Kwik Trip (Pleasant Prairie/120th Avenue)

• 10215 120th Avenue
• Pleasant Prairie, WI 53158
• (269) 857-4105
• Website

Road trip!

It’s been a few weeks but I was on the road for work again.  This time it was a quick three day trip to northeastern Wisconsin.  A co-worker and I left Saturday morning and we got home early evening on Monday.

We wanted to get to our hotel in Appleton before we had to start work around 4:30 CT on Saturday.  We left fairly early but still, stopping for lunch sounded like a gamble.  

As we neared the Wisconsin border with Illinois, he started talking about a gas station chain prevalent in Wisconsin.  He kept saying he didn’t want to oversell it but I already knew about it.  My wife and daughter have been talking non-stop about it since their trip to Wisconsin Rapids last summer for an ice skating camp.  

We crossed in to Wisconsin around noon and sure enough, the first exit we hit, there was this Kwik Trip everyone keeps telling me about.  I had to use the bathroom anyway…plus I needed more Pepsi.  

The first (of many) Kwik Trips we stopped at on this trip was on 120th Avenue in Pleasant Prairie, WI.  The gas station is right off I-94 at the exit with 104th Street.  The roadside stop looks like any other gas station when you pull in to the parking…but when you go inside..completely different story.  

The stores are set up with the same basic layout as other gas station. Coolers of drinks along the walls, aisles of candy bars, etc. You know the drill. But the food selection…. The hot food selection is what makes Kwik Trip so great. This isn’t Speedway with a few microwaved hamburgers and some Tornados on the roller grill. There’s a really large hot food selection.

I was overwhelmed at first. There was so much to choose from. Sure, they have the typical sandwiches. Chicken, hamburgers, breakfast, etc. But there are also things like cheesy breadsticks, mashed potatoes and gravy, mac and cheese, and fried chicken.

In addition to the hot food, they also have a pretty large grab and go cooler of cold food as well. There’s stuff like cold meat sandwiches, fresh fruits and salads but they also have take ‘n bake pizzas and microwave meals. The hot food is always available late at night so if you have access to a microwave, these meals are a much better option than a bag of chips or a candy bar.

I didn’t want to just grab a burger so I also grabbed a box of chicken tenders and waffle fries. Along with my two Pepsi’s, the cost was right around $15.

We hopped back in the car to continue our drive. I opened up the box of chicken first. There were two large chicken tenders in there surrounded by some golden brown waffle fries. The chicken tenders were juicy and tender but, as you’d expect, the breading is soft from sitting in a box for a while. The waffle fries were plentiful but they too suffered from being under a heat lamp for a while. Still delicious and still so much better than the typical gas station food options.

The burger was…a burger. Nothing special. I grabbed the cheeseburger. The sandwich is pretty thin but it’s not any different from any other gas station burger. It’s tasty and filling.

I could just stop there and call it a day but we stopped at a Kwik Trip every time we need gas, drinks or food on this trip. Our job Sunday night got us out of Green Bay after midnight so we stopped at a Kwik Trip back in Appleton near our hotel.

The hot bar was pretty much empty at that time because it was pushing 1 AM but there was enough options of cold food that we were still able to grab dinner. I picked up an 8 piece of cold fried chicken. I like cold fried chicken….like more than anyone should like cold fried chicken…so it didn’t bother me that my hotel room didn’t have a microwave. The chicken was probably pretty tender and juicy when it was warm but cold, it was just delicious. I actually really liked the breading this way. While some of it was pretty limp there were bites that I bit in to what was once a warm, crispy crunch. Those bites had a fantastic bit of spice to the breading.

We didn’t really have to hurry home on Monday. Neither of us had to be home for something which is pretty unusual for me. We got moving around 9 AM and started heading back to Michigan. On the way to Wisconsin on Saturday, we saw a billboard for “The World’s Largest Kwik Trip” off I-94. We decided to hit that on the way back just to see if it really was.

I’ve only been to three Kwik Trips so I have no idea. My colleague worked in LaCrosse, WI for a while so he knows all about Kwik Trips. He said it was bigger than normal but he felt like some near LaCrosse were at least the same size.

I grabbed a breakfast sandwich here along with my Pepsi because we actually had plans to stop in Chicago for lunch (we’ll get to that in a couple blog posts down the road). I felt weird not buying food though because there was just so much to choose from. I grabbed a sausage, egg, and cheese muffin to hold me over for the next hour.

Kwik Trip needs to expand further in to Michigan. There are a couple of Upper Peninsula stores, one in Ironwood and one in Bessemer, but that’s as far as they go in to Michigan.

Kwik Trip is such a great convenience store. The food isn’t gourmet or anything but there’s so much to choose from. If you’re in the mood for a burger, there’s a burger. If you’re in the mood for chicken, there’s chicken. The options! There’s so many options…and there’s a Kwik Trip on like every corner all through Wisconsin. It feels weird getting excited over a gas station but here we are.