The new, global Circle K brand will replace Couche-Tard’s existing Circle K, Statoil, Mac’s and Kangaroo Express branding on stores and service stations across Canada, the US, Scandinavia and central and eastern Europe.
The new Circle K brand will also appear on licensed stores worldwide and will be a fundamental part of Couche-Tard’s future growth.
Couche-Tard has chosen to retain the company’s founding Couche-Tard retail brand in the Canadian province of Québec, because of the specifics of that market. The Circle K brand will begin rolling out to stores in the US from January 2016. It will be seen on service stations in Europe from May 2016, and Canadian customers outside Québec will see the new Circle K brand from May 2017.
“Circle K is a brand that’s already popular with huge numbers of our customers and employees,” Couche-Tard President and CEO Brian Hannasch said. “Today we’re setting out to make it easy for existing and new customers in more countries than ever before to prefer Circle K as their destination for convenience and fuel, with a fresh new look and feel and even better products for people on the go, always combined with fast and friendly service.”
Circle K is already Couche-Tard’s largest and most international brand. It can be seen today on thousands of stores and service stations in 14 countries around the world and is Couche-Tard’s best-positioned brand for carrying into new markets.
Adopting a single global brand for Couche-Tard’s convenience business and much of its retail fuel business will strengthen its perception among customers and help to align and reinforce Couche-Tard’s culture of operational excellence. Best-practice sharing and benchmarking across international boundaries will be enhanced and the business will have opportunities to benefit further from economies of scale and a simplified brand portfolio.
