Family-owned Gordy’s Travel Plaza has been a staple of the Casselton community since 1968. The owners, Audrey + Gary Gunderson, are best known for their humility, hard work + passion for the business. This shines through to their employees, who are always serving their customers with a smile to ensure they enjoy their experience at the convenience store or service center.
Gordy’s Travel Plaza provides the Casselton/Mapleton community with convenience store products, gas + diesel, great food + beverage options. In addition, they also offer a touch-free carwash, full-service center + localized towing services. The travel plaza recently remodeled and added multiple amenities for customers, which helped make it a one-stop shop. The Gunderson’s came to MINT looking for our expertise to help them establish their core values, create a new logo, update their website + develop/manage a social media strategy.
We started off our relationship with the Gordy’s owners by having a 90-minute evolveMINT session to fully understand their current business, their history, what they believe in + where they want to be in the future. Before getting started on their logo design, we established four core values for the business: exceed expectations, community choice, sincere service + passion for our people.
Based on these core values, we started our process to design the new travel plaza logo. Our logo design was based on incorporating a large “G” as the focal point of the logo while including the full Gordy’s Travel Plaza name. We landed on a logo design that intertwines a G with a road to perfectly encapsulate a travel plaza + show that Gordy’s is on a journey with their customers. A bold + easy-to-read sans serif font was paired with the icon to give a strong + welcoming look. The red, black + gray color scheme grabs attention + lends itself to the industry. Variations of the primary logo were also designed for greater brand versatility.
With a new brand set in place, we got started on the website development + design process. The goals of the website were simple: highlight their history + what they bring to the community, provide an easy way for their customers to see information about all services offered + showcase the value they provide for potential employees. The website design utilized the visual identity created to bring a new life to the brand. New photography, copywriting + layout helped it feel fresh + welcoming.
With all of the momentum we had establishing a solid brand + website for the Gunderson’s, we were quickly able to help them grow a following on their new Facebook + Instagram pages. We held a content day on location to capture photos of the available products + services + hear testimonials from wonderful customers that were then used to help us create the social media content. Some highlights from our social media management are:
- All social media growth was organic, no paid ads
- We created the accounts from scratch + got them up to 12,000 views within the first 90 days with a reach of 12.1K
- Each post ranges from 400 to 1,500 interactions
With the branding, website + social media in full swing, Gordy’s Travel Plaza has become a place that not only helps you reach your destination but has become a destination itself.
Check out the Gordy’s Travel Plaza website here!
Check out the Gordy’s Travel Plaza Facebook here!
