A-Plus
APlus is an American convenience store chain owned & operated by Sunoco, Inc. The chain is currently owned by the energy company Energy Transfer Partners.[1]
The chain began life as the convenience store chain for Atlantic Petroleum in 1985, which was spun off from ARCO, Inc. (ARCO itself was formed from the 1966 merger of Atlantic and Richfield Oil.) The first Aplus stores were rebranded ampm locations.
In 1988, Sunoco bought Atlantic, and since Sunoco didn't have its own convenience store chain, APlus became Sunoco's chain by default. While Atlantic stations were converted to Sunoco by the mid-1990s, APlus grew, with Sunoco rebranding many company-owned stations in the Northeast with convenience stores into APlus. Sunoco has even converted some garages into convenience stores with the APlus brand.
Sunoco still used the APlus logo from the Atlantic days until 1999, when Sunoco updated its own logo and completely redesigning APlus's logo, giving it a more Sunoco look.
The split between company-owned and franchised locations is about 50/50.
Originally a Northeastern US brand, Sunoco has rapidly expanded the APlus moniker. In 2001, Sunoco expanded APlus into the Southeastern United States by purchasing 193 of Marathon Oil's Speedway SuperAmerica convenience stores—115 in Florida, 62 in South Carolina, 13 in North Carolina, and 3 in Georgia. Further expansion is being pushed as part of Sunoco's NASCAR sponsorship, where APlus is known as the "Official Pit Stop of NASCAR".
In October 2013, Sunoco purchased Mid-Atlantic Convenience Stores, a Richmond, VA based Circle K Franchisee, with over 300 stores in the mid-atlantic region.[2] These locations continued to operate as Circle K until early 2016, when they were converted to the APlus brand. Though operated by Sunoco, the majority of the locations continue to sell Exxon fuels.
Products
Here is a list of products offered at APlus locations:
- Gulliver's Coffee — APlus's gourmet coffee. Competes with Circle K's Millstone coffee and Sheetz's Sheetz Bros. Coffee.
- City Deli — APlus's hot foods area. Likely conceived to compete with Sheetz's MTO's, which overlap APlus in several areas in Pennsylvania, though it's more similar to Giant Eagle's GetGo Kitchen at their GetGo chain. Currently available only at newer, larger locations.
References
- ↑ "ETP 2015 10-K" (PDF). Retrieved 2016-12-10.
- ↑ "Sunoco's Surprise MACS Buy". CSP Daily News. Retrieved 2016-04-30.