DES MOINES, Iowa -- Convenience store chain QuikTrip has launched its QT Kitchens made-to-order menu at 17 locations in the greater Des Moines, Iowa, area, reported The Business Record.
At each c-store's QT Kitchens full-service counter, from 6:00 a.m. to 10:00 p.m. each day, customers can order food including sandwiches, pizzas, flatbreads, smoothies and coffee drinks.
QuikTrip is in the process of installing full-service counters in more than 700 stores across the country.
"We are getting into the fast-food business," Chuck Barton, QuikTrip's vice president of marketing and convenience store sales, said when the company rolled out the program in Phoenix in January.
QuikTrip spent the last 18 months remodeling its older stores in Phoenix and Tucson markets, adding the new kitchen areas. Barton said opening the kitchens in all of its markets has been a 10-year journey, including research, testing and rolling it out in 700 stores across 11 markets.
"We have rolled it out in eight of our 11 markets so far," Barton said. "It has been very well received for our Midwestern markets."
QuikTrip is implementing the kitchen concept in its stores in Phoenix, Dallas and Atlanta.
"I recognize there is a stigma about food in convenience stores, and we really have gone above and beyond and made sure we are using the best quality ingredients that we can," Nick Powell, QuikTrip's corporate chef, said at the time.
Watch the embedded video from WHO TV.
Tulsa, Okla.-based QuikTrip operates more than 700 convenience stores in 11 states: Arizona, Georgia, Illinois, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina and Texas.
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