How This Convenience Store Turned Road Trippers Into Obsessive Fans

If you’re driving through America’s Mountain West, you’re likely to see a Maverik sign on the side of the highway. If you’ve never heard of the chain, your interest may be piqued; if you have, you’re most likely pulling over for a freshly-made burrito.

Maverik, which operates over 500 stores across 13 states, has developed a cult following for its boldly stuffed burritos, freshly baked cookies, and famously wide fountain soda offerings. It has made a staunch rebuke to the argument that convenience store food is a sad, withering cuisine.

But Maverik’s great food doesn’t just appear out of nowhere.

Getting to this level of consistency and quality across hundreds of stores requires the work of many internal teams, from foodservice to store operations to customer service. Customer feedback is a crucial part of Maverik’s success, and they are always incorporating that feedback into their plans. But of course, delicious recipes and quality sourcing are just as important. To make Maverik’s delectable burritos, pizzas, and cookies as fresh and craveable as possible, the company’s foodservice team collaborates closely with chef Kyle Lore, the company’s R&D chef.

Lore first stopped at a Maverik after moving to Utah from California twenty years ago, and was impressed by the quality and variety of the food. It made an impression, and when he saw that Maverik was hiring a few years later, he applied and got the job.

Since then, Lore has partnered with Maverik’s foodservice, quality assurance, and store-level operations teams to level up the brand’s food program, which has resulted in a fanatically loyal customer base. Lore says, “the idea was to elevate the food experience in terms of wholesomeness, heartiness, and flavor.” At that point, he says, “most convenience stores, especially in the West, just didn’t have food that a lot of people would eat, period.” At Maverik, feeding people—and feeding them well—is a primary goal.

Maverik had just begun serving breakfast burritos, which they assembled, but didn’t cook from scratch. Convenience store food requires a completely different process than restaurant food, as the stores don’t have fully outfitted kitchens: if a breakfast burrito has sausage in it, for example, Maverik will source their cooked pork from a regional producer, heat it in their ovens, and then assemble the burrito by hand. So, Lore committed himself to not just developing an expanded menu but filling it with the best ingredients Maverik could find.

The foodservice team aims to avoid preservatives, and seeks out whole ingredients wherever possible. “I avoid using the word healthy, because that’s a misnomer in so many industries,” Lore says. He prefers the word wholesome. “Most people don’t want junk in their food, they don’t want preservatives. If they’re going to splurge on something, they want it well made: if they want a cookie, they want it to be made with sugar, real butter, real eggs. That was the framework that we started with.”

Those cookies have become famous, too. Maverik stores receive them as portioned dough and bake them fresh each day. Lore worked with their distributor to remove the margarine and preservatives, and use whole eggs and butter. Recently, the food team had to retool the chain’s steak, because stores were getting feedback that it had become too chewy. So their steak burritos are now filled with meat that’s cut smaller, and more tenderized. Or you can get it on nachos, or tucked into tacos—that menu variety is another key to Maverik’s success.

“We build our menu based upon what our customers tell us they want,” Lore explains. Currently that includes burritos, breakfast sandwiches, and Detroit pizza, among other comforting and “wholesome” food. And it’s never bland: “We also get away with spicier food than most—we get away with a broader range of condiments that are considered decadent.”

Their attentive social media team keeps track of what fans are saying online, but most of their feedback comes from the stores themselves. In-store Team Members are responsible for delivering the final recipe, product, and experience the brand has delicately designed – the final lasting (and tasty) connection with its customers. The company tracks customer feedback on a wide variety of topics, like product assortment, flavor, value, and even store cleanliness, and incorporates all of that into their future planning.

Maverik’s food team is always looking towards the next thing. They’re currently developing a recipe for slow-cooked beans made with plant-based protein that they’re hoping will appear in the burrito case soon.

Maverik recently acquired the midwestern convenience store Kum & Go, and are figuring out how to marry the strengths of both menus and roll out their combined food programs in the similarly beloved regional chain. That means continuing to nourish even more people with quality on-the-go food—and doing it deliciously.