As it revealed plans to pursue an IPO earlier this month, Cumberland Farms also laid out a significant roadmap to rebrand most of its U.S. convenience store network to its namesake banner. The company intends to convert 600 to 700 stores over the next five years.
But this rebranding initiative has been in the works for years. Judging by the sluggish progress it's made, it’ll need to pick up the pace to hit these targets.
The first signs of this effort emerged in February 2022, when the company — then operating as EG America — announced plans to rebrand all 113 of its Tom Thumb convenience stores in Florida and Alabama to Cumberland Farms. In addition to the name over the door, changes included a new store design, layout and equipment, along with expanded foodservice offerings.
At the time, EG anticipated the $50 million project would begin that May and take 18 to 24 months to complete, putting the estimated completion date no later than May 2024.
Since then, company executives have repeatedly said they intend to consolidate most of its U.S. portfolio under the Cumberland Farms brand. It successfully rebranded 13 Sprint stores in Georgia and South Carolina, all nine Neon Marketplace sites in the Northeast that it bought in 2025 and is in the early stages of a planned rebrand of 101 of the retailer’s 139 Loaf 'N Jug stores, beginning with locations in Colorado.
But four years after the first Tom Thumb announcement — and two years past the estimated completion target for that project — fewer than half of those stores have been converted. As of April, just 55 Tom Thumb locations had been rebranded, according to the retailer's filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.
Altogether, Cumberland Farms had converted just 77 c-stores across its U.S. network by the end of April, per the filing. That's fewer than 20 rebrands per year since the initiative began — a pace that falls well short of the 120 to 140 annual conversions the company now says it expects to complete over the next five years.
So what’s causing the hold up?
To be fair, the company has undergone sweeping changes since first announcing the Tom Thumb conversions. It has seen one of its founders depart, changed CEOs, overhauled much of its executive leadership team and relocated its global headquarters from the U.K. to Charlotte, North Carolina.
Those changes came while the company continued to shed non-core assets, including the divestitures of hundreds of convenience stores across Italy, France and Australia. It also rebranded itself, expanded its U.S. footprint through acquisitions and invested in foodservice and technology initiatives.
A spokesperson from Cumberland Farms declined to comment when asked about the slow pace of the rebranding process.
Taken together, those competing priorities help explain why the rebranding effort has moved slowly. But they don't change the reality that, with an IPO now on the horizon, Cumberland Farms needs to buckle down and speed up the process. Hitting its rebranding targets will be a major test of whether its execution can keep up with its growth ambitions.
