CORPUS CHRISTI, Texas -- As the recently gone-public Susser Holdings Corp. continues its even, methodical approach to growth, the company is finding bigger can be better as it relates to store size. Historically a company of 2,400- to 2,700-square-foot convenience stores, the chain is now typically building stores of 5,000 square feet or larger.
The goal is to provide convenience and certainly the bigger box gives us the opportunity to offer more kinds of [profit centers], Sam Susser, president and CEO, told CSP Daily News, but I think the key is to [image-nocss] have the facility that allows us to deal with the variety of rushes [we see each day].
Susser announced the opening of two of these larger sites during the company's first-quarter 2007 conference call yesterday. [For more of the company's results from the quarter, see related story elsewhere in this issue of CSP Daily News.]
This industry gets a rush at 7:00 in the morning, said Susser. There's another kind of transaction at noon, a completely different one at 6 p.m. and then [another] at 11:00 p.m. We're trying to have the capacity to deal with those rushes as they occur.
Since 1999, that effort has meant the larger store format has become commonplace for the Corpus Christi, Texas-based retailer, which has 325 stores in Texas and Oklahoma under the Stripes banner.
We have a format that we are using generally in small towns. It's about 6,500 square feet, Susser said. A lot of these stores have rear parking and rear doors, as well as front-end parking, and all of them have our kitchens.
The kitchens, which typically entail Susser's proprietary Laredo Taco Co. restaurants that feature authentic, made-from-scratch Mexican food, have been a real win for the chain. We continue to be very pleased with the growth of our Laredo Taco Co. restaurant business, Susser said in a press release. We opened six new kitchens in the first quarter, and we expect to add a total of 25-30 kitchens in our new and existing stores in 2007. There are 150 Laredo Taco Co. restaurants in total so far.
Meanwhile, the chain continues to look for small acquisition opportunitiesboth of existing stores and property to be developedin the outskirt neighborhoods and communities where the chain already operates.
A lot of our growth is in the growing parts of Brownsville, McAllen and Laredo, Texas, said Susser. We're starting to grow in Houston a bit. We're not entering new markets, but we're on the growing sides of town where perhaps there weren't any homes or even highways before.
With three new stores opened so far this year and six others under construction, the chain is on target to reach its goal of opening 18 to 22 stores in 2007, most of them in towns along the Rio Grande and most of them ground-up new construction.
We think it makes sense to continue to explore for acquisition opportunities, but also to build in the growing parts of the communities we operate in. We want to do both, Susser said. Land is plentiful and cheap [in our markets], so there's lots of competition. It's not like Phoenix or Los Angeles or Orlando, where there are barriers to [entering a new community]. This is a very, very competitive part of the world. There's lots of competition of all formats because there's plenty of land and it's cheap.
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