Gales gas bar and convenience, family business, sold after 58 years | Spare News

The Gale family may have sold their long-running business, Gales Gas Bars Limited and Bob’s Fast & Fresh Convenience, but third-generation owner-operator Jessica (Gale) Friesen says community support for the gas station and convenience store company should continue.

“There are really good people working there and they deserve Niagara’s support,” said Friesen, in an interview with The Lake Report.

“My kids are getting older and my husband and I are wanting to travel and enjoy life a little bit more — and it just worked out.”

Friesen said protecting her staff was a top priority in the sale, so she is proud to have negotiated a deal to ensure all employees kept their jobs, wages and benefits under the new owners — 1001175390 Ontario Ltd.

“They were as unaffected by this major change as possible,” she said. “It has been very important to me, always, to take care of my employees.”

She’s now looking forward to a summer off to spend time with her two children, ages 16 and 17, before deciding on her next steps in the fall.

Friesen said her children weren’t interested in taking over Gales — at least, not yet.

“I’ve never wanted to put pressure on either of them to take over something that they may not have wanted to and I wasn’t going to wait another 10 or 15 years, just to find out that neither of them were interested — when I had a deal like this,” she said.

She said both the family she grew up in and the one she’s raising now are deeply rooted in Niagara-on-the-Lake, where one of Gales locations operates at 1487 Niagara Stone Rd.

“We are very heavily entrenched in the Niagara-on-the-Lake community,” she said.

An on-and-off NOTL resident for 35 of the past 40 years, Friesen announced the sale on the company’s Facebook page on April 10.

The post prompted more than 200 comments from residents — some supportive, others questioning her decision to step away.

“You’re in business to make the right decisions,” she said. “Sometimes, the right decision is to sell.”

“I’ve seen some things online about how I abandoned the company and individuals that have called me a coward and that’s not the case at all,” she said.

Friesen said she had hoped to remain involved during the transition to help ensure a smooth handover, but the new owners did not wish to retain her, she said.

“I offered to stay on, but they were not interested,” she said, adding that there was a pull to remain, as some of the staff were people she had worked with for 20 to 30 years.

As owner-operator, Friesen oversaw all aspects of the business, from major contracts to the workplace culture. She also managed dispatching, maintained fuel levels at sites and negotiated with suppliers.

While the idea of selling had surfaced before, Friesen said she never took it seriously because most of the interest was only in parts of the company.

“If something came by my desk, yeah, I’d look at it,” she said. “It was all kind of piecemeal.”

“But this was the first time where it was someone who wanted to take over everything,” she said.

Friesen said she spoke with her father, Bob Gale — the second-generation owner — before finalizing the sale, out of respect, not obligation.

“I wanted to make sure that we were both comfortable with this,” she said, though she was the owner-operator for the last 11 years.

“My dad and I are very close and we’ve always had the conversation that, you know, I shouldn’t hold on to it just because it’s a family company,” she said.

Gales was founded 58 years ago, when Bob Gale Sr. bought a single truck and gas station in 1967.

His son, Bob Gale Jr., took over in the 1980s and expanded operations: Adding more stations, building an oil terminal and launching Bob’s Fast & Fresh Convenience in 2009.

Bob Gale Jr.’s daughter, Friesen, became the third-generation owner in 2014 and by 2017, Gales had grown to 11 gas station locations, four with convenience stores and a fleet of six fuel delivery trucks.

She said Niagara remains home for the Gales — even with the company changing hands.

“If anything, this gives us more opportunity to have the time to invest into the area that we love,” she said.

paigeseburn@niagaranow