not seen many of these- there is the one in Boise mentioned here. There is of course one in Bentonville in front of a newer Neighborhood Market.
I actually thought Murphy was owned by Walmart, and they had gas stations with pretty much all of their stores. My local store got one a few years after the store expanded to a Supercenter, with the gas station in an outlot between a Schlotzsky's and Church's Chicken.

Knowing they're a separate company has the stand-alone "Murphy Express" gas stations I've seen pop up in Houston make more sense, though.

Re: Maverik to enter California

Posted: February 28th, 2021, 12:11 am
by storewanderer
pseudo3d wrote: February 27th, 2021, 11:58 pm I actually thought Murphy was owned by Walmart, and they had gas stations with pretty much all of their stores. My local store got one a few years after the store expanded to a Supercenter, with the gas station in an outlot between a Schlotzsky's and Church's Chicken.

Knowing they're a separate company has the stand-alone "Murphy Express" gas stations I've seen pop up in Houston make more sense, though.
Murphy sure felt like it was owned by Wal Mart with how they operated their stations. Heavy marketing of Wal Mart gift card/credit card at their stations. They had a ton of product crammed under the canopy outside the kiosk, gas price was usually the lowest around, it appeared they also had low prices for tobacco products and were doing a surprising volume of sales out of those kiosks.

They started to develop Murphy Express maybe a decade ago so they did not have all their eggs in the Wal Mart basket. They must have been getting feelers that Wal Mart may be about to modify the relationship, even back then.

Re: Maverik to enter California

Posted: February 28th, 2021, 8:04 am
by Romr123
Interesting...I got a marketing research study several weeks ago on c-stores which listed "Murphy" as one of the brands...I'd thought they were a wholly owned WM subsidiary but surprise surprise. They did pre-date WM...Murphy Oil was a mid-continent refiner which used Spur as their brand. I have some old road maps from Spur...in the small print it's Murphy Oil Company.

Re: Maverik to enter California

Posted: February 28th, 2021, 8:13 am
by Romr123
An interesting analysis of the business, and showing what the lower-end c-store competitive set is in the east/midwest.
https://ir.corporate.murphyusa.com/inve ... fault.aspx

Re: Maverik to enter California

Posted: February 28th, 2021, 12:40 pm
by cjd
There is a gas station out near me that's been branded as Spur ever since I can remember. I don't know of any others around in existence so it is interesting to find one out here randomly. It only dates back to about 1990 though.

Re: Maverik to enter California

Posted: February 28th, 2021, 7:34 pm
by Romr123
I think when the two Murphy Oils split they just kind of dwindled any Spur left (kinda like so many other oil brands from the past...DX, Deep Rock, Kerr McGee, Champlin, Total, Vickers, APCO, Lion, etc etc etc)

Re: Maverik to enter California

Posted: March 1st, 2021, 10:44 am
by SamSpade
Maverik in Baker CIty, Oregon has really gone downhill in some areas under COVID-19. Are all their locations like this? Or is this because this is their only Oregon store (not sure why it's even here, so far away from everywhere in a small town)?

I did at least enjoy the fact Maverik does have that large outdoor "picnic" space in their newer locations like this one, though.

Re: Maverik to enter California

Posted: March 1st, 2021, 4:55 pm
by storewanderer
SamSpade wrote: March 1st, 2021, 10:44 am Maverik in Baker CIty, Oregon has really gone downhill in some areas under COVID-19. Are all their locations like this? Or is this because this is their only Oregon store (not sure why it's even here, so far away from everywhere in a small town)?

I did at least enjoy the fact Maverik does have that large outdoor "picnic" space in their newer locations like this one, though.
How has it gone downhill?