LAS VEGAS — Pilot Travel Centers earlier this year kicked off its $1 billion, multiyear New Horizons initiative to improve the customer experience, and since then it has remodeled or is nearly done remodeling more than 50 locations, according to Allison Cornish, vice president of store modernization, who is leading the endeavor.
“We should end the year about 55 locations of fully re-enhanced locations,” Cornish told CSP at the NACS Show earlier in October in Las Vegas. “And in addition to that, we’ve actually refreshed an additional 60 locations.”
More than half of the 55 locations were fully remodeled, and Knoxville, Tenn.-based Pilot added some of its proprietary hot and cold food into the sites, “which has been hugely successful,” Cornish said. “We’ve also been able to add self-checkouts to those locations, which creates a faster experience for our guests, and expand retail space.”
“We’re making slow and steady progress and feel really good about what we’ve accomplished so far this year, despite all the challenges with some of the supply chain, etc.,” Cornish added.
The initiative is “a three- to four-year journey,” Cornish said. It will include more than 400 of the company’s 644 travel centers and comes after Pilot asked its customers and professional drivers how it can better serve them. The program also is considering future trends and alternative fueling technologies. Foodservice is a substantial part of the endeavor, which also includes storewide enhancements including updating interiors and exteriors, showers, restrooms, driver lounges and team member breakrooms and workspaces.
Jonathan Braatvedt, Pilot’s vice president of foodservice, added that Pilot conducted an internal customer survey and found that food is a driving factor for about 60% of customers entering Pilot stores. When announcing the initiative earlier this year, Pilot said proprietary food was available in about 300 c-stores but would expand to as many locations as possible.
“Expanding food, where you walk in, you smell, you see the fresh food that we have, it’s a huge benefit to us as we continue to remodel and expand daily,” he said.
Braatvedt added that Pilot continues to simplify the production of its sandwiches and salads, which are made fresh daily in stores. This simplification—which reduces steps in production and thus helps with the labor shortage—is a trend that was promoted by several vendors at the NACS Show.
Simplification “has been a big push in our organization when we bring in new innovation or new fresh foods—make it easier for operators to be able to execute,” he said.
Pilot is even conscious of streamlining food production when redesigning its kitchens, Braatvedt added.
“We put equipment in the right location so we can cut out steps,” he said. “When we talk about what new store designs look like, we are very conscious of where we put the equipment, and do we need all the SKUs we have. We really try to simplify without eroding the kind of quality of freshness we have today.”
Discussions get as detailed as considering employees having to bend down to pick something up from a shelf, food assembly and ergonomics, he added.
“You want to make things easy and accessible so employees can pull items off shelves as easily as possible,” he said.
Cornish added that Braatvedt and his team research new equipment to ensure they are selecting pieces that help employees do tasks faster.