Kwik Trip: plans to double size of central bakery

La Crosse / WI. (div) Kwik Trip Inc. plans to double the size of its central bakery – a roughly 23 million project expected to add more than 100 jobs at the retailer´s support center in La Crosse (Wisconsin), a company official told local newspapers.

The convenience store chain is seeking local approval to build an 80’000-square-foot addition to its existing 80’000-square-foot bakery. The expansion will be incorporated into an existing tax increment finance district, created in 2006 for the chain´s 14 million USD commissary and ice-making plant, according to the reports.

Steve Loehr, Kwik Trip´s vice president of support operations, said the company is aiming to begin preliminary work such as land preparation as early as July, and hopes to be operating in the addition by next spring. The entire project is expected to be completed by early to midsummer 2010. «The reason we are doing the bakery project is because of tremendous growth in bakery sales in our store», Loehr told the newspapers.

Kwik Trip operates 353 convenience stores and 37 Tobacco Outlet Plus stores in Wisconsin, Minnesota and Iowa. The approximately 23 million USD project cost estimate includes the bakery expansion, remodeling and new equipment, said Loehr.

Kwik Trip Inc. is unique in the convenience store industry because the company maintains total quality control over a wide variety of products by producing and packaging these items in its own state-of-the-art facilities. In addition to the corporate Support Center, which handles the administrative needs of the stores and co-workers, the company has its own Bakery, Commissary, Dairy, Distribution Warehouse and Vehicle Maintenance divisions.