The Kwik Trip campus, settled along the eastern bank of the Mississippi River, is home to the retailer’s bakery, kitchens, food protection laboratory, distribution center, ice plant, LP plant and blow mold facility. Kwik Trip is a vertically integrated company and makes and ships over 80% of its own branded products, which include Kitchen Cravings, the Kwikery and Cheese Mountain.

The Research & Technology Committee’s first stop was the blow mold facility. The facility can make over 130 bottles per minute, which are filled with Kwik Trip’s Nature’s Touch brand of dairy products, water and flavored drinks. Each bottle is stamped with Kwik Trip’s signature “smiley face.”

The morning of the tour, the Kwik Trip bakery was making bismarks. The bismarks (and other baked goods like muffins, cinnamon rolls, long johns and the retailer’s famous Glazers Donuts) are made in-house and the bakery can make 328 bismarks per minute. The Committee also visited the kitchens, the bread and bun bakery and the Food Protection Laboratory.

“Even within the first stop of the tour, the self-sufficiency of Kwik Trip’s operations immediately became obvious and it was impressive to see how quickly they can produce so many private-label products and fresh food items with such quality,” said Emma Tainter, research analyst/writer at NACS.

Kwik Trip employs over 38,000 workers across six states and 876 stores. In addition to the production facility, Kwik Trip’s headquarters has an onsite childcare facility and a Center for Health available to all employees and their dependents.