Publisher’s Note: I attended Friday’s grand opening and ribbon cut of the 97th Parker’s Kitchen in the Southeast and the 7th in the CSRA. It’s on Washington Road in Evans across from the Riverwood Shopping Center and convenience store competitor The Pumping Station (TPS). I spoke personally with founder Greg Parker about several business topics. The round numbers seem to be adding up. Revenues are approximately $1 Billion per year. Parker’s is planning to build 25 new stores in 2025 including their 100th. His goal for the Augusta market is 25 over several years. He’s also beginning a milestone year at the helm of the award-winning brand. Our interview has been lightly edited for clarity.
ABD: Happy 50th anniversary. Talk about when you started. Did you have any idea this expansion was going to happen?
Greg Parker: My friends keep reminding me that I did say I wanted to have 100 stores one day when I started. Quite honestly, I would not have conceived or imagined the success that we’ve had. It’s certainly been born on the shoulders of an incredible team that I have. So many of them started with my first store.
I was just working on this last week, 42 years, 40 years, 28 years, 24 years. All these people that work for all these years, yeah, and then they get to be close to 70, and they said, we retire.”
ABD: So, I watched the construction progress. This one was interesting, because of the land slope, crews were digging deep into the dirt to level out the (2-acre) property. Was that different from other Parkers you built?
Greg Parker: Having the right soil, having the right elevation is key, and it takes much longer to get permitted than it does to get built. Now, you know, permitting can take forever, but you know what the engineers are doing, the geotechnical, the civil, all of that is underpinning everything we do.
So, we’re spending at this location, $10 or $11 million dollars, so we got to make sure that foundationally, we’re suited to last for a long time.
And we build with permanence in mind. Yeah, I don’t think anybody spends more per square foot to build than we do.
ABD: I understand there was sort of an integrity reason why you hadn’t built in Augusta before. Is that right?
Greg Parker: Yeah, one of my best friends, Andy Jones, had a group of Sprint stores and he was in my (business) share group, so I wasn’t going to come in on top of him, but once he sold, it was Caty bar the door. We’re coming!
ABD: The Evans store is your 7th one in the CSRA. Why do you feel can support 25 stores here?
Greg Parker: Because it’s a growing market. You know, Columbia County has grown 30% since 2012.
That’s pretty fast growth. This is a natural bolt-on from where we were in Savannah to come here. We’ve never been embraced in a community like we have here. And we’ve never had stores perform as well as they have here. We have the highest sales of gas and highest sales in our kitchens of any marketplace we’ve ever opened.
ABD: Why do you think that is?
Greg Parker: I think there was a void here. I think people were ready for Parkers to open. We had heard it. We get contacted on social media and all. We have a very elevated experience from anything that exists here. That’s right. And I think people are voting with their feet.
ABD: What’s the old joke about gas stations? They serve roller food. Some people think gas station food isn’t very good.
Greg Parker: That’s what it used to be. We’ve been selected by Trip Advisors in the top 10% of restaurants in America. So, we have transformed from being a convenience store company that sells food service to being a food service company that sells convenience. That’s the reason we changed our name from Parker’s-to-Parker’s Kitchen, which we did many years ago. Last year we sold 3 million chicken tenders.
ABD: It seems like you are trying to develop loyalty with your customers.
Greg Parker: With every $25 spent you get 10 cents off per gallon. So, if you buy enough, you get free gas.
We started this in 2011 because of problems with MasterCard and Visa.
They’re a legal monopoly. You have to take them. And during that time, I was chairman of the National Association of Convenience Stores Industry Summit.
We found out that MasterCard and Visa were making more money processing the credit cards that we made in our stores. So that prompted me to start a members club card (tied to your checking account with lower prices). I had written permission from the state of Georgia to advertise club pricing. My competitors started complaining, and as a result, they convinced Agriculture Commissioner Gary Black to rescind my right to be able to advertise the club price and the regular price, to which he told me to cease and desist from deceptive pricing tactics.
This infuriated me, so I took the state of Georgia to court, and I won, and if it wasn’t for my lawsuit, we wouldn’t have all the discounts that are on gas at convenience stores now, right? So, we run the right to do it. We now have 300,000 people that are using the Parkers rewards card.
