Patrick McLean: Turning “Highway Hospitality” Into a New Engine for Growth

As the first Chief Marketing Officer of Love’s, Patrick McLean is helping one of America’s largest family-owned businesses move from decades of growth through expansion to its next stage of growth through marketing—without losing what made the company successful in the first place.

When most people think of Love’s Travel Stops, they probably think of fuel, coffee, food or simply a welcome break on a long drive.

What they may not realize is the scale of the business behind those familiar highway signs.

Love’s has grown from a single location in 1964 to nearly 700 locations across 42 states—a massive family-owned enterprise built over more than six decades. And until McLean arrived in 2025, it had never had a Chief Marketing Officer.

That makes his mandate particularly interesting.

Love’s didn’t hire its first CMO to change what made the company successful. It hired one to help turn those strengths into its next stage of growth.

Patrick McLean came to Love’s after senior marketing roles spanning telecommunications, banking, and retail. What attracted him wasn’t a business in need of rescuing or reinvention. Quite the opposite.

“The business is just thriving and growing,” he says. “We’re entering a new phase and marketing is going to be at the heart of this next phase of growth.”

---

---

When Expansion Becomes Marketing

Love’s has historically been very good at growing by building.

For years, the company could add 35 or 40 locations annually. As the network doubled over roughly a decade, physical expansion itself created an impressive growth engine.

Today, with nearly 700 locations, Love’s continues to open new travel stops and is making substantial investments in older ones through a renovation program called Road Ahead. But the mathematics of growth inevitably change as the base gets larger.

“You’ve got to find a way to make the locations themselves more profitable,” McLean explains. “And that’s where demand generation, that’s where marketing kicks in.”

The mandate becomes increasing traffic, trips and basket size at the locations Love’s already has.

For a first CMO, that creates an enviable assignment: marketing isn’t being asked simply to communicate the company’s growth. It is being asked to help create it.

Pat McLean also found something perhaps equally important when he arrived: an organization receptive to what marketing could contribute.

He describes both the Love family and the leadership team as “marketing curious.”

His role, therefore, hasn’t been about convincing skeptical executives that marketing matters. It has been about helping an already interested organization understand where to begin, how to structure the work and where investment can produce meaningful returns.

In his first 15 months, that has meant organizing the work and making foundational investments that, he says, are already paying back and creating the case for further investment.

From the Back Court to the Front Court

There is another dimension to the growth opportunity.

Love’s built much of its strength serving commercial trucking fleets—the company’s traditional “back court.” But McLean sees significant potential in what Love’s calls the “front court”: everyday drivers.

These are families on vacation, commuters, road trippers and others who may suddenly see an exit sign and decide where to stop—or increasingly, plan that stop before the journey begins.

The difference between those two behaviors is important.

Because he isn’t simply trying to generate another visit. Pat McLean’s trying to change the nature of the decision.

And that’s where highway hospitality enters the story.

Highway Hospitality

Patrick McLean didn’t invent the phrase. Love’s founder, Tom Love, used it years ago.

But it may be an ideal expression for what the brand can mean today.

“We just fundamentally believe that people deserve a certain level of hospitality and a certain level of a positive experience when they’re stopping at the side of the road,” McLean says.

That means something very tangible: a safe, well-lit location. Friendly people. Clean restrooms. Food and merchandise choices. A place to refuel the vehicle, refuel yourself and comfortably get back on the road.

“We greet you, we treat you like you’re in our home,” he says.

It is an interesting reframing of a category that consumers often regard as purely transactional.

Love’s isn’t pretending to be the traveler’s destination. McLean readily acknowledges that. Its opportunity is to become the place travelers prefer along the way.

And, unusually for a marketer charged with changing perceptions, McLean believes the underlying experience is already there.

“What makes marketing really great is when it’s actually true,” he says.

For the vast majority of customers, he argues, Love’s is already fulfilling the promise. His job is to get more people to experience it.

“People do fall in love with the experience and then they will seek us out when they’re on the road, and that’s ultimately what we want.”

From Happy Coincidence to Deliberate Preference

Perhaps the best description of McLean’s marketing challenge comes from Love’s Chief Operating Officer.

An occasional customer may encounter Love’s as a “happy coincidence.”

They need fuel. They see the sign. They stop.

McLean wants to turn that coincidence into intention.

“If I can take you from a happy coincidence to a deliberate preference, there’s a lot of power in that.”

That may also be one of the clearest definitions of what brand-building is supposed to accomplish.

And it helps explain why Patrick McLean doesn’t view his role as imposing transformation on Love’s. The more interesting challenge is to reveal and amplify something the organization already possesses.

The hospitality is real. The culture is real. The physical network is real.

Marketing’s job is to help more people discover it—and then choose it again.

The Surprisingly Simple Truth About Marketing

McLean’s career has taken him through very different industries and organizations. Yet when asked what he has learned about human behavior that remains consistent regardless of category, his answer is strikingly uncomplicated.

“People just want to be treated like human beings.”

Products matter, of course. Services matter. But he argues that product differentiation can be difficult to sustain. Experience is different.

“When you treat people well and you give them an experience that’s positive and not overcomplicate it, not make it about you, that’s where the difference is made.”

And when that experience is consistent enough to create genuine preference, he believes marketers have achieved something much more durable: sustainable differentiation.

For Love’s first CMO, then, the opportunity isn’t simply to introduce more marketing into a successful family enterprise.

It’s to use marketing to turn an existing strength into a new source of growth.

Or, perhaps more appropriately for Love’s, to help more people discover a little hospitality along the highway—and remember where they found it.