Dive Brief:
- Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores expects to open or remodel 70 locations this year, President Shane Wharton said during a press conference on Wednesday.
- Specifically, Love’s plans to build 20 brand-new travel centers and refresh 50 existing locations under its ongoing $1 billion remodel project. Through that initiative, Love’s is investing between $2 million and $7 million each into about a third of its 655 travel centers.
- Wharton said that he expects more than half of Love’s locations to be new or freshly remodeled within the next decade.
Dive Insight:
Love’s has said that every new location and remodel is different depending on what that site and community needs. However, common features of its refreshed stores include a more open floor plan, open-kitchen and restaurant concepts, dog parks and updated restrooms and showers.
Speaking to reporters on Wednesday, Wharton emphasized that these “major” renovations are meant to meet customer expectations. The expected 50 remodels this year is a slight increase from the 40 Love’s aimed to renovate in 2024.
“We feel like we're bringing this up to a standard to take care of our customers in terms of what they expect,” Wharton said. “And it’s not just kind of a paint fix — it’s a major overhaul.”
Food is a focus for Love’s new and remodeled stores, and as part of that focus, the company created the director of fresh kitchen strategy and growth position in December to spearhead its brand-new culinary innovation center in its headquarters of Oklahoma City.
This facility, Wharton said, will be used to develop and test food offerings to be sold in Love’s stores. He clarified that not all new and remodeled locations have Love’s full suite of prepared food offerings, but the ones that do feature tacos, sandwiches, salads and more.
“Food is big in our industry,” Wharton said. “Everybody is trying to up their game, and so are we.”
Another part of Love’s 2025 growth plans are its electrification efforts. The company received $83 million in grants for charging infrastructure last year, and Wharton said that Love’s will begin construction this year on fast chargers in Alabama, Colorado, Illinois, Kansas, Kentucky, New York, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
