Great Ideas for Attracting and Retaining Travel Center Customers
NATSO’s Great Ideas! for Travel Centers Workshop at NATSO Connect 2025 brought truck stop and travel center operators to share innovative strategies and best practices that are helping set locations apart from their competition. This year, industry leaders shared their insights into meeting customers’ increasing expectations through great fundamentals.
Trail, along with Valkyrie Musarra, chief operating officer of Bowlin Travel Centers, and Keith Wade, owner of KEW Travel Center Consulting, kicked off the workshop with a panel discussion moderated by NATSO Foundation Executive Director Amy Toner on merchandising, food service and operations.
Attracting Four-Wheel Traffic
Operators said they’re increasingly targeting four-wheel traffic. “Buc-ee’s is doing something right,” said Wade, who started his career with Petro Stopping Centers and served as the vice president of operations at Dodge City TravelCenter before launching his consulting business.
Trail noted that 90% of travel centers or c-stores have the same products. “Try to find things other places don’t have,” he added. “Anything you can do to try something different…that is our focus.”
Trails Travel Center, a Nordic-themed location in Albert Lea, Minnesota, has a dedicated space for clothing and gift items, and Trail said the location tries different things to see what works and what doesn’t. The location also features a Caribou Coffee, a full bar, 10 fueling lanes, 24 gas positions, a seven-bay service center and a truck wash.
Bowlin Travel Centers’ locations sell everything from Native American handmade jewelry to shot glasses and souvenirs. “Have a table with $1 items to $1,000 squash blossom necklaces and jewelry,” Musarra said. “We try to market to different price ranges so people can walk away with a gift or something for themselves.”
Making Merchandising Attractive
During the workshop, Wade shared cost-effective ways to make the most out of available space at locations and make it look nice. “At some travel centers, you have a high gondola and then nothing above the gondola on a wall. I look at that and say, ‘It is a lot of space you’re not using,’” Wade said, adding that operators have told him they wanted to add slat walls, but they are too expensive.
Inexpensive awnings can also add to the environment. “You can get a tin roof and put it out in the rain, and it looks pretty neat with some rust on it,” Wade said.
There are vendors that will pay for eye-catching displays. “Find some branded concepts and let them pay for it,” Wade said, noting that Simply Southern, Oakley and CAT all offer displays. While at DodgePetro, Wade secured about $25,000 worth of fixtures for free by putting in the CAT products.
Slat walls and other displays can be ideal locations to merchandise what Wade calls non-shoppable margins. “If you buy a Snickers, that is a shoppable margin because you can go to a competitor and see what they sell it for, but if you go in and they have some type of lamp you haven’t seen before, that is a non-shoppable item,” he explained. “You can grab a better margin sometimes on those things.”
Driving Traffic with Food Service
Adding well-known quick-service brands can be powerful tools to attract customers. “One golden brand is all you need,” Wade said, adding that a known brand can even boost sales of proprietary offerings.
Trail said there is always a fear that adding another food-serve brand will cannibalize sales of the existing offerings. “Sometimes you do, but if you pick the right ones, they all actually see an increase with all the new logos and billboards,” he said. “You give people another reason to stop, and you’re driving traffic to your location.”
Wade agreed. “If you put the right quick service in, you can put in a whole food court and people will come,” he said.
Sharing Ideas and Insights
After the panel discussion, operators had time to share ideas and hear from their peers at small-table discussions. Ideas ranged from offering breakfast all day to investing in LED screens and selling advertising to vendors.
Trail added that NATSO and NATSO Foundation staff are always willing to answer questions and share ideas of other operators to connect with for ideas.
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