Love’s Outlines Growth Areas for 2025

The retailer has 20 new locations planned and is investing in its own foodservice offerings.

January 23, 2025

Love’s Travel Stops is expecting to build 20 locations from the ground up and remodel an additional 50 in the coming year, said Love’s President Shane Wharton during a 2025 preview roundtable.

The retailer is also focusing on truck parking and enhancing its ability to be a one-stop shop for truckers. “We’re going to add 1,000 new spaces. We’ll do that predominantly through new locations, but we also are looking to add new parking where we can. But by the end of 2025 we’ll have over 50,000 parking spaces helping out the trucking industry,” Wharton said.

All those trucks will also need truck care support. Love’s said it will be adding 12 maintenance bays (from 432 currently) and adding six to ten new roadside service trucks. The retailer also said it currently has 11 truck wash facilities and plans to add another three to five in 2025. Another move toward winning the business of this core customer took place last year, when Love’s added a Freightliner warranty program. It also continues to develop its factoring business.

Love’s also laid out its plan for foodservice in 2025. Love’s recently opened a new culinary innovation center to help “develop and enhance” food offerings. The retailer hired Greg Ekman as a senior manager of culinary to help in this aspect.

When asked what inspired this investment, Wharton explained that it’s partly to give EV customers, who may stay on-site longer, more dining options. More generally, “It’s just upping our game and making sure that we’re providing a good-quality product.”

“For years we’ve focused on QSR-branded restaurant offerings, and we’re going to continue that. It’s worked well for us, but we felt like with the size and scale of our network, that we could leverage the Love’s brand in terms of trusting what we offer.”

On the QSR front, Love’s is adding a 20th QSR partner, the Texas-based Whataburger, which has a loyal following in that part of the country.

“By the end of 2025, we’re going to have over 1,000 QSRs on our network, so we’ll be one of the largest operators of QSRs in the United States,” said Wharton.

Like many other retailers, Love’s is expanding its private label line. “We’re working to optimize our supply chain around that, to make sure that we have efficiency and sustainability,” Wharton said Love’s will be launching “a couple of new fresh juice options” in its private label line as well as a gummy candy line and flavored popcorn.

On a different note: The retailer is getting a lot of mileage out of its investment in the NBA’s Oklahoma City Thunder. Love’s became the patch sponsor of the team in 2019 as the Thunder were entering a rebuild.

This year it’s a different story, as the Thunder have the best record in the Western Conference. Wharton noted the sponsorship “has a big impact in a couple ways. One is this idea, culturally, of supporting the communities that we work in and where we’re at. We’re headquartered here in Oklahoma City, and so that’s one of the many ways that we can support the community. It does give visibility to not only our customers, but also to people that we want to hire. And the fact that we have a patch on the uniform, we say it travels. So you don’t just see that sponsorship when you’re in Oklahoma City. When they’re as good as they are this year, when they’re on TV, that’s a way to get into other markets.”