Iowa — It will be Kum and Go no more. A trade publication called C-Store Dive reports the Utah company that bought the Iowa-based convenience store chain in 2023 will rebrand all Kum and Go locations as Maverik stores in 2025.
Sekar Raju — chair of the Department of Marketing in Iowa State University’s Business School — says a brand name is one of a company’s assets.
Kum and Go has sold caps, koozies and other items that bear the Kum and Go logo, but Raju isn’t sure of the long-term value of that memorabilia once the brand is retired.
The Kum and Go brand was launched in the 1970s by Bill Krause and Tony Gentle, who started the chain. They opened their first gas station in 1959 in Hampton. Jim Davies, a Hampton native who’s chairman of the Hampton Historic Preservation Commission, remembers when the company started selling food and merchandise as well as gasoline.
Davies and his family attended the same church when the Krause family lived in Hampton.
The company’s corporate headquarters moved to Des Moines in 1988. According to C-Store Dive — a trade publication for the convenience store industry — a Maverik spokesperson said Kum and Go stores will briefly close, be rebranded as Maverik stores, and reopen with the same employees.
The west Casey’s store in Sheldon at the four-way stop on Highway 18 and Business 60 used to be a Kum & Go, and for a time, the former SuperAmerica location across the street east was one too. Sioux Center also had a Kum & Go on Highway 75 downtown. Now the nearest locations are in Adrian, Minnesota; Sioux Falls, South Dakota; and in the Iowa Great Lakes area.
