New York-Based Stewart’s Shops to Buy Vermont’s Jolley Stores

Stewart’s Shops, a convenience store chain with 360 outlets in New York State and southern Vermont, plans to acquire the Jolley chain — including 38 stores in Vermont.

The deal, announced Friday, is expected to close at the end of this year. Including stores in New York State and New Hampshire, Stewart’s will acquire 45 Jolley stores total.

“We are thrilled to have this opportunity to acquire a company with such an impressive reputation in a market that we’ve been watching for many years,” Stewart’s Shops president Gary Dake said in a statement.

Jolley Associates was founded 50 years ago by brothers Bruce and Robert Jolley, and has 38 stores in Vermont.

Stewart’s, based in Ballston Spa, N.Y., has 5,000 employees and produces milk and ice cream at a plant near Saratoga Springs, N.Y. The company is far larger than the St. Albans-based chain Maplefields, which has 44 convenience stores in Vermont, New Hampshire and New York.

In its announcement, Stewart’s did not state whether the Jolley stores would be rebranded as Stewart’s Shops. A spokesperson for the company told the Plattsburgh Press Republican that the company will slowly transition the stores to Stewart’s Shops over time.

Stewart’s is also buying Jolley’s sister companies S.B. Collins, which delivers gas and diesel to stores in Vermont, New Hampshire and New York; and Clarence Brown, a heating oil business serving northwestern Vermont.

About 550 convenience stores operate in Vermont, and 430 of them also sell gas, said Matt Cota, who owns a government affairs firm called Meadow Hill that focuses on energy and transportation.

After the sale, Maplefield’s, owned by the St. Albans-based R.L. Vallee, will be the only one of the larger chains still owned by a Vermont company, Cota said.

The Dake family, which owns Stewart’s Shops, announced in late September that they planned to sell their 60 percent stake in the company to their employees over the next 20 years. Their employees now own 40 percent of the company through an employee stock ownership plan, or ESOP.  Jolley’s employees will have a chance to take part in the employee ownership plan after the sale goes through.

“We are happy to know that Stewart’s is providing our employees an opportunity to have ownership in the business and will continue to treat them well,” Bruce Jolley, the company’s president and cofounder, said in a statement from Stewart’s.

The sale requires approval from federal regulators.