Circle K

Circle K Stores, Inc.

"Take it Easy"
Type	Wholly owned subsidiary
Industry	Retail (Convenience stores)
Founded	El Paso, Texas (1951)
Founder	Fred Hervey
Headquarters	Tempe, Arizona, U.S.
Number of locations	8,000+
Area served	United States, Canada, Mexico, Guam, Norway (from 2016), Sweden, Japan, China, Hong Kong, Macau, Vietnam, Indonesia, Philippines, Denmark, Malaysia, United Arab Emirates, Costa Rica, Honduras and Lithuania
Parent	Alimentation Couche-Tard
Website	www.circlek.com USA/Canada

Circle K is an international chain of convenience stores, founded in 1951 in El Paso, Texas, United States. It is owned and operated by the Canadian-based Alimentation Couche-Tard. Today it is present in most of the US 50 states, all Canadian provinces and a number of European countries (Denmark, Sweden, Norway, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, and the Republic of Ireland). In Asia and Latin America the brand is used by franchisees.

Since the 1980s, Circle K has been the largest company-owned convenience-store chain (i.e. of non-franchised stores) in the U.S. It was second in overall number of U.S. stores to 7-Eleven. However, by 1989, it faced strong competition from convenience stores owned by oil companies, and Circle K declared bankruptcy in 1990. By July 2010, Circle K had dropped to fourth rank in number of stores (3,455), then behind BP (4,730 stores) and Shell (4,630 convenience stores).

Some Circle K stores operate gasoline pumps selling Union 76-branded motor fuels; others sell Mobil, Marathon, Phillips 66, Irving, BP, Sunoco or Shell-branded fuel. Until mid-2006, nearly all Circle K stores in South Texas sold Citgo-branded fuel; however, those stores have dropped the Circle K name and now operate as Stripes Convenience Stores and are served by Valero-branded fuel. Circle K stores in northeast Ohio vary depending upon what stores they used to be: the majority are former Citgo/Holland Oil, whose gas is branded as Circle K; others are remnants of the Lawson's/Dairy Mart chain, which sell gas from other companies (most of them served Marathon Gasoline). Some locations, especially older outlets in the company's core markets of the American Southwest, do not sell gasoline.