Kwik Trip’s Corn Maze is Great Food Marketing

 

It seems to the team at Foodservice Solutions® that convenience stores are out marketing restaurants of late. Consider this, Kwik Trip Inc. is a-"mazing" consumers this fall with a Kwik Trip-themed corn maze.

The maze opened Sept. 10, at Stevens Point, Wis.-based Feltz's Dairy Store.  This year Feltz’s is welcoming customers to its annual corn maze, which features iconic Kwik Trip-themed paraphernalia carved into nearly 13 acres of corn, as reported Wisconsin Rapids Tribune.

Take a close look at the picture above from Feltz’s Dairy Store and you will see intertwined in the design are a Nature's Touch milk bottle, a Karuba coffee cup, a fuel pump and the classic Kwik Trip farewell line "See you next time!"

In case you did not know, each year, Feltz's Dairy Store partners with companies to feature Wisconsin brands in its corn maze, and this year it tapped La Crosse-based Kwik Trip because of the convenience store retailer's strong identity throughout the state and the excitement the company garners, according to the report.

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Feltz's Dairy Store and Kwik Trip began working together on a rough draft of the corn maze design last fall.

Alta Bradford, Kwik Trip's brand and product design manager, stated, “designers, we naturally love to solve design challenges, and the bigger the better,"… who noted that the design team often gets requests to design in unusual media. The team has designed wraps for vehicles, Zambonis and a life-sized fiberglass cow, as well as designed a barn silo to look like a Karuba coffee cup.

Bradford continued, the design team brainstormed many different ideas and researched other corn mazes to see what was possible. Then it worked to refine the design, and designed additional materials like posters, T-shirts and more promotional items for the maze.

The team coordinated with Feltz's and tweaked the design to fit the field. Initial design work started in January and the corn was planted in May.

"We were pleasantly surprised at the amount of detail that is possible with corn and how much of our original design came through," Bradford said.

The maze runs through Oct. 29. Guests can wander through the maze from 10 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday, 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Saturday and 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Sunday. The last tickets of the day will be sold about an hour before the maze closes each day.

According to the Feltz's Dairy Store website, the maze takes about 35 to 60 minutes to complete, but there are options to exit after about 20 minutes. In addition, there are seven scavenger hunt locations throughout the maze.

Yes, and there is more! From 6:15 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Oct. 21–29, the maze will transform into Feltz's Fear Farm, a haunted corn maze.

"The team is looking forward to making a field trip to the farm and experiencing the maze for ourselves," Bradford said. "Getting to see it and also see others enjoying it will be awesome."

Feltz Family Farms, a fifth-generation dairy farm, has been owned and operated by Ken and Jackie Feltz since it was purchased from Ken's parents in 1995. Their children Taryn, Jared and Jake, along with Jared's wife Jenna and Jake's wife Amanda, will carry the farm and dairy store into the sixth generation. In June 2017, the family opened Feltz's Dairy Store, which offers dairy products, agricultural items and local specialty goods.

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