Expanding The Enterprise

Strasburger Enterprises

While its contract management program continues to branch out, Strasburger Enterprises introduces prepared foods to its company-owned Quix locations

In its August 2010 issue, Convenience Store News ran a feature story on Strasburger Enterprises, a convenience store operator based in Temple, Texas. The article, entitled "America's Largest Invisible C-store," explained how the company owned and operated 50 Quix stores in Texas, but at the time, was also operating more than 200 additional c-stores throughout the United States via its contract management program.

Whether they are owned by major oil companies divesting their retail assets such as Chevron, Shell or BP, or banks who have foreclosed on store locations, Strasburger Enterprises operates the sites until they are sold — providing employee training, site operations, site management and accounting.

CSNews recently interviewed Roy Strasburger, vice president of the company and president of the convenience division, to see what has changed over the past year.

Although the number of contract-managed stores fluctuates as locations are sold and new contracts taken on, Strasburger said as of press time, the company was in the process of negotiating for sites that would have it operating more than 200 U.S. locations. The privately held company has operated sites internationally in countries such as Australia, Asia and Europe, but right now is focused only on the U.S.

"We are currently in discussions that might have us running stores in other countries again, but most of our recent focus has been optimizing our program in the U.S. so that we can use it overseas," Strasburger explained. "Our contract management program in the U.S. continues to grow, and we are constantly being contacted by new clients to take over new sites. This is a strong growth area for our business, and we are seeing the trend lines going up."

A new area of business for the company is working with private investors who are looking to invest in the convenience store business, but don't want to actually operate the stores, Strasburger said. "We have started some negotiations, and this would be a longer term project for us," he added.

Additionally, Strasburger Enterprises continues to focus on its 50 company-owned and -operated Quix locations in Texas, from Dallas to the I-35 corridor. "Our store sales have continued to improve. We are trending upward on that, and are having a good year," Strasburger said, noting the company just rolled out a new foodservice initiative — a burrito program supplied by Green Chile Grill in Las Cruces, N.M.

Strasburger Enterprises

"We felt we needed to have a stronger prepared food offering and wanted something that would appeal to our clientele in Texas, and burritos are very popular," he said. "We also wanted to reduce the amount of labor that would go into it."

Green Chile Grill supplies the stores with ingredients to make the burritos, which are assembled on demand at each location by store employees. Although it is a very competitive market — Quix will be competing with other c-stores and taco trucks in the area — Strasburger views it as an additional offering for its customers.

"We've had the basic standards like hot dogs and packaged sandwiches, but we have not been in the prepared foods business on-site in the last five or six years. With this, we are reentering it," he said.

The same group of people who supports the 50 Quix stores also handles the contracted locations, and people are pulled from one group to work at the store locations as well. "We pull people as we need them, and use the same office staff and back-office systems to support them," he explained.

For comments, please contact Tammy Mastroberte, Contributing Editor, at [email protected].