The US Gas Station Convenience Stores You Might Not Know Are Owned By Mexico

A transaction in October of 2024, between an American company and a Mexican one, resulted in a chain of U.S.-located gas station convenience stores being owned by the Mexican firm. The American company is Delek US Holdings, Inc., which sold its retail operations for $385 million. These retail operations consisted of 249 convenience stores that operated under the DK brand, located in New Mexico, Arkansas, and Texas. Delek is an energy company involved in petroleum and renewable fuels. As an oil products producer, it has a refining capacity of 302,000 barrels each day. It is also one of five owners of the 650-mile oil pipeline that goes from Wink to Webster in the Permian Basin in Texas, moving over one million barrels per day of crude oil and condensate to the Gulf Coast. 

The Mexican company that bought the convenience stores at Delek’s gas stations is called FEMSA. It’s a huge conglomerate that includes the OXXO chain of 28,800 convenience stores located in Mexico, Chile, Peru, Brazil, and Colombia. FEMSA also owns the largest volume Coca-Cola products franchise bottler in the world. It has a total of over 392,000 employees located in 18 countries, including Europe, having purchased the food retail company Valora in 2022. FEMSA is also involved in many other business ventures, including retail drugstores and digital financial services.

FEMSA has now rebranded many DK stores, which now operate as OXXO, a well-known brand near the Mexican border. By 2027, all of the stores in the El Paso area, which adjoins the border, will be rebranded as OXXO stores. Once the OXXO brand starts to expand beyond its initial footprint, it may build even larger stores, following the trend of U.S. gas stations turning into massive convenience stores.

As far as the supply of fuel products to the stores, FEMSA has continued to purchase them from Delek after the ownership change. Delek continues to operate hundreds of gas stations under both the DK and Alon brands, positioning itself as a locally sourced, high-quality fuel supplier with a lower carbon footprint. While this acquisition may have been FEMSA’s first attempt to plant its flag in the U.S., the company has said it has plans to become a major player in the U.S. market. FEMSA is not the only foreign operator to land here; the Speedway gas station chain is owned by a Japanese company.