Company type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Retail (convenience stores) |
Founded | El Paso, Texas, U.S. (1951 ) |
Founder | Fred Hervey |
Headquarters | |
Number of locations | 15,000+ |
Area served | |
Number of employees | 40,000+ |
Parent | Alimentation Couche-Tard, Inc. |
Website | circlek |
Footnotes / references [1][2][3][4][5][6] |
Circle K Stores, Inc. is a North American chain of convenience stores headquartered in Tempe, Arizona, and owned by Alimentation Couche-Tard, Inc., based in Laval, Quebec.[7] Founded in 1951 in El Paso, Texas, the company filed for bankruptcy protection in 1990 and went through several owners, before being acquired by Alimentation Couche-Tard in 2003.[2][1] As of February 2020, Circle K has 9,799 stores in North America, 2,697 stores in Europe, and an additional 2,380 stores operating under franchise agreements worldwide.[1]
In 2015, Circle K unveiled a new logo and brand identity, and Couche-Tard announced that it would deploy the brand globally, including English-speaking Canada (rebranding from the Mac's brand), Europe (rebranding from the Statoil brand), and the United States (rebranding from the Kangaroo Express brand and updating the existing Circle K brand).[1][3]