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What a difference a decade makes.
In 2001, brothers Craig and Mark McDowell opened their first c-store and gas station. Life was looking good in the desert sun for this Phoenix team. Then came QuikTrip, and suddenly the gorilla had started to romp and stomp.
“They’re very good at what they do,” Mark says of the Tulsa, Okla.-based behemoth, which is widely regarded as among the best c-store operators in the nation. “We saw what they were doing to other (c-store) owners and decided that might not be the business we wanted to grow in.”
Instead of waiting for the inevitable pulverization of profits, the McDowells got proactive.
