The end of an era looks to be coming soon as Kum & Go’s new owner has announced it will begin renaming the chain’s convenience stores in Iowa.
“Kum & Go stores in Iowa will soon reopen as Maverik — Adventure’s First Stop,” the company, now owned by the Utah-based Maverik convenience store chain, said in an email to Kum & Go Rewards members on Tuesday, July 15.
“Our commitment to our members and our communities remains as strong as ever,” said the email, as first reported by Axios. “The familiar faces you’ve relied on will still be here to serve you.”
Maverik, which bought formerly Des Moines-based Kum & Go in April 2023, had announced last November that all Kum & Go locations would become Maverik stores, but hadn’t provided any sort of timeline.
The combined chain has about 800 stores in 20 states. Then-Maverik CEO Chuck Maggelet said in August 2023, after the planned sale was announced, that all the Kum & Go stores in Idaho, Utah, Colorado and Wyoming — the four states where both chains had locations — would be rebranded. But he didn’t immediately tip his hand on the company-wide rebranding, with some analysts saying that ditching such a widely known name would be a potential misstep.
Kum & Go’s name had loyal following
Bill Krause and father-in-law T.S. Gentle founded Kum & Go in 1959 as Hampton Oil Co., naming it after the northeast Iowa town where, at the time, it had a single gas station. Gradually, the business expanded, and it adopted the Kum & Go name in the 1970s.
Krause, who died in 2013, told the Des Moines Register in 1993 that the K stood for Krause and the G stood for Gentle.
“I chose the name that had the fewest number of letters so the signs would be cheaper,” Krause said.
He acknowledged it had become a source of sophomoric laughs, but said he didn’t mind.
“I can bristle and be offended or I can look at the fact that 100,000 people a day come through the doors of Kum & Go,” he said.
Kum & Go later came to embrace its quirky name. The chain’s website had the tag line, “Welcome to the Kummunity” at the top of its page.
Sales of its T-shirts took off in 2006 when actor and stuntman Johnny Knoxville wore a Kum & Go T-shirt in the movie “Jackass Number Two.” Last year, “Late Show” host Stephen Colbert made fun of Kum & Go’s impending name change, saying the chain should change its name to “Kum & then maybe stay the night.”
But in the wake of the sale, there were signs that Maverik wasn’t a fan as Kum & Go’s tongue-in-cheek marketing messages playing on the double entendres vanished from its accounts.
In the email to rewards members, Maverik said they will be added automatically to Maverik’s rewards program. But it said Kum & Go Rewards points will not transfer to Maverik Rewards, “So make sure to use them up while you can.”
The email did not say specifically when Kum & Go Rewards will end — or when the chain will start changing the name of its Iowa stores, though the changeover apparently has begun in neighboring Missouri.
Philip Joens covers retail and real estate for the Des Moines Register. He can be reached at 515-284-8184 or pjoens@registermedia.com.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: End of an era: Maverik says it will ‘soon’ change names of Kum & Go stores in Iowa
Reporting by Philip Joens, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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