Kum & Go logos on gas pumps at 1203 Blairs Ferry Road in Marion are covered up in preparation for transition to the Mega Saver brand Tuesday, August 26, 2025. The large green sticker on the pump is a Mega Saver offer of 11 cents off per gallon when payment is made inside with cash or card. (Photo by Jeff Morrison)
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The first tipoff was a transfer of liquor licenses.
KUOO Radio in Dickinson County reported Aug. 14 that city councils in Okoboji and Spirit Lake had approved liquor licenses for Mega Saver, a convenience store chain in the Omaha area with some Florida locations. The license locations were gas stations for Kum & Go, a Des Moines-based chain that was acquired by Salt Lake City-based Maverik in 2023. Maverik announced this summer that it would rebrand all Kum & Go locations in the country and cut the Iowa administrative staff it inherited to “a limited presence.”
Days later, convenience store trade publication Mass Market Retailers picked up KUOO’s report. Then C-Store Dive got more details: Maverik was selling 20 locations in Iowa and three in Sioux Falls to Mega Saver, following the June sale of three Omaha locations. However, neither C-Store Dive nor CSP Daily News mentioned which Iowa Kum & Go stations were being sold.
The conversion of certain Kum & Go locations to Mega Saver has not been widely publicized. The discovery that the Kum & Go at the intersection of Blairs Ferry Road and Lindale Drive in Marion was closed Aug. 26 for such a conversion precipitated an inquiry through public records.
A list was compiled by cross-referencing Kum & Go’s 96-location Iowa list, which has yet to have any removed, with Maverik’s rebranding timeline. The locations not on the latter list were followed up by looking for city council meetings where liquor licenses for Mega Saver were approved. Then a better reference was located: the Iowa Lottery’s list of active retailers. In the last week of August, only five locations remained with Kum & Go as the licensee of record, and three of those were double-listed with Mega Saver. The 20 stores becoming Mega Savers have new identification numbers in sequential order. A dozen of them are in Polk and Dallas counties.
The 20 locations changing from Kum & Go to Mega Saver are:
The sole sites in Adel, Altoona, Okoboji, Polk City, Spirit Lake, and Winterset, and both in Marion
Ames: 3111 S. Duff Ave. (1 of 6 in the city)
Ankeny: 1825 N. Ankeny Blvd., 1025 E 1st St. (2 of 6)
Cedar Rapids: 2604 16th Ave. SW (1 of 4)
Clear Lake: 2005 U.S. Highway 18 E. (1 of 2)
Des Moines: 6304 SW 9th St. (1 of 7)
Grimes: 1880 SE Princeton Dr. (1 of 2)
Johnston: 5800 Northglenn Dr., 6130 NW 86th St. (2 of 3)
Urbandale: 12041 Douglas Pkwy., 4585 156th St., 4860 NW Urbandale Dr. (3 of 5)
A phone call to the De Soto gas station, one of the two locations listed by the Iowa Lottery only under Kum & Go, revealed that that location will become a Casey’s in the fall. The remaining Kum & Go in Grimes does not know its future status yet.
Until this change, Mega Saver’s only Iowa locations were in Council Bluffs. There are four there, two of which opened after January 2024. The Mega Saver at Abbott Drive and Avenue H is not in Carter Lake, despite what Google Maps shows. From the railroad tracks north to Carter Lake (the lake), there is a thin sliver of land west of Abbott Drive that is part of Omaha.
Mega Saver’s website says it was founded in 2002 and is “recognized as one of the top cell phone and accessory retailers in Nebraska.” It will have more Iowa locations (24) than QuikTrip (19), which is exclusively in Polk County.
Maverik rebranding timeline
Iowa’s first rebranded Maverik opened July 22 at the Neola exit off I-80 in western Iowa, with Adair following a day later. Right now, locations in the Des Moines metro are cycling through the 84-hour closure periods and scheduled to wrap up Oct. 21. Changes will come to the Iowa City area at the end of October, then Cedar Rapids and Ames in early November. The final Kum & Go stations in Iowa will be phased out of Sioux City in mid-November. The last two, in Sloan and on Gordon Drive in Sioux City, will close Nov. 17 and reopen Nov. 21.
The first Kum & Go opened in Hampton in 1959. In recent decades, nearly all the chain’s Iowa locations have been confined to large metro areas or freeway exits.
This column is republished from Between Two Rivers through the Iowa Writers’ Collaborative.
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