Zietlow spoke in an interview after receiving the La Crosse Area Development Corp.'s Distinguished Service Award at the organization's annual meeting. LADCO officials noted La Crosse-based Kwik Trip has grown to 372 convenience stores and 38 [image-nocss] Tobacco Outlet stores in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa, with $3.5 billion in annual sales.
Kwik Trip today has about 9,574 employees in the three states it serves, including about 1,789 in the La Crosse area. The latter number includes about 1,314 employees at the company's support center in La Crosse and about 475 at stores in La Crosse, Onalaska, Holmen, West Salem and La Crescent, Minn.
Zietlow said Kwik Trip probably will add about 2,000 jobs companywide in the next three years, including 400 at the support center. Kwik Trip usually opens 15 to 20 new stores a year, according to the report.
The company recently completed an 80,000-square-foot addition that doubled the size of its bakery, and over the next 12 to 18 months, it will renovate and put new equipment in the original bakery.Click here to read more about Kwik Trip's recent growth.
Construction is expected to begin next fall on a new ice-cream plant that will be able to produce at least three times as much ice cream as Kwik Trip's current plant. The new plant should begin operating by spring 2012.
Kwik Trip plans other expansions at its dairy and warehouse operations in La Crosse in 2011 and 2012.
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