Erie, Pa.-based Country Fair is celebrating its 60th year of business in 2025 — a feat that was marked with the opening of its largest c-store to date in its hometown of Erie. CStore Decisions’ Editor-in-Chief Erin Del Conte recently sat down with Steve Seymour, director of personnel, and Stacy Kline, director of advertising for Country Fair, to learn more about the monumental year they are experiencing on the CStore Talks podcast.
Listen to the podcast interview here.
Humble Beginnings
Country Fair was initially founded by Dr. Ray McGarvey as a dairy in Erie, Pa., in 1965. The company was created to offer local community members a place to purchase fresh milk. The business then expanded and began offering its product in its own, proprietary corner stores.
The stores also featured typical c-store offerings like soda, chips and snacks, laying the base for what would become a flourishing chain of convenience stores.
As the convenience industry evolved, Seymour noted, Country Fair evolved with it, adding fuel to its offerings in the 80s and then foodservice in the mid-90s.
In 2001, the owners sold the company to United Refining Co., a refinery based in Warren, Pa., which remains the owner of the brand today.
“It’s been great to be owned by United Refining,” said Seymour. “They’re wonderful business people, and we have direct access to all of our fuel products, which is awesome. We never run out of gas, too, so that’s wonderful for us.”
Today, according to Kline, Country Fair has expanded to operate 73 stores in three states, with 61 in Pennsylvania, seven in New York and five in Ohio. The retailer’s fuel stations operate under the CITGO banner, with its c-store banner remaining as Country Fair.
Marking Six Decades
Small and regional marketers do not always have the success Country Fair has had, Seymour noted gratefully. He added that the original owners made numerous franchise agreements early on, laying the groundwork for its future growth.
For year 60, Country Fair is ready to celebrate “like when we turned 50,” said Seymour.
“Every year, we have a big trade show where we invite all of our employees over a few days — a two-and-a-half day period — to come and walk the trade show and meet with our vendors about product that’s going to be coming out over the next time period … it’s always a great event for our vendors and our employees.”
This year, Country Fair is adding a special 60th year component by featuring a country western star. Additionally, the retailer will host various employee picnics to celebrate the folks that help drive the business forward. A special 60th anniversary logo has also been created.
“We love celebrating with our employees. We also love celebrating with our customers,” Seymour continued. “So this summer, we have plans to have a whole bunch of parking lot parties right in our parking lots at our locations,
The parking lot parties will feature local bands, foodservice offerings, and special customer giveaways to “thank them for being part of the Country Fair family for the 60 year period.”
Flagship Location
Country Fair’s new flagship store is one that Seymour is “so incredibly excited about,” mentioning that the city of Erie is in the midst of revitalization. When the company’s economic development group in Erie brought forward the property, the executive leadership team jumped at the opportunity.
“The city of Erie is also quite a food desert, and so, not only would it be a good idea to be downtown, but it would also be really good business for us — and this is different for us,” Seymour continued. “We’re owned by a refinery, and there will be no fuel here because it’s 9,000 square feet of an old historic city building, and we are going to go all out and do the best we can to provide for the locals.”
The site is located right next to Gannon University, also nearby the courthouse and Perry Square park.
Country Fair is doubling down on its foodservice innovation at the flagship site, converting the store to almost a testing ground for other locations. It will also stock an extended selection of beer and wine, ready-to-drink cocktails and more.
The 9,000-square-foot site is larger than the retailer’s typical 4,000 or 6,000-square-foot c-stores.
“(The) design is a gambrel barn look with a cupola on top of our red barns,” noted Kline. “They’re iconic in this area, and the consistent farm look goes back to our roots when we opened our doors in 1965 to sell fresh local milk to local people.”
Today, stores are set up in a way that when the customer walks in, they have about two seconds to focus on different areas of the store, Kline mentioned.
Extensive food and beverage offerings are what sets the retailer apart.
“We have a large amount of cooler doors, lots of beverage options — probably more than many other c-stores would have,” she continued. “We keep our delis up front, which is really unique to us. We slice our deli meats and cheeses. Our deli business is very strong, and we do offer some of the lowest pricing in town.”
The retailer still pays homage to its roots by selling fresh milk, eggs, butter and cheese, with Kline noting that milk is still a top seller.
Leveraging Foodservice and Loyalty
Foodservice is key for Country Fair, with all of its offerings being proprietary. The retailer offers grab-and-go, in addition to made-to-order.
“Breakfast is very strong for us. We get a lot of folks in the morning stopping by before work or school,” said Kline. “And we have breakfast sandwiches. We have a choice of breads — muffins, croissants, bagels. We do breakfast pizzas and burritos and some baked goods — you know, all the delicious stuff that you want in the morning.”
For lunch and dinner, customers can find “Barn Buster” subs, wraps, salads, as well as walking tacos, pizza, pretzel melts, hot dogs and more. Country Fair offers a loyalty program through Club CITGO.
“We work very, very closely with CITGO,” said Kline. “We’ve worked with them since the beginning on this, and I would say we may be one of their strongest in the Eastern part of the U.S.”
The retailer implemented CITGO’s loyalty program two years ago, and has worked with CITGO to evolve the program and tailor it to its communities’ needs. Through the Club CITGO program, loyalty members can receive three cents off per gallon of gas — Country Fair takes this even further and adds 10 cents to the savings, promoting it as a stack of 13 cents off per gallon.
“We’ve been plugging away at (the loyalty program), and I think we’ve seen really some nice growth from it,” Kline continued. “We do incentivize our store employees to promote the app to the customers.”
Looking Forward
As it continues to grow and evolve, Country Fair’s mission is to always care for its customers and employees, Seymour noted.
“We want to be a preferred employer, and so we do the best we can to take care of our folks,” he said.
Country Fair prides itself on being the local, hometown c-store in northwestern Pennsylvania that takes care of its community. Seymour mentioned that this is not just a perception, but a reality.
“We are deeply rooted in giving to our community through lots of different programs,” he continued.
“We have 1,300 associates in our company. We have 1300 different personalities in our company, and we know that we cannot be everything to everyone, but I’ll be darned if we shouldn’t have something for everyone,” added Kline. “And so, I think that folks come to us because we have something that they want, or their friends who work for us have told us about why we’re a great place to work.”
