Kum & Go is going away. Its new owner is rebranding all of its locations
CNN
Kum & Go, the Midwestern gas station chain that gained national fame for the immature snickers its name often receives, is making a change.
Kum & Go, the Midwestern gas station chain that gained national fame for the immature snickers its name often receives, is making a change. Maverik, a rival chain that bought Kum & Go in 2023, announced that it’s in “process of rebranding Kum & Go stores, with the intent to unify our entire combined footprint under the Maverik brand,” marking an eventual end to the 49-year-old naughty name. “While we’re committed to this vision, we are taking a thoughtful, market-by-market approach to ensure the best customer experience before confirming each state’s rebrand,” a Maverick spokesperson said in a statement to CNN. A specific timeline for when the Kum & Go name will be fully retired wasn’t revealed. Kum & Go was founded in Iowa in 1959 by Bill Krause and his father-in-law T.S. Gentle as Hampton Oil Co. and eventually expanded across the Midwest, changing its name to Kum & Go in 1975. In a 1993 interview with the Des Moines Register, Krause said that the K stood for his name and the G stood for Gentle, choosing the Kum & Go brand because “it had the fewest number of letters so the signs would be cheaper.” The inferred sexual innuendo became a part of its reputation. “I can bristle and be offended, or I can look at the fact that 100,000 people a day come through the doors of Kum & Go,” Krause said, who died in 2013.