Travel Center & Truck Stop Design-Build

A travel center is the most demanding store type we design. It has to serve a family stopping for gas, a commuter grabbing coffee and a driver who has been on the road for ten hours, often in the same five minutes. Those customers want different things, arrive in different vehicles and move through the building on different paths. The floor plan has to sort that out before anyone orders a cooler door.

What makes a travel center different from a convenience store

The equipment is mostly the same as a c-store's. The difference is volume, dwell time and the number of jobs one building does.

Every row on the right adds square footage, plumbing, electrical load and refrigeration. That is why we start every travel center with the floor plan and the equipment package together, not the building shell first.

Planning the floor around three customer paths

The first drawing answers one question: where does each type of customer walk?

• Car customers usually enter from the fuel islands at the front. They want restrooms, coffee or a fountain drink, a snack and a fast checkout.
• Professional drivers often park at the side or back. They need a direct, visible route to restrooms, showers and the driver area, and they spend longer in the store.
• Food customers may come only for the kitchen. Their queue cannot block the aisle to the restrooms.

We place restrooms so every customer passes merchandise on the way there and back. We keep the food queue clear of the main aisle. And we put the cooler wall where it pulls people deeper into the store. Our convenience store layout guide covers the zone logic in more detail.

Food service and the kitchen

On most travel centers the kitchen decides the plan. A hood line, grease interceptor, walk-in freezer and prep area have to sit where the plumbing and ventilation can reach them, and the serving line has to face the customer path. Whether you are running your own hot food program or adding a franchise restaurant, the kitchen is designed first and the retail floor works around it. See food service build-outs for how we plan that scope.

Walk-ins, beer caves and the cooler wall

Travel centers sell a lot of cold drinks, and the cooler wall is one of the most expensive and least movable parts of the building. We design walk-in coolers, freezers and beer caves with refrigeration calculations and power requirements, and we carry the equipment lines we install: Heatcraft and Russell refrigeration, Anthony and Styleline display doors. Getting the walk-in size right at design stage avoids the most common travel-center regret, which is a cooler wall that is too short by the second summer.

What we deliver

A JayComp travel center project follows the same eight steps as every store we build, from the floor plan to the store delivery package. You get one set of drawings where the floor plan, the equipment schedule, the electrical layout and the refrigeration design agree with each other. Then we deliver and install the equipment.

What we do not do is engineer fuel systems, underground tanks or site paving. Those belong with the engineers and contractors your site needs. We plan the store around their site plan, and we can work with your general contractor on how the building package fits their schedule.

Travel plazas we have designed

Our project pages include Cherokee Travel Plaza, a full convenience store and gas station floor plan, and Lakeside Travel Plaza, a convenience store floor plan designed from the ground up. You can see them, and the rest of our work, on the projects page.

If you are planning a new travel center or expanding one, send us the site plan or the lot address, the services you want inside and your target opening date. We will tell you what the building needs to do and what a design package would cover.