A First Look at Dolly Parton's New Travel Stop - Episode 546

I just got back from the grand opening of Dolly's Tennessean Travel Stop, which opened on June 24th. Probably saw it in the news. Dolly was there herself. What I'd like to talk about today is share a little bit about what I saw at the store, but also talk about what they did for the grand opening that could work for you when you have your grand openings.

so if you saw the news dolly was there at dolly's tennessee and travel stop a lot of coverage and we covered it in in the next daily if you go to convenience.org you can read my my report on it with some pictures that that were supplied by both the company and i took some but wanted to not necessarily give you a play-by-play review of what i saw there and what I already wrote about, but I wanted to talk about how it really addresses, I think, three broad themes that we're seeing in our industry and what I saw in the store, and then talk a little bit about how that grand opening can resonate with how you do grand openings because they did an awful lot of things well at that store.

Now, first off, setting up this Dolly's Tennessean store. it is it has been around for a couple decades as far as i understand and the new owner recent owner took possession of it in 2017 and he said over the last couple years i talked to him for a little bit during the grant opening so why why did you decide to change it from what it was which was a travel stop that served both truckers and in the local community it's in a town of Cornersville, Tennessee, which is about an hour outside of Nashville.

Not a whole lot going around there. Although I got to tell you, I ate at this one gas station in Mooresville. Send me a note if you want to go there. It looked like the place had been abandoned years ago.

It's great. They had some amazing food inside. And that's kind of what you see in the South. It doesn't matter what it looks on the outside.

And actually, it kind of helps if it doesn't look so good on the outside because you know it's going to be good on the inside. Okay, non sequitur. Let's get back to Dolly's. Talked to Greg, one of the three co-founders, and he had continued to be the owner of the Tennessean.

So why change from what you had? And he said, you can really see the last few years in the industry when you're talking about travel stops, where they're talking about convenience stores, that there's been a switch. There's been a switch from purely selling merchandise to really selling experience. And he said, quite honestly, who's the best at hospitality in the world?

Not just the US, not just Tennessee. He said Dolly Parton. So that's how the whole conversation started and why Dolly is now in our business. So next thing we need to do is get her on committee and stuff like that.

Get her an actual, all kinds of fun stuff. But so that was really the impetus for why they changed. And while it was the grand opening, I went in the day before and you could shop, you could buy, you could do whatever. So one of the things with grand openings, as you all know, when you have a grand opening, you don't want to close an existing business and risk having customers that go there all the time find someplace else to go.

It was open, so you could walk in. The only time you really couldn't walk in is when they had the special unveiling with Dolly there and some other dignitaries. So there really were three broad themes that I saw at the Dolly's. Number one, no surprise, a focus on food service.

There were multiple options for food offers to make sure that you can get whatever you want, whatever you're in the mood for. There was a cup of ambition, which I finally figured out yesterday is a line in the song 9 to 5. Yes, I've heard the song. I just didn't pick up on that lyric.

So it's a coffee shop. It's her own brand. and they also have that tied into or it's her branded coffee i should say and it's tied into also an ice cream shop that existed there so you can have a place to grab a cup of coffee a cup of ambition ice cream kind of a hangout area just kind of more of a place for families uh near that was uh dolly's barbecue and it had barbecue pizza and some of the traditional ish fare that you might find in a in a convenience store or travel center then they had a sit-down restaurant um had a buffet um at least for yesterday for uh folks who were there for the grand opening, but it also was tied into a entertainment area.

And I'll get a little bit more into the entertainment in a bit, but that was a third place. And then you go upstairs and there was a lounge with a full bar and a place to also eat whatever food that you were purchasing at the other places. So it was definitely food forward. Second thing, second trend that I thought was worth talking about is the whole idea of experience.

And I had mentioned that Greg, one of the co-founders or co-owners of the concept, talked to me about the experience. And it the idea of making the stop what was previously the stop the destination And obviously Obviously no one done it better than Buc And obviously Dolly and team has picked up on what Bucky is doing because one of her lines when she was at the grand opening she was talking about she said people that come ask me why are you now in the travel stop business And she said, well, I didn't want to leave it all to the beavers, which is her way of saying, welcome, Bucky's.

I'm not necessarily competition, but, you know, I'm thinking about you. So it's proof of concept and how they might translate more of these into something that is Dolly's Tennessean from the Tennessean name remains to be seen. But it really, really is all about the experience. Yes, you can buy a Snickers bar or something like that there.

but the travel center it has fuel and it has all the restaurants and food service type programs that i was talking about earlier but when you look at the aisles you do have some snacks you do have some candy you do have some other things but there's an awful lot of dolly branded stuff uh you you name it you can find the dolly name on it the dolly image on it the dolly brand associated with it or butterflies, which have become her emblem. You could even see it like when they had the cannons, when they shot out confetti, there were butterflies.

Now when I'm saying butterflies, not actual butterflies, it was a butterfly designed confetti that was hugely on brand. And you saw people afterwards just picking up the confetti because that's Dolly confetti. Why not? so obviously what they're famous for is dolly and anything dolly is moving off the shelves and and it's it looked like uh similar to a bucky's where you you see people that are walking in that store and they're not walking out with a three dollar purchase they're probably walking out with a thirty dollar purchase if not a three hundred dollar purchase so it's it's a gift shop that had some other convenience items plus the the the food offer the third thing that i thought was worth sharing is how they are making that location so instagram worthy um there are multiple points in the store where where you want to take a picture you want to share it online now first off that that concert stage, the, the overlook, uh, with the lounge for, for truckers is, is beautiful.

Um, it overlooks the store, the, the lounge, one lounge overlooks the store. It is basically indoor outdoor screened in. I'm sure they can close it, but they have, uh, um, uh, fire pits and all kinds of things there to make it warm year round. And it, it had a really cool vibe, but also those moments where you can find places to take pictures of yourself or whoever you're with or whatever to post.

There was a Dolly branded tour bus that you can walk inside, check out what a tour bus might have been like back in the day when she was more likely to be on the road all the time. It's also decorated on the outside and you just saw lines of people looking to get their picture next to the tour bus. Right next to that, it's a mural with, guess what, butterfly images, among other things. Another place where you can take Instagram-ready pictures.

There's Dog Park that, of course, wasn't called Dog Park. It was called Doggy Parton Dog Park. And great imagery of Dolly there, great imagery inside the main store of a chandelier that was essentially made of a couple dozen guitars. I think there were a couple mandolins and ukuleles thrown in there too, but whatever strength instruments that look very, very similar to guitars, but, um, a lot of elements in there that would just make people say, wow.

And, um, that may not get them coming back, but once they post it, it gets their friends to want to go there. So, so there is a virtuous cycle in putting these things there and sharing it out. And as I said, these lounges, they were comfortable. You could hang out a couple hours there if you wanted to, whether you're a trucker or whether you're just a local that you're in a small town.

And this is by far the biggest thing in town, much like when you go to a Bucky's, it's a big thing and usually a much smaller town. one other thing I thought was was great and some of the PR team showed this to me everything that you see in this store has Dolly, Dolly's image, the words Dolly, a butterfly, all of the above except for one framed picture and it's as you walk from the restaurant up the stairs to the lounge. It's a framed copy of Naxx magazine from January 2025 when Al Iber, the gas station gourmet, wrote about the Tennessean and some of the food offers that they had there.

So I had no idea until I got there that that existed, but pretty cool to see that the only dolly thing was something from Naxx. So really nice to see. So that's an overview of what the grand opening was like and thought I'd share a couple moments about, since it's in my mind now, share a couple things about what I saw at this grand opening and what I saw at other grand openings and want to share what might work for you when you have grand openings to ensure that you get the same kind of coverage that this got over the last couple days So first off what makes for a good grand opening?

I suppose having Dolly Parton there is a start, but let's just assume that you don't have the ability to get Dolly Parton there. What makes for a good grand opening? What I saw is you want to temper expectations. They didn't promise that Dolly was going to be there.

And I think that was really smart because you don't want to guarantee something that may not happen. She hasn't done as many public appearances the last few months as she has in the past. So rather than saying, she might be there, we think she might be there, we'd love it if she were there, they were fairly flat out and saying that she wasn't going to be there, at least according to news reports and things like that. So I think that probably also helps keeping down a crowd, but it also, I think, tempers expectations.

The second thing is thinking about, I've been to opening grand openings at Wawa, for instance, and what they do that I also think is great that other groups that have opening receptions, grand openings, is they really make it feel like it's a local event. I went to a Wawa grand opening in Vienna, Virginia, and the whole front row, the first two rows, I think, were VIPs. And typically when you have these grand openings, they're VIPs and they're people that are councilmen or mayors or congressmen, etc.

not at the Wawa grand opening. They were all people that had been on social media and actively talking about how much they loved Wawa and love that they were coming to their area. They didn't set it up by saying, whoever is most active on this will make sure they sit in the front row. Again, what I was saying earlier, that would be over-promising possibly under delivering if somebody is really active and then doesn't wind up as a VIP.

But what they did is their social media team would monitor and then they would find who was really, really active and contact them via direct message or however they contacted them. And that's how they got in the front row. So do you think that those people who are already active and impassioned about the Wawa brand would talk about the Wawa brand even more. I would imagine so.

I thought that was a really good way of getting local buy-in. The other thing that I saw that was interesting, and it's been one of the evolutions in my time in media relations, is who was there from the media. We brought a camera crew because we're filming an episode that we'll be showing on the NACS website, probably some other places. We had some pretty good interviews and some things that we want to capture, but there weren't all that many video cameras there.

And there definitely weren't all these newspaper reporters. What you would see actually more of is influencers. Our cameraman is somewhat local from Tennessee. And he said, oh yeah, that guy's on Instagram, that guy's whatever.

And influencers. So it's very interesting to me to see the shift of how media credentials have gone over the last couple of years. We've also seen at the NAC show where we spend more time navigating who is a influencer who was largely talking about him or herself and who is there to talk about the NAC show and or the products on display. So that's a thing to navigate, but looked like their team has done it, did a very good job of bringing both influencers and also bringing the news to those who can't cover it.

Now, news budgets are much tighter than they used to be. But if you look at the coverage that was in all the media, there was coverage everywhere. And I will tell you, being a media person there or being registered as a media person at this grand opening for Dolly's, there were not a whole lot of newspaper reporters there. Yet the New York Times did a story on it.

So one of the, I think the great takeaways is that the PR team for Dolly's had a graphics package that was sent out probably within a half hour of the grand opening. Now, obviously, they took a lot of pictures beforehand and had those ready to go and had video B-roll, just things that you could use for your news segment. And then as fast as possible, they pulled together a couple pictures from the grand opening, sent it out in a package. So it was addressed Dear Jeff and was, I'm sure, addressed Dear New York Times, et cetera.

And everybody had the same information. Now, obviously, I had a lot more insights than somebody from The New York Times who wasn't there. but we both covered it. So when you're thinking about grand openings, I think that's also something that you want to think about.

Another thing, obviously, and I probably should have led with this, if you don't have the resources or the skills to do something, hire it out. Obviously, they had a terrific PR team that they contracted to do all these things, to make sure all these logistics happened to make sure exits were blocked entrances were blocked all these other things because there were an awful lot of people for this ribbon cutting that was out by the forecourt And obviously you can have cars coming out in and out and things like that.

But they anticipated just about everything you could anticipate besides it was pretty hot. But I think they also anticipated that because looked like there was some supplier partners that had lots of cold beverages on hand. And they also had some branded paper fans that you could fan yourself, which I think was also pretty clever when you're thinking about it's late June in Tennessee. So they thought through a whole bunch of things.

The communications afterwards was really, really well done. The other thing I thought was really well done was the whole idea of scripting things out. Now, obviously, Dolly knows what scripting is like. It doesn't mean that she was intimately involved in it, but you could just see that they had pre-staged where they were going to put their cameras, et cetera.

There were pieces of tape down. And when it came time to move cameras in place and do these certain things, it was not like they had to spend 20 minutes or an hour to set up lights, to set all this other stuff. It was, here you go, roll it out, hit your mark, just like what you do in a convenience store where you know, you know, if something's on casters, how do you move it out? How do you set it up?

So I thought that was terrific. Um, so how can you execute? I think I already covered a couple of those things. As I said, um, number one thing you can do is, um, you got somebody that, that you think people want to be there for, then, then tie that in.

It doesn't have to be Dolly Parton. Cohen Markets in, um, Pittsburgh used to, for their, uh, grand openings would have this guy i think i think his name is pittsburgh dad or pittsburgh guy or something like that and he apparently is super popular on on social media um just as a really good um persona that that people just love um you have somebody like that it doesn't have to be a national celebrity but just somebody that that makes somebody say hey i'll show up at the grand opening.

And then how do you make the grand opening memorable beyond the ribbon cutting is very important to you, but what is important for everybody else there? And it starts with the pictures. It starts with some sort of thing you can come back with. There are plenty of people at this grand opening that had driven hours.

They were there to see Dolly. They saw Dolly, but they were going in with the expectation that they might not. So what would make it worthwhile for them to drive a couple hours was probably going inside afterwards and spending a couple hundred dollars on on dolly merch that you can't get anywhere else um the other thing i i would suggest is uh not to not to use the new york times again but the pr team that i worked with they treated me like i worked for the new york times and um you know that's same thing you do with your customers.

Treat everybody like they're special to you. And it helps. It really helps in what you're feeling is when you come back from one of these things. Doesn't that be with the media?

It could be with the local community. It could be with elected leaders. It could be with whoever. And make them want to come back.

Now, I'm not very close to Cornersville, Tennessee, So it might be a while before I go back. But those little bits of extra attention, I think, really, really matter as you execute these things and finish your execution of a grand opening. and then the fourth thing or the last thing uh wasn't necessarily counting is the follow-up i also got uh in addition to the the b-roll package and the images i also got a couple notes from from the pr contact uh just saying hey i thought this was did you did you see the the nacks um framed uh article and just little things like that this is like 10 o'clock at night after I'm sure an exhausting day, but those little things matter.

They, they, they, they kind of separate the difference between why somebody would go to your grand opening and maybe say, yeah, it was okay. And just be a raving fan afterwards. So little things like that, that I saw now, obviously they have a lot more resources, but I thought it really came down to, they had a good plan and then they figured out what they needed and they execute it. Now, obviously, weather, it's always a factor and there's some other things that are always a factor, but a pretty good day and a pretty good day for our industry when you think about it because we have a little bit more swag in our industry, a little bit more attention paid to it from somebody who's a celebrity and somebody who's an expert in hospitality.

So we'll see where this goes. And if anybody has any thoughts or feedback on what I wrote in on convenience.org, or what I talked about here in the podcast, or any other grand openings, love to know more. I'd like going to grand openings and seeing how the industry is evolving.

So So shoot me any notes. And if you want to know more about that place in Mooresville, I guess Mooresville, if not, I'll get that information as well. So anyway, Dolly Parton's in our industry. And I hope you enjoyed this episode of Convenience Matters.

Convenience Matters is brought to you by NACS and produced in partnership with Human Factor. For more information, visit convenience.org.