A little over year since making a push into Green Bay (story HERE), True North took another step this week towards challenging Kwik Trip in the market.

The company went before the Green Bay Planning Committee to make their Velp Avenue store a 24 hour operation. The location sits next to a Mexican restaurant and credit union.

It’s also a rare “Kwik Trip” desert, with the convenient store nowhere easily accessible to this location, and right off of an important traffic artery in the area.

It’s still not a threat to the Kwik Trip “big dog” in the area, who has stores everywhere, a gate at Lambeau Field, and a new location coming to West Mason, which will potentially play an important role in the routine of Green Bay residents.

And True North stores can’t offer the same products and service. The Velp location, and other stores in the area are clean, which is always a great start, but they’re still missing the product depth of their big brother, and a hot kitchen which rivals many fast food restaurants.

It’s still a step forward for True North, where both an opportunity for revenue awaits, if they can overcome a challenge in the area that Kwik Trip could not.

That is late night unrest.

There was subtle concerns that pedestrian traffic could approach the store through a back end residential neighborhood at late hours.

This is the same kind of pedestrian traffic that plagues the Kwik Trip on Walnut. Despite, a hard working team of employees, the bad element swarms the location each day. So much so that they’ve been forced to begin closing at night (story HERE).

Still. That late night money is there to be made.

This is a small but notable event for a group of stores some of us visit each day. True North is trying to make it a place for nightly visits too.