A Real Criticism of Kwik Trip

I want to preface I have worked for Kwik trip for two going on three years in multiple districts and stores, so I have a pretty good understanding of how the company operates internally. Kwik trip has turned from a pioneer of the convince store chains across America into a soulless machine that has no regard for its employees. Let me elaborate.

LAR was a system designed to properly allocate labor hours to the store front based off the percentages of gross profit aka “GP”. (Basically the better your stores GP the more hours your store would be allocated thus more man power to help the store run smoother this crates an incentive for stores to do better and be rewarded with more help) in an ideal world that how it’s supposed to work. LAR has started to be used systematically for the opposite purpose however. Recently the vast majority of stores have faced massive labor cuts and not as a response and not just to the seasonal changes. LAR is starting to be used as a system to dictate the minimum amount of labor a store can be allocated while maximizing the GP from stores. Many coworkers in this Reddit have shown this to be the case but haven’t yet connected those dots. LAR is being used against the storefront coworkers to pump out the maximum amount of profit. if you read through the threads in this Reddit it’s very apparent that this is certainly the case as I have not heard of any stores being rewarded with an increase of hours despite improving GP from previous years the districts I’ve worked.

The next case is that coworker development has be completely halted on both a store front level and district level. There are multitudes of posts made here that show this to be the case coworkers are stuck in a perpetual cycle of being taught how to handle leadership tasks without the benefits of doing the job of leadership. This goes hand in hand with LAR. The incentive as of this moment is that store realistically can only hire on part time coworkers because stores are being starved for labor and since the district and company as a whole prefer leadership to be full time the people who are part time that are trying to move to full time leadership roles can’t because the company has no interest of rewarding the stores for doing well. It’s all about record breaking profits.

The food program has been twisted in recent years as well what was the pride of the company and set it apart from other convenience chains has turned into a bloated list of items. to maximize the profit the company keeps pumping out new items for food service coworkers to make with no promise of any help. All while pushing the message of “mental wellbeing” while pushing their hard working food coworkers into extreme stress over the unreal expectations of the hotspot and “daily goals”. All for the sake of profit though right?

Additionally despite having record profits these last couple years both coworkers and most store leaders raises have been capped at 3% even if their performance reviews were above average this company has focused on their expansion into other states so much that they have completely neglected the workforce that allowed them to do so in the first place. they keep pumping money into expanding rather than renovating stores that desperately need upgrades and remodels and giving better raises. All while hiking up prices for grocery items and hot spot items with no increase to the coworkers or store leadership.

There is no incentive to work hard here anymore and applying for Kwik Trip should be avoided at all costs. Anyone who has disagreed with this post and previous ones criticizing this company either has the wool pulled over their eyes or is willfully being ignorant to the choices corporate has been making for a long time and is continuing to do so.