When I bought my first gas station in New Jersey in 2008, I wasn’t thinking about building a national network. I was thinking about making payroll, learning the business and not losing the investment my partner Yuval and I had scraped together. It was one station with one shot at making it work.
Today, we now operate as LV Petroleum with over 76 travel centers and more than 180 quick-service restaurants across the country. All of it grew out of paying attention to what our customers needed next and moving when we saw an opening.
Expanding into new lanes taught me a few things worth sharing.
Your First Business Is a Starting Point
A lot of entrepreneurs treat their first business like it’s the finish line rather than the beginning of a work in progress. They spend years perfecting and protecting it, yet they never look up long enough to see what it’s actually telling them.
Your first business is a learning experience. It gives you constant lessons on what you’re doing right and what you’re doing wrong. But more importantly, it shows you who your customer is, what they actually need and where the gaps are. If you’re paying attention, your customers will point you toward your next move.
In our case, that first gas station pointed us toward truckers. Professional drivers were stopping at our locations every day. These are the people who keep store shelves stocked and supply chains moving. They run tight schedules, log hundreds of miles per shift and every stop has to be worth it. They needed fuel, yes, but they also needed food, showers, safe overnight parking and consistency after 600 miles on the road.
The gap was right in front of us. A whole professional category desperate for a brand they could trust anywhere in the country.
That’s why when Val and I moved to Las Vegas and started LV Petroleum, we pivoted from gas stations to full-service travel centers. We got there by seeing who our customers were and listening to what they needed most –- a reliable, one-stop shop.
The Customer Will Tell You Where to Go Next
From my experience, there was no better market research in the world than spending time at our different sites and watching what people asked for that we weren’t giving them.
Drivers pulling into our travel centers wanted more than diesel and some food. After a long stretch of highway, they were looking for something familiar: a Starbucks, an Arby’s, a Bojangles, a consistent stop they could count on. That feedback didn’t come from surveys or consultants, it came from talking to the people who walked through our doors and asking them how we could serve them better.
So we brought national quick-service restaurant (QSR) brands into our travel centers. Bringing in those brands did more than add a revenue line, it made the travel centers a destination drivers would choose intentionally.
Drivers stayed longer, came back more often and started choosing our locations specifically because of the food, comfort and cleanliness.
In other words, our customers wanted to be at our stores.That’s the indicator worth paying attention to.
New Lanes Should Build on What You Already Have
Here’s the test I use before moving into any new business lane: does this make my existing business more valuable, or does it just add complexity?
The moves that worked for us were always additive. Travel centers made the gas station business more valuable because they served the same customer more completely. QSRs made the travel centers more valuable because they gave drivers a reason to choose us.
Each lane reinforced the one before it.
When you’re evaluating a new opportunity, ask: does my existing customer base already need this? If the answer is, ‘yes,’ you’re deepening a relationship you’ve already earned rather than starting from scratch.
Expansion only works if your foundation is solid. Travel centers came only after we had a real grip on gas station operations and scaling our QSRs only happened until we had the systems in place to run food service consistently across multiple locations. None of those would have worked if they weren’t something our customers actually wanted.
Every time we entered a new lane, we brought the same operational discipline and customer service that made the previous lane work.
You Can’t Expand What You Haven’t Mastered
Expansion is not an escape hatch. If your business has cash flow issues, operational gaps or team instability, growth will only make those problems worse. Discipline in your core business earns you the right to expand.
The real shift came when I stopped thinking about a single product and started thinking about a platform. Today, LV Petroleum is a network of locations, customer relationships and systems that allow us to add new brands and travel centers without starting from zero.
If I could tell my 2008 self one thing, it would be this: pay attention to what customers are asking for that you are not yet providing. The next opportunity is usually already right in front of you.
Guy Madmon is the co-founder of LV Petroleum, a leading nationwide network of travel centers, gas stations, and quick-service restaurants based in Las Vegas, Nevada. He has built businesses by acquiring and improving underperforming assets, with a leadership style rooted in hands-on operations and community engagement.
