Dive Brief:
- RaceTrac opened its second travel center in the Buckeye State, the company announced on Wednesday.
- The 8,000-plus-square-foot store in West Jefferson, about 18 miles from downtown Columbus, comes nearly two years after RaceTrac made its debut in the state in Findlay.
- This is the first of several stores the company has planned for the Columbus area, according to the announcement. In a LinkedIn post on Oct. 16, the company highlighted Circleville, Lima and Canal Winchester as the locations of future sites.
Dive Insight:
As fellow super regionals like Wawa, Sheetz and QuikTrip make headlines for expanding into new markets, RaceTrac is also pursuing growth plans.
In late 2023, the company confirmed its upcoming entry into Ohio, Indiana and South Carolina. In addition to its second Ohio site, the company runs three stores in Indiana, according to its website, and has already opened 18 in South Carolina.
The faster growth in South Carolina is unsurprising given how heavily concentrated RaceTrac is in the Southeast. At the start of this year, more than 70% of its stores were in that region, and only 10 locations total were in the Midwest, according to NACS data.
Last year, the company also opened its first North Carolina RaceTrac — a state where it previously only had stores under its RaceWay banner. It now has 10 stores in North Carolina, according to its website.
In established areas like Texas and Florida, RaceTrac is spending tens of millions of dollars to remodel stores.
The company has also been improving its technology and beefing up its supply chain over the past several years, including opening a new distribution center in Louisiana and expanding its partnership with supplier Core-Mark.
