Dive Brief:
- EG America expects to convert all of its Tom Thumb convenience stores to the Cumberland Farms banner within the next 12 to 15 months, parent company EG Group said in its third-quarter trading update on Wednesday.
- EG Group said its U.S. subsidiary has converted 35 of 110 Tom Thumb sites as part of the $50 million rebranding plan the company launched back in February 2022.
- The rebranding project was initially expected to finish by 2024, according to EG Group’s initial announcement. A company spokesperson did not respond by press time when asked what caused the significant delay.
Dive Insight:
If EG America completes the Tom Thumb rebrands within its updated timeline, it’ll have finished the project roughly five years after launch — and about three years behind schedule. When the initiative was first announced, EG Group said it chose to rebrand Tom Thumb to Cumberland Farms after reviewing both banners’ brand affinity and competition.
The first group of Tom Thumb stores was converted in Gulf Shores, Alabama, in September 2022. Other states with Tom Thumb sites include Florida, Mississippi and Tennessee. In Wednesday’s trading update, EG Group CEO Russ Colaco said the 35 rebranded sites have so far shown “strong early performance indicators.”
EG America isn’t just rebranding Tom Thumb. The company has publicly spoken about rebranding several of its banners to Cumberland Farms in recent years, with former CEO John Carey noting in an interview earlier this year that unifying the company under Cumberland Farms was a priority. Besides Cumberland Farms and Tom Thumb, its banners include Loaf ‘N Jug, Turkey Hill, Certified, QuikStop, Fastrac, KwikShop, MinitMart and Sprint.
In the trading update, EG Group said that EG America had begun rebranding 102 Loaf ‘N Jug c-stores in Colorado to Cumberland Farms, representing over half of that brand’s sites. Colaco also pointed to the nine former Neon Marketplace stores that EG acquired this year and recently converted, noting that these sites showed increased fuel volumes and inside sales after the rebrands.
