don kwik trip

Kwik Trip announces leadership changes; CEO, President of 22 years to retire

Don Zietlow (Courtesy: Kwik Trip)

(ABC 6 News) – Kwik Trip announced on Monday they will undergo some leadership changes effective Jan. 1, 2023 .

Donald P. Zietlow, CEO and President of Kwik Trip for the last 22 years, announced he is retiring effective Dec. 31, 2022 . Zietlow has been with the company for 52 years and was the driving force behind sharing 40% of the pre-tax profits with all the coworkers and Kwik Trip’s successful food programs.

Kwik Trip says under Zietlow’s leadership, the company has grown its vertically integrated support center in La Crosse, including major capital investments in the dairy, kitchens, bakeries, and distribution center.

The company now operates more than 800 locations in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Michigan.

Scott Zietlow, the Chair of the Board of Kwik Trip and 2nd-generation owner, will become the company’s next President and CEO. Scott will be retiring from his role as a Professor of Surgery in the Trauma, Critical Care and General Surgery Division in Rochester to assume his new Kwik Trip responsibilities.

“I am honored to follow my dad’s legacy of guiding Kwik Trip. We are a very strong company and with our 36,000 phenomenal coworkers, great retail locations, and industry-leading vertical integration, our future is bright,” said Scott Zietlow.

As part of the new leadership team, Tom Reinhart has been appointed Chief Operating Officer. Jeff Wrobel will continue his role as Chief Financial Officer.

To learn more about Kwik Trip, CLICK HERE .

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Kwik Trip CEO and President Retires After 52 Years

Don Zietlow’s 52 years of leadership brought substantial growth to Wisconsin-based Kwik Trip.

November 28, 2022

LA CROSSE, Wisc.—Kwik Trip announced its CEO and president Donald P.  Zietlow is retiring, effective December 31, 2022. Zietlow has worked at Kwik Trip for 52 years and served as CEO and president for 22 years.

“Although Don attributes the success of Kwik Trip to the coworkers, his leadership has brought substantial growth and innovation,” said Kwik Trip in a statement.

The company operates more than 800 locations in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Michigan and is considered a leader in the convenience store industry.

Zietlow was the driving force behind sharing 40% of the pre-tax profits with all the coworkers and Kwik Trip’s successful food programs. Under his leadership the company grew its vertically integrated support center in La Crosse, Wisconsin, including major capital investments in the dairy, kitchens, bakeries and distribution center.

On January 1, 2023, Kwik Trip’s chair of the board and second-generation owner Scott Zietlow will become Kwik Trip’s next president and CEO. Scott will be retiring from his role as a professor of surgery in the trauma, critical care and general surgery division of Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota, to assume his new responsibilities at Kwik Trip.

“I am honored to follow my dad’s legacy of guiding Kwik Trip. We are a very strong company and with our 36,000 phenomenal coworkers, great retail locations and industry-leading vertical integration, our future is bright,” said Scott.

As part of the new leadership team, Tom Reinhart has been appointed chief operating officer, and Jeff Wrobel will continue his role as chief financial officer.

Kwik Trip showcases its 800 th store in this 2022 NACS Ideas 2 Go segment. The next gen store, located in Holmes, Wisconsin, features an updated color scheme, new flooring and ample space for customers to shop the store.

FMN Magazine awarded Kwik Trip the first-ever FMN Fuels Innovator of the Year Awards at the 2022 NACS Show.

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Kwik Trip CEO Don Zietlow retiring after 52 years with company

LACROSSE, Wis. (KEYC) - After over 50 years with the company, Don Zietlow announced he is retiring as CEO of Kwik Trip at the end of the year.

During his tenure, Don was the driving force behind sharing 40% of pre-tax profits with all coworkers near the end of each year.

Starting Jan. 1, 2023, current Chair of Kwik Trip’s Board of Director Scott Zietlow will take over the position of CEO.

The convenience store chain operates more than 800 locations all across Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Michigan.

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Kwik Trip CEO steps down after 22 years, son to take over

Kwik Trip has announced its current CEO, Donald Zietlow (left) will retire at the end of the year. His son, Scott Zietlow (right), will take over as CEO in 2023.

Wisconsin-based gas station and convenience store chain Kwik Trip has announced the upcoming departure of its CEO.

According to a release, Donald Zietlow is retiring at the end of the year after 52 years with the company– and 22 years as CEO.

Zietlow’s son, Scott, will step into the role at the start of 2023. Previously, Scott Zietlow was a professor of surgery at Mayo Clinic in Rochester.

“I am honored to follow my dad’s legacy of guiding Kwik Trip” Scott Zietlow said.

Kwik Trip has over 800 locations across the Midwest.

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Business | Mayo Clinic surgeon quitting to lead family’s…

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Business | Mayo Clinic surgeon quitting to lead family’s Kwik Trip convenience store empire

Dr. Scott Zietlow, who has worked at Mayo Clinic since the early 1990s, will take on the titles of president and CEO of the La Crosse, Wis.-based Kwik Trip at the start of 2023. Dr. Zietlow is also the chair of the Kwik Trip’s board of directors.

He is leaving his position of professor of surgery in Mayo Clinic’s trauma, critical care and general surgery division. Zietlow has served in a variety of leadership positions at Mayo Clinic, including as chairman of the Mayo Clinic Medical Transport Board.

“I am honored to follow my dad’s legacy of guiding Kwik Trip. We are a very strong company and with our 36,000 phenomenal co-workers, great retail locations, and industry-leading vertical integration, our future is bright,” Zietlow stated in the announcement of his appointment.

Don Zeitlow, who is considered a founder of Kwik Trip, has worked at the company for 52 years, 22 years of that as the CEO.

The company’s roots date back to a grocery store business in 1965. The groceries evolved into Kwik Trip in 1971, and it was led by the Hansen and Zietlow families in Eau Claire, Wis. The headquarters moved to La Crosse in 1973, and the Zietlow family became the sole owners in 2000.

The company now operates more than 800 locations in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois and Michigan.

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How a DIY business strategy led to Kwik Trip's explosive growth. 11.5 million people visit the stores every week.

If customers look hard enough, they'll find a tiny Easter egg on each bottle of milk at their local Kwik Trip.

It's a small, hard to see smiley face, a reproduction of a drawing that former President and CEO Don Zietlow drew during annual meetings when he announced the company's year-end results, future goals and the amount employees would receive through the company's profit sharing program. It also appears on bottles of tea, juice and other drinks.

The smiley face is a nod to Zietlow, who retired in 2022 , and to the company's employee-focused culture. But it's also an add-on that's only possible because of a business strategy Zietlow introduced more than two decades ago and continues to underpin the company's rapid growth.

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Known as vertical integration, it's a do-it-yourself strategy of controlling as much of the production, warehousing, distribution and sales as you can. In Kwik Trip's case, that's grown from a small bakery at the back of an early store to a production and distribution network that extends across six states from Kwik Trip's sprawling La Crosse campus.

The La Crosse operation includes a dairy, a bread bakery, a sweets bakery, a commissary that makes all of the chain's hot food items and salads, warehousing and a distribution center, food safety and quality assurance labs, offices, a call center and other backroom functions. It all operates seamlessly to send custom ordered shipments six days a week to 872 convenience stores in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Illinois, South Dakota and Michigan.

One of the benefits of doing all of that food preparation and packaging in house: the dairy operation also makes its own plastic bottles, which allowed Kwik Trip to easily add Zietlow's smiley face.

"Don asked people to smile at every guest and ask them to come back. So he started drawing smiley faces on stage and that kind of became his signature, his trademark, the early part of his personal brand," said Carl Rick, Kwik Trip's training manager and a third-generation owner of the business.

A changing convenience-store business needed a new model

Kwik Trip began making sandwiches for its stores in the back room of a La Crosse location in the 1970s, and it bought a small dairy in Caledonia, Minnesota in 1981. The full embrace of vertical integration didn't really come until 2000, said John McHugh, Kwik Trip's vice president of external relations.

That's the year that Zietlow concluded the exiting model for convenience stores, based on sales of cigarettes, snacks, gasoline and household staples sold at "insult prices," wasn't a recipe for long-term success. Instead, McHugh said, Zietlow decided to focus on in-house food and drink production and cutting out the middle man as a way to overcome two traditional barriers to growing a convenience store business: cost and freshness.

"If you're having a third party deliver that loaf of bread and you're only doing a handful of loaves in a traditional convenience store, you have to charge so much for that loaf of bread to make it worthwhile that, in our industry, we have something called insult pricing – we have it and you need it, we're convenient, and you're gonna pay through the nose to get it," McHugh said.

Controlling production, storage and transportation reduces those costs and puts Kwik Trip prices on equal footing with grocery stores.

It also helps ensure freshness and food safety. In the case of milk, that means 24 hours from the dairy to the store shelf. For the company's signature Glazers donuts, it means delivery the same day they're made.

The result: customers know that they can get consistently fresh food items at a competitive price.

"Don knew that for us to be successful in our business model, you had to beat everybody on price, and you had to beat everybody on freshness, and that's where the vertical integration model comes in," McHugh said.

The success of the model can be seen in the shopping trends of Kwik Trip's 11.5 million weekly customers, he said.

"What happens now is, especially if you look at some of our small and rural markets, from 1 in the afternoon until 4, the demographic is people in their late 70s and 80s with grocery carts in our stores buying eggs, milk, butter, bread, onions, kind of thing," McHugh said. "People are just coming here for their their basic commodities."

The company does not make its annual sales public. However its profit sharing plan provides a glimpse into the its finances. Last year employees received about $200 million as their 40% share of Kwik Trip's pre-tax profit, which puts the company's annual profit at about $500 million.

Nearly 8,000 employees keep Kwik Trip stores stocked and the business humming

What began as a small food production operation in what is now the company's training center has grown to take up most of the company's sprawling 140 acre campus. Much of that growth has occured since 2017, when the company first tapped Wisconsin Economic Development Corp. Enterprise Zone tax incentives to fuel its expansion.

Since then, the company has spent more than $325 million to expand the operation and created nearly 1,800 new, full-time jobs, according to WEDC records.

WEDC Secretary Missy Hughes said that growth is all the more impressive because the company has maintained its employees-first focus and even doubled down by providing on-site child care and a health clinic in La Crosse.

"They're a model Wisconsin company, and their decision to continue to expand here is just a huge win for us," Hughes said.

Today, the La Crosse workforce includes:

• 700 production employees in the kitchen, also known as the commissary, who produce pizza, burritos, salads and take-home meals.
• 150 dairy workers who pasteurize and homogenize milk, package it and make ice cream.
• 320 people who make doughnuts on two lines: one dedicated to Glazers in the morning and Dunkers in the afternoon, the other focused on Bismarks and Long Johns, cookies, cinnamon rolls and other sweet treats.
• 117 workers in the bread and roll bakery.
• 600 drivers who handle deliveries to retail locations with a fleet of 350 tractors and 250 trailers.

Kwik Trip's plan for continued growth and expansion

The seamless system that gets products to the stores' shelves is a product of 20 years of growth, experimentation and learning, one that company leaders acknowledge would be hard to reproduce today.

"This whole process grew organically," McHugh said. "To re-establish our140-acre campus with everything that we have here, someplace else in the Midwest, would be cost prohibitive."

Kwik trip has more than doubled its retail stores in the past decade and keeping up with that growth required continued investment in all of the behind-the-scenes support operations.

The company recently announced plans to spend another $151 million to support its plan to continue to add about 50 new stores a year.

That includes a recently completed expansion of Kwik Trip's burrito production line to make up to 90,000 burritos a day, a new 40-foot production line for Dunkers and cake doughnuts and additional packaging automation in the sweets bakery and a cooler expansion in the dairy.

For the first time, Kwik Trip will move some of the La Crosse operation off campus by building a new distribution center in De Forest and renovating an office building in Onalaska that the company recently bought.

The office building will house training, accounting and operations support, including a 24/7 help line for the stores, which in turn frees up more space for other overcrowded office functions. In time, the current training center will likely be torn down for an expansion of the dairy, McHugh said.

That expansion is being aided by an additional $15 million in tax credits from WEDC. The credits are tied to completing the $151 million investment and creating more than 500 new jobs by 2027.

"What I love is Kwik Trip's commitment to Wisconsin and the Midwest. They clearly have confidence that they can continue to grow," Hughes said.

The De Forest distribution center will help Kwik Trip better support its stores in southeastern Wisconsin, McHugh said. The company plans to eventually set up two additional distribution centers to better serve Kwik Trip's retail expansion. Likely locations are in western Wisconsin near Twin Cities and in Iowa, he said.

"We think we can double our footprint of stores and still be able to service it with this campus and the satellite distribution centers, but after that I think we're going to have to start thinking about other logistic concerns," McHugh said. "First, maybe you do a dairy or a bakery - you can't just replicate this campus."

Tapping automation increases efficiency without cutting workforce

Automation has helped the company expand production, while the company's growth has ensured that the efficiencies robotics bring don't cost employees their jobs.

"We're going to spend a lot of money on automation in years to come not to create jobs, but to free up those people to do jobs that we need people to do," Rick said. "Nobody's going to get fired because the robot's doing a job. We're taking those manual jobs, those highly repetitive jobs, and we're going to use robots for that. And that frees people up to do more, a different line of work."

Keeping the existing workforce is critical for a company expects to hire 500 more workers in a competitive regional labor market. Opportunities for career advancement and personal growth, and the company's commitment to sharing its profit with with employees has resulted in annual employee turnover of about 30%, far below the industry average, and is a key to attracting new workers, Rick said.

"When you go back to when Don was very first starting in business in the '50s and '60s, we were a major manufacturing community and Don watched friends, he watched family, he watched people lose jobs, because those facilities were bought, sold and had those jobs left La Crosse and never came back," Rick said. "And, so, one of the reasons we're committed to owning and growing the business going forward is we want to provide that long term stability for our co-workers and for the communities that we call home."

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: How a DIY business strategy led to Kwik Trip's explosive growth. 11.5 million people visit the stores every week.

Kwik Trip President, CEO Don Zietlow retiring, son to take his place

by Sam Shilts

LA CROSSE (WKBT) — Longtime Kwik Trip CEO Don Zietlow will retire at the end of the year.

Don Zietlow served as president and CEO for 22 years and 52 years total with the company.

Under his leadership, Kwik Trip says they have seen substantial growth and now operates over 800 locations in the region.

Starting the first of next year, Don’s son Scott Zietlow will retire from his position as a Professor of Surgery in the Trauma, Critical Care and General Surgery Division of Mayo Clinic in Rochester to assume responsibilities at Kwik Trip as the new president and CEO.

“I am honored to follow my dad’s legacy of guiding Kwik Trip,” Scott Zietlow said. “We are a very strong company and with our 36,000 phenomenal coworkers, great retail locations, and industry-leading vertical integration, our future is bright.”

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Retail Leader of the Year: Don Zietlow

If any convenience chain were a reflection of its owner, it would be Kwik Trip.

Don Zietlow has built a $4.2-billion business on selling life’s simple necessities and living by the simple rule of doing unto others.

But if life were simple, assembling a 433-store, vertically integrated chain would be com­monplace. And there’s nothing common about Kwik Trip, nor the people behind its success.

Since its inception in 1965, La Crosse, Wis.-based Kwik Trip has evolved into a regional icon, finding profit in knowing what the cus­tomer wants and coming up with the best, most efficient way to deliver. For Zietlow, that meant taking control of the supply chain, spending more than $1 billion on a foodservice infrastructure and pairing the Golden Rule with a hunger to be the best.

But building a complex, enduring busi­ness was never the end goal. For Zietlow, the people who work for Kwik Trip are its most vital resource and the reason the chain strives for excellence. It’s their humility, generosity and determination to improve their communities that makes Kwik Trip successful in his eyes.

To that end, Zietlow has practiced a thought­ful yet driven leadership style that led CSP to name him its 2012 Retail Leader of the Year.

One of the coolest things in Kwik Trip’s bakery/commissary/dairy complex is a new, 20-foot-tall robotic arm that picks up large baking trays with a kind of mag­netic suction and moves them from one roller belt to another. It’s like something from an automobile assembly line.

Then there’s the doughnut-glazing conveyor, the sandwich-packaging machine and, of course, the hulking device that fills thick plastic bags with Kwik Trip milk.

Not that automation is more interest­ing or important than people, but these formidable machines symbolize a busi­ness that’s serious about what it produces. Kwik Trip makes what it sells—much of it, anyway. And in that ownership, the chain transcends the mechanical and moves into that hard-fought, hands-dirty Midwestern sensibility: a pride derived from making something yourself.

That’s the innate quality resonating from the chain’s employees, its leadership and most certainly its owner and CEO, Zietlow.

To know Kwik Trip is to know Zietlow. While a humble person and one to imme­diately credit his team before taking any himself, Zietlow, 77, has made an indel­ible impression on the convenience chain he heads. Like every good leader, he leads by example, driven by a combination of simple but undeniable truths: Do unto others, be the best and make a difference.

Zietlow will talk about the backbreak­ing work he did early in his career: The job as a truck driver that had him up at 4:30 a.m. pulling loads from La Crosse to meat plants in Albert Lea, Minn., and Waterloo, Iowa. The six-day-a-week schedule that had him openly complain­ing about how hard he worked for so little. The one with the supervisor who told him to either shut up or leave. And when he decided that if he were in the position to properly reward people for their hard work, he’d do it.

But that revelation was more of a focal point, an epiphany for someone already intent on doing good.

Formative Years

Zietlow did not have an easy upbringing. His father, Elmer Zietlow, died when Don and his brother David were boys, and the struggle to make sense of the loss played a big role in who Don became, what would motivate him at the core.

He had a stutter, one his wife, LaVonne, described as keeping him from putting four words together. (Humorously, she recalls, “It took him 10 minutes to ask me out on a date.”) But it also made him a target at school. And it kept him from pur­suing the career path he wanted: ministry.

Still, Zietlow grew up with stability, raised by strong women in his mother, Helen, and his Aunt Emma, as well as her husband, Paul. And his Lutheran upbringing introduced role models in his pastors and, in a broader sense, the church community.

The dueling elements of fortitude and frailty would instill in him an internal drumbeat, a drive to produce, provide and ultimately win.

It led him into business and the truck­ing position in the 1950s that would focus his drive, taking him from meat delivery to supervising grocery stores. Oddly enough, the success of Kwik Trip overshadows his equally notable career as a grocer: He rose through the ranks to become president of Gateway Foods, then a division of Rein­hart Foodservice, Rosemont, Ill. Gateway owned five c-stores in the 1960s, which Zietlow bought with a busi­ness partner, John Hansen, in 1972. That’s when Kwik Trip’s true history begins. Reinhart remained a third partner in the business as it grew.

Reinhart would eventually sell Gateway Foods in 1989 and part ways with Kwik Trip. Hansen and Zietlow would be equal partners until 2000, when a divergence of goals—including the continuance of its already lucrative employee-benefits plan—motivated the Zietlow family to buy the company outright.

To ensure family ownership, Zietlow has already transferred the business to his three children: Steve, who manages the petroleum side of the business; Vicky Kunz, who participates in Kwik Trip’s donation committees; and Scott, who is chairman of the Kwik Trip board and a physician at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. This move and giving the chain’s real estate to its employees helped as far as taxes due upon the owner’s death, which could potentially force a sale or raise issues with the company’s stock.

In many ways, Kwik Trip became Ziet­low’s clay, an opportunity to mold a busi­ness in the values in which he so believed.

Many talk of how adamant Zietlow can be regarding certain aspects of the business, especially when it comes to visionary, big-picture elements. Zietlow’s grandson, Mark Zietlow, talks of a “con­fidence” his grandfather has about where the company should go.

“That confidence is a tough thing to get around … and tough to build and maintain,” he says. “It’s a tremendous quality, something to be admired.”

“Don is a risk taker,” says LaVonne Ziet­low. Over the years, “his partners clashed over borrowing money. Don said, ‘You have to borrow money to make money.’ ”

Yet one of the things he seems ada­mant about is being upbeat and having nice people around him. Steve Loehr, vice president of support operations for Kwik Trip, recalls a time when a journalist came to interview Zietlow. Not knowing what the Kwik Trip owner looked like, she hap­pened to meet a nice gentleman as they both entered the corporate building. He opened the door for her and started a friendly conversation. She was shocked to find out it was Zietlow.

“People are always telling us the thing about our company is: The further up in management you go, the nicer people get,” Loehr says.

But don’t mistake nice for meek. Nice as a management style, at least with Kwik Trip, means little micromanagement and a ton of trust building. “Don will be the last one to take credit when things go right and the first one to take the blame if something goes wrong,” Loehr says. “We’ll discuss what needs to get done and he’ll get out of our way.”

Where does the confidence to let go come from? As much as Zietlow exudes a genuine, caring nature, he’s also a num­bers person.

LaVonne and many Kwik Trip employ­ees attest to Zietlow’s ability to compute numbers in his head. In an interview with CSP in 2009, when the chain won the magazine’s annual mystery-shop program for the first of three times, Zietlow sponta­neously updated a company statistic in his head, adding six-digit figures and coming up with a total. So it’s no surprise to find out he enjoys numbers games and has a passion for cribbage.

All this is to say that as much as he trusts in people and his personal faith, he trusts numbers. And numbers don’t lie.Over the past four years, Kwik Trip has managed record profits, even as the rest of the economy struggled through the worst recession in decades.

Vertical Strategy

The numbers and his years as a grocer brought Zietlow to the Holy Grail of verti­cal integration, with the company seeming to grow at both ends of the supply chain. With acquisitions mounting through the 1980s—17 Wolters Mini Marts in Iowa in 1985 and 54 Kickapoo stores in 1988 in Wisconsin—and new builds putting meat on the chain, as it were, Kwik Trip slowly gravitated toward manufacturing.

Its first commissary was built in 1975, making sandwiches behind the Losey Bou­levard store in La Crosse. A few years later, the company bought its first used straight truck. A warehouse distribution center came in 1980, and the bakery in 1985.

Today, the commissary that started out making 24,000 sandwiches a year now produces 13 million food items annually from a 60,000-square-foot facility built in May 2007. That first truck is now 62 fuel tankers, 49 grocery semis and 35 straight trucks. The warehouse gave way to a new facility in 1996, which the company expanded three times, in 2000, 2004 and 2010—ending up at 220,000 square feet. Also in 2010, the company completed an 80,000-square-foot addition to its 68,000 square-foot-bakery, upgrading with new equipment in the process.

“I’m sure they’d rather be spending money on the stores,” says Doug Ingle, who works in the Kwik Trip bakery. “But they know that to support the stores, you need to throw in money.”

Ingle says that with current improve­ments, “we’ll be set for what we think is 10 to 15 years, but with our growth rate, that 10 to 15 years amounts to seven or eight.”

Zietlow traces the renewed commit­ment to foodservice back to 2002, when the company introduced a display case of food items, called Hot Spot. He knew declining tobacco sales and growing fuel volatility was stifling the business, and that Kwik Trip would have to make a major shift to stay viable.

Over the past decade, the invest­ment into facility expansion, manu­facturing equipment , labor and expertise—including the development of an in-house food inspection and test­ing laboratory—moved into the seven-figure range and turned into one of the company’s biggest gambles.

Part of that investment was develop­ing a new foodservice culture. When that shift started, Kwik Trip had a policy of hairnets and gloves for anyone handling food, says Marty Putz, food safety and quality assurance for the chain. But even after training the staff, he would see zone and district leaders not wearing them. “They’d say they were just going in to help for 5 minutes,” Putz recalls. “But we’d say, ‘Aren’t you still making food?’ ”

A stronger auditing process, as well as a move to hire individuals with a food-handling background, has changed the mindset, Putz says. And with those new hires now rising up into zone and district ranks, the issue of hairnets and gloves is a thing of the past.

Steve Zietlow, Don’s son and head of the company’s petroleum division, never doubted his father’s vision. “With regula­tions, people not wanting to smoke, we needed to focus where we are getting … profits from,” he says, “which led us to food and commodities, things we produce that attract the largest amount of people, that every household needs and uses.”

Fresh Secrets

Closely tied to Kwik Trip’s manufacturing advantage is its delivery system. Zietlow says daily delivery is crucial to customer perception and the truth of freshness. Every night, trucks make deliveries so that everything with a short shelf life is on display by 5 a.m. Once an item sells, automated processes place a new order at the commissary for the next day.

The Achilles’ heel of the paradigm is proximity. With its manufacturing and distribution facilities in La Crosse, the chain can’t move past its 300-mile radius, which covers Wisconsin and areas of Minnesota and Iowa.

But Zietlow believes much of the com­pany’s current market area is ripe for new builds, seeing no reason why it can’t keep its 20-store-per-year growth rate on track into the next decade.

Though outward expansion and density goals appear set, what’s offered inside the store is a shifting variable. The company has its stalwarts, including its signature bananas, Glazers doughnuts and $1 Wednesday cheeseburgers. But it also carries a wide variety of baked goods, foodservice items and dairy products.

Its bakery produces seven varieties of packaged goods and 48 bakery items. It makes 120 regular-sized doughnuts and 150 loaves of bread per minute, going through 40,000 to 55,000 pounds of flour per day. Its commissaries and kitchens produce pizzas, salads, sandwiches, subs, burritos, soups and yogurt parfait cups. The dairy makes 15 million gallons of milk, 2 million gallons of orange juice and other drinks, and 600,000 gallons of ice cream annually.

Its fruit and renowned 38-cents-per-pound bananas come from global suppliers, moving up from Texas to La Crosse. Kwik Trip has five ripening rooms with 80,000 pounds of capacity, where bananas sit before being trucked to stores.

The vertical integration ultimately means a value price. Besides good values on bananas, other basics, such as eggs, milk and bread, are competitively priced. In a faceoff with area stores from Ben­tonville, Ark.-based Walmart, Kwik Trip assessed its prices to be almost 50 cents cheaper on a 2% gallon milk jug, 17 cents on a half-gallon jug of orange juice and 8 cents on a pound of bananas.

While not assuming Kwik Trip will replace that grocery trip to Walmart, Ziet­low believes his c-stores will be where people go to replace what they run out of during the week.

“When it comes to commodities, we should be able to buy flour as cheaply as Walmart does,” Zietlow says. “You’ve got to take costs out of the system, and you’ve got to give value to the customer.”

Walking the Walk

That value equation doesn’t stop with price. Several years ago, Zietlow sug­gested to his team that the stores stop charging fees at its ATMs, a stream of income in the millions that would just disappear. “It was a lot of money,” Loehr says, but doing so led to higher transac­tion volumes, increased store traffic and a ton of goodwill.

Internally, the Zietlow family has established how nurturing, supporting and rewarding its own people leads to the kind of customer service and store-level execution that makes a compelling case for consumers.

In 1989, Zietlow came full circle from his arduous career as a truck driver, estab­lishing the company’s 40% profit sharing among employees—an unprecedented amount for any business, in any channel. It has led to one of the industry’s lowest turnover rates, 24%—nearly a third of rates for top-quartile companies among non-managers, 66.9%, per the NACS State of the Industry Survey of 2011 Data.

Employees with at least five years of service own Kwik Trip’s property, includ­ing any store built since 1989. On the employee’s fifth anniversary, he or she receives a unit share per year.

Appreciation for the company’s ben­efit packages is certainly a part of why the chain has kept turnover low and ranked high among local media for best places to work. But Kwik Trip also has a reputation for growth, stability and strategic vision. Brad Clarkin, warehouse superintendent for almost three years, says the chain is known for “hiring the right people and putting them in the right places.”

New Frontiers

Despite success with both its business model and employee culture, Zietlow and his management team are loath to rest on their laurels. Already on the proactive front with alternative fuels, the company has begun establishing a network of com­pressed natural gas (CNG) and liquid nat­ural gas (LNG) fueling sites in La Crosse.

This year, it hosted the first ever Natu­ral Gas Tradeshow and Summit, invit­ing local fleet owners to its facilities. It unveiled a flagship site in La Crosse near its headquarters. The site, which also sells propane, E85, B5 and B10 biodiesel, is the first of five intended locations.

“If you look at Kwik Trip, at what makes it unique right now, it’s not only our network of stores but the ability to build a functional infrastructure,” says Chad Hollett, director of transportation and distribution for Kwik Trip. “The vehicles are here, the technology is here.”

As is the essence of a leader who per­vasively instilled a value system and sense of entrepreneurialism into a company destined to support several generations to come.

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Kwik trip announces new 'dunker' chip coming to stores this weekend.

The chips will roll out in almost 900 stores on May 18

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Kwik Trip announced a new "Urge" brand potato chip coming to stores this weekend. The gas station posted a picture of the new "Blueberry Dunker Donut" ripple potato chip on X.

Yeah, it's big news. Blueberry Dunker Chips rolling out to stores this weekend. 💙 pic.twitter.com/az8a9HRB9e — Kwik Trip (@KwikTrip) May 13, 2024

The chips are already drawing mixed reactions. Some comments on X accused Kwik Trip of going too far, while others commented that they would get multiple bags.

Kwik Trip said the chips will be in almost 900 stores beginning on Saturday. The chips will be available for a limited time only, but Kwik Trip did not say when they will leave stores.

Kwik Trip also sold a limited-time "Glazer" potato chip in 2019.

Rutter's, Royal Farms among best gas stations in the country: USA Today readers

Two regional convenience store chains — including Rutter's based in York, Pa. — made USA TODAY's 10Best Readers’ Choice Awards in two separate categories for road trips.

Rutter's and Baltimore-based Royal Farms, which has stores in south-central Pennsylvania, made the Top 10 list for best gas station brand as well as best gas station for food .

Sheetz and Wawa — two other popular convenience store chains in Pennsylvania — did not make the list.

In the best gas station for food, Royal Farms took the No. 1 spot while Rutter's came in fourth.

In the best gas station brand category, Rutter's came in seventh while Royal Farms placed fourth.

Rutter's sells a variety of food at its 24-hour convenience stores, such as burgers, sandwiches, pizza, tacos, fried rice bowls and fried seafood.

Royal Farms is beloved for its fried chicken.

Getting hungry? Visit www.rutters.com or www.royalfarms.com to check out the menu.

Here are the top 10 winners in each category:

Best gas station brand

1. Kwik Trip

4. Royal Farms

5. RaceTrac

7. Rutter's

8. TravelCenters of America

9. QuikTrip

10. Buc-ee's

Best gas station for food

Here's the full top 10 list:

1. Royal Farms

3. Kwik Trip

4. Rutter's

5. TravelCenters of America

7. QuickChek

8. Weigel's

Would you try a blueberry doughnut-flavored potato chip? You can find them at Kwik Trip.

The new potato chips, inspired by the popular blueberry dunker donuts, will hit shelves starting may 18 at kwik trip..

Kwik Trip shoppers can now find Blueberry Dunker-flavored potato chips for a limited time.

The convenience store announced on social media Monday the reveal of its new Blueberry Dunker-flavored URGE potato chips. The new product will hit shelves this weekend, starting May 18. The new flavored snack is a nod at Kwik Trip’s popular Blueberry Dunker Donuts, which debuted in 2013. Last year, the company made more than 9 million Blueberry Dunkers.

Will Churchill, Kwik Trip’s director of category management, said the company wanted to create a new product based on one of its popular products. After testing various options, the Blueberry Dunker chips were the winner, combining sweet and salty flavors.

Kwik Trip has been telling its followers it had an announcement to share for the last few weeks , teasing something big was coming via its social media pages.

“The launch of this new product has been a fun one for our team to tease on social media these past few weeks,” said Paige Geary, Kwik Trip’s social media supervisor.

The company shipped the new chips to all of its influencers early, giving them the opportunity to taste test the products and share their thoughts on their social media platforms before everyone else can find them in stores.

This is the second time Kwik Trip has been inspired by a doughnut while creating a limited-time snack. In 2019, the brand launched Glazers-flavored chips . The idea for that chip started from an April Fool’s Day joke three years prior. Employees and customers loved the idea, and Kwik Trip worked to make it a reality.

Kwik Trip started out as a neighborhood grocery store, opening its first location in Eau Claire in 1965. The second store opened in 1971 in its now home-base, La Crosse. In the last 59 years, the convenience store and gas station has continued to grow, both in physical locations and in popularity, largely because of its social media presence that interacts with its followers on a whole new level.

USA TODAY NETWORK-Wisconsin talked with the company about its social media presence and growing popularity in 2022 . Kwik Trip team members shared how the business shifted its entire digital marketing strategy from focusing on products to focusing on people and developing a brand voice to humanize the company and its content. It's the type of social interaction that can take an April Fool's Day joke and develop new products for its guests.

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USA TODAY 10Best

From roadside attractions to gas stations, these are the best road trip stops

May 15, 2024 // By 10Best Editors

By 10Best Editors May 15, 2024

Summer is just around the corner — are you ready to make the most of it? Start planning a road trip with our rankings of the best gas stations, glamping spots, RV campgrounds and resorts, national park lodges, rental car companies, and more.

To find the top spots for 2024, a panel of experts selected nominees across 10 categories, then our readers voted for their favorites. After four weeks of voting, the results are in.

Click on each category below to see the full winners list:

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Best Gas Station Brand: Kwik Trip

Kwik Trip, a Wisconsin-based, family-owned company, operates more than 800 stores in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Iowa, Michigan, South Dakota, and Illinois. Their bakeries make more than two dozen different types of items each day, and all milk is sourced from dairy farms within a 100-mile radius of La Crosse, Wisconsin.

Full list of winners: Best Gas Station Brand »

Best Gas Station for Food: Royal Farms

Royal Farms offers a breakfast menu that’s available any time of the day or night. That's in addition to other hot food menu items, including sandwiches, burgers, hot dogs, and their popular fried chicken. The stores also sell a wide variety of packaged snacks along with fountain and bottled beverages. Some locations even feature a Blending Bar, where you can craft a milkshake.

Full list of winners: Best Gas Station for Food »

Best Glamping Spot: Sky Ridge Yurts in Bryson City, North Carolina

Sky Ridge Yurts provides guests with a glimpse into the splendor of Appalachia with eight distinct structures all available for booking. Whether guests spring for the three-person Santeelah or six-person Fontana, each space comes equipped with cooking areas, full baths, and both heating and air conditioning.

Full list of winners: Best Glamping Spot »

Best Luxury RV Resort: Camp Margaritaville RV Resort & Cabana Cabins in Auburndale, Florida

Camp Margaritaville RV Resort invites guests to “get into the island state of mind” in central Florida. Located conveniently between Orlando and Tampa, their oversized sites have plenty of room to accommodate all RV sizes and include full hookups, free Wi-Fi and cable access, a charcoal grill, and a picnic table. Each week, the resort features live music and entertainment with delicious food trucks and fun activities for all family members.

Full list of winners: Best Luxury RV Resort »

Best National Park Lodge: Jackson Lake Lodge in Grand Teton National Park

Jackson Lake Lodge offers nearly 400 guest rooms, some with excellent views of the Tetons, one of America’s most scenic mountain ranges. A limited number of guest rooms are on the third floor of the main lodge, but most are in numerous multiple-unit cottages that flank the lodge. The huge lobby with enormous windows offers guests a picture-perfect view of the surroundings.

Full list of winners: Best National Park Lodge »

Best Rental Car Company: Enterprise Rent-A-Car

Equipped with thousands of locations, Enterprise Rent-A-Car serves as the one of the largest vehicle rental companies in all of the United States. Though rentals are available to any form of customer, the company is popular with consumers in need of a replacement vehicle while theirs is in the shop.

Full list of winners: Best Rental Car Company »

Best Roadside Attraction: Lucy the Elephant in Margate City, New Jersey

Listed on the National Park Registry of Historical Landmarks, Lucy the Elephant stands six stories high in Josephine Harron Park. Visitors can stop by and have their photos taken with Lucy, and, for those who wish to go inside the elephant, guided tours are available.

Full list of winners: Best Roadside Attraction »

Best Roadside Motel: The Groovy Nomad in Trenton, Georgia

A renovated 1959 roadside motel, The Groovy Nomad now features 10 themed rooms that will offer a fun and eclectic background for your next road trip. Try "Elvis' Jungle," inspired by the King of Rock 'n' Roll's Jungle Room at Graceland, let loose your inner flower child in "Flower Power," or tap into your '80s kid in "Pac-Man."

Full list of winners: Best Roadside Motel »

Best RV Campground: Inn Town Campground in Nevada City, California

Inn Town Campground, just minutes outside Nevada City, California, has several RV sites, many with full hookups and a few with water and electric only. Each site has its own picnic table, and campground amenities include barbecues and a swimming pool.

Full list of winners: Best RV Campground »

Best Vintage Trailer Hotel: The Vintages Trailer Resort in Dayton, Oregon

The Vintages Trailer Resort, situated in Willamette Valley, has a “neighborhood” of rental trailers. Each unique trailer comes with pour-over coffee, bathrobes, hotel-quality linens, and a propane grill for cooking. Park amenities include a pool, general store, complimentary cruiser bikes, and a nearby dog park.

Full list of winners: Best Vintage Trailer Hotel »

Congratulations to all these winners! Remember to visit 10best.usatoday.com daily to vote in more Readers' Choice Awards.

Kwik Trip will sell Blueberry Dunker potato chips for a limited time

Blueberry-doughnut-flavored potato chips? Leave it to Kwik Trip to create them.

The La Crosse-based convenience-store chain announced Monday that it will debut Blueberry Dunker-flavored Urge potato chips this weekend in its stores.

Kwik Trip debuted the Blueberry Dunker donut in 2013 and produced more than 9 million of them in the last year, according to a company news release.

“We wanted this based off a popular item and, after taste testing a few options, the sweet and salty combination of the Blueberry Dunker was a real winner,” said Will Churchill, Kwik Trip's director of category management.

It's the second doughnut-inspired chip Kwik Trip has introduced, after Glazers-flavored chips came out in 2019.

More: We tried Kwik Trip Glazers potato chips to see what drink pairs best. Here's what we found

The chips will ship to stores Saturday and will be available for a limited time, the company said.

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Kwik Trip will sell Blueberry Dunker potato chips for a limited time

Blueberry-donut-flavored potato chips? Leave it to Kwik Trip to create them. The La Crosse-based convenience-store chain announced Monday that it'll debut Blueberry Dunker-flavored Urge potato chips this weekend in its stores. Kwik Trip debuted the Blueberry Dunker donut in 2013 and produced more than 9 million of them in the last year, according to a company news release. “We wanted this based off a popular item and, after taste testing a few options, the sweet and salty combination of the Blueberry Dunker was a real winner,” said Will Churchill, Kwik...

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