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E-Z Mart Stores founder Jim Yates kept his first convenience store in Ashdown, Arkansas, open until 11. The company now boasts 300 outlets across five southern states (Arkansas, Louisiana, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Texas). Rather than build its own stores, the company usually expands through acquisitions. In addition to the standard hot dogs, chips, sodas, and cigarettes, most E-Z Mart locations also offer Shell, Conoco, Phillips 66, or CITGO gasoline. Yates died in late 1998 when the plane he was piloting crashed, leaving his daughter Sonja Hubbard at the company's helm as CEO.

Englefield Oil Company supplies fuel and lubricants and operates about 100 convenience stores under the Duke and Duchess Shoppe banner in Ohio and West Virginia. Many of the company's convenience stores sell BP brand gasoline. In addition, Englefield Oil operates several truck stops, a pair of Super 8 motels, several Taco Bell Express restaurants, and other various businesses in Ohio and West Virginia. Englefield also operates more than a dozen Pacific Pride automated commercial fueling sites. Chairman F. W. "Bill" Englefield III founded the company in 1961 with three service stations and an office operating out of his basement.

Japanese take the family to FamilyMart, the country's #3 convenience store chain behind market leader Seven-Eleven Japan and LAWSON. About half of the fast-growing company's 15,000 stores are in Japan. FamilyMart also operates shops in China, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and the US. The chain opened its first store in Shanghai in 2004 and has grown to number about 220 stores in China. FamilyMart entered the US market in 2005 and now operates about 15 upscale convenience stores in the Los Angeles area under the Famima banner. Many more are planned. To further strengthen its retail network, FamilyMart in December 2009 acquired smaller rival am/pm Japan Co. from owner REX Holdings.

Fred Meyer Stores went out for groceries and wound up in Kroger's cart. Freddy's -- as the chain is known -- is a supercenter pioneer providing food and general merchandise to cost-conscious consumers in the Pacific Northwest and Alaska. One of the largest supercenter operators in the US (along with Wal-Mart and Costco Wholesale), Fred Meyer's more than 125 multidepartment stores (averaging 155,000 sq. ft.) offer everything from apparel and home goods to groceries, consumer electronics, fuel, and jewelry. Its Web store delivers to the Alaska Bush. Kroger has leveraged Fred Meyer's general merchandising expertise as defense against Wal-Mart, which has overtaken Kroger as the #1 seller of groceries in the US.

Fred's, Inc. and its subsidiaries sell general merchandise through retail discount stores and pharmacies in the southeastern United States. It offers pharmaceuticals, household goods, food and tobacco products, apparel and linens, health and beauty aids, household cleaning supplies, disposable diapers, pet foods, paper products, and various beverage products principally to low, middle, and fixed income families. The company also sells general merchandise to franchised Fred's stores. As of April 3, 2010, it operated 669 discount general merchandise stores, including 24 franchised stores. The company was founded in 1947 and is headquartered in Memphis, Tennessee.

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