Kwik Trip last month opened its second distribution center in DeForest, Wisconsin—the first is in La Crosse, Wisconsin, where the company is headquartered—but there’s already talk of a third one.
“Our plan is to build 400 to 500 new stores over the course of the next decade,” Kwik Trip spokesperson Ben Leibl told CSP. “With these new stores, there could potentially be a need for us to build more distribution centers to help with this growth.”
Leibl added that Kwik Trip currently does not have a timeline of when another distribution center would be built.
Kwik Trip is looking at other sites for future growth, he said, “whether it’s the Twin Cities market or the Des Moines area, we’re looking at other areas, but nothing’s been confirmed, no land has been bought.”
Kwik Trip has 896 stores in CSP’s 2025 Top 202 list, and opened in its seventh state, North Dakota, last month.
- Kwik Trip is No. 11 on CSP’s 2025 Top 202 ranking of U.S. c-store chains by store count.
Kwik Trip CEO Scott Zietlow told the Wisconsin State Journal that his leadership team is being forced to consider building additional distribution centers to relieve pressure from the La Crosse campus, improve efficiencies and expand its workforce.
Requirements include access to highways and interstates, housing and a pool of potential employees, the State Journal said.
“Many things go into the mix,” Zietlow told the State Journal. “It isn’t just build it and everything will be fine. You have to take many things into consideration.”
The $120 million, 280,000-square-foot facility in DeForest sits on a 150-acre parcel of land Kwik Trip bought in 2024.
Kwik Trip broke ground on the new center on July 10, 2024. The center, about 10 miles north of the state capitol in Madison, services 350 Kwik Trip stores and includes freezer, cooler and dry good space as well as four conditioning rooms for banana ripening, CSP previously reported.
Kwik Trip operates in Wisconsin, Minnesota and northern Michigan under the Kwik Trip name, and in Iowa, Illinois, North Dakota and South Dakota under the Kwik Star banner. The family-owned company is one of the biggest independently held c-store chains in the country.
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