Mac's

Did You Know?

• Mac's original mascot was a cat named MacTavish wearing a Tam o' shanter and a kilt, holding a jug of milk.
• After the 1999 acquisition, the mascot changed to a winking owl named Hibou, the French word for owl.
• In 1994, the company sold most of the Mac's stores in Quebec to Alimentation Couche-Tard Ltd. Mac's stores in Quebec were renamed 'Dépan-Escompte Couche-Tard'.

History

The McGowen brothers, Kenneth and Carl, founded Mac's Milk Limited in Ontario on April 4, 1962. Just over a year later, on July 5, 1963, Silverwood Dairies Limited bought a 40% stake in the company. Silverwood increased its ownership to 80% on March 29, 1968, and took full control on January 12, 1972. In 1971, Mac's bought 18 stores operating under the Little Z name from Zehrs Markets.

Three years later, in 1974, it acquired thirteen Mini-Mart locations in Vancouver from a George Weston Limited subsidiary, plus seven Starlite Variety Stores in Windsor, Ontario. The company changed its name to Mac's Convenience Stores Limited on May 7, 1975. In 1976, Silverwood Dairies purchased shares of Royal Oak Dairy, which brought in the Bantam and Astro convenience store chains. In 1994, Mac's sold most of its Quebec stores to Alimentation Couche-Tard, which rebranded them as Dépan-Escompte Couche-Tard.

Silcorp, Mac's parent company, bought 163 stores in Southern Ontario and the assets of rival Becker's in November 1996. On April 14, 1999, Couche-Tard bought Silcorp, including both the Mac's and Becker's chains. Mac's then swapped its longtime cat logo for Couche-Tard's owl. On September 23, 2015, Couche-Tard announced that all Mac's stores would eventually become Circle K locations; the Canadian conversion began in May 2017.