DRIVING GROWTH
Love’s anticipates continued expansion
The retail industry continues evolving in the digital age, but one Oklahomabased company is expanding its national presence thanks in large part to old-fashioned in-person service.
Love’s Travel Stops has a presence in 41 states. With 441 locations, and more than 20,000 employees, the company serves professional drivers, local motorists, weekend warriors and road-tripping families.
But make no mistake, Love’s is in the retail business. The company operates like any brick-and-mortar retailer by providing goods and services to consumers, it’s just that their consumers are almost always roadway drivers or passengers.
“How we look at our business is being able to offer a
great shopping experience for the motoring public,” Vice President of Communications Jenny Love Meyer said. “We want to provide a clean experience that’s friendly. Once people have a good shopping experience, we feel like they come back.”
This model has allowed the company to open 147 new stores in the past five years, including 37 in 2017. The company employs about 1,300 at its corporate headquarters in Oklahoma City.
In 2018, the company plans to continue its growth. Several newer, bigger locations are planned in the greater Oklahoma City area as part of 40 new locations across the country. It also plans to expand on-site truck and tire care services and bring three additional hotels to its Love’s Hospitality service.
Happy employees, customers
While expansion decisions and changes in service provided are made higher up the corporate chain, district managers like Dan West work to incorporate those changes at the on-site level. West supervises nine locations throughout Oklahoma, managing about 350 employees, and has seen how the industry has evolved.
“I take all these new ideas (from corporate) and I love being the guy to make it happen,” West said.
To do it, he relies on his employees.
“First and foremost, I focus on my people,” West said. “We want to see that our leaders lead through example. If you have happy employees, everything else falls in place.”
While fuel sales represent the lion’s share of profits for a Love’s Travel Stop, according to Love Meyer, West’s role is to ensure customers are happy.
“That’s the goal,” West said. “Cleanliness is of huge importance. I try to tell my workers to have the ‘lady in the white dress mentality.’ If a customer were to get out of their car and pump gas or come inside, they should leave as clean as they came in.”
Another way Love’s, and West, work to maximize customer experience is by providing separated services for professional truck drivers. For context, West said one of his stores might sell about 120,000 gallons of regular gasoline in a month and about 800,000 gallons of diesel fuel. It isn’t a straight comparison in number of customers, because trucks take more fuel, but retaining the trucking customers is of significant importance.
“For professional truck drivers, their time is becoming more and more valuable because of certain regulations, and so what they tell us is having more bundling of services and having more services available at our locations is meaningful to them,” Love Meyer said.
Another strategy used by Love’s is separate cash registers for professional and civilian drivers. This allows professional drivers to check out away from the purchases being made by other drivers in the more traditional “gas station” part of the store. Professional driver orders and checkout procedures can be more time consuming, which helps minimize frustration for other customers, West said.
The service and products inside are all designed to provide motorists as much convenience as possible on sometimes grueling trips.
“It’s a one-stop shop,” West said.