Heartland Food Corp. made headlines in December 2003 when the company, then owned by Core Value Partners, purchased 120 Chicago-area Burger King restaurants from floundering franchisee AmeriKing, Inc. Within five weeks the restaurants, which had been operating in the red for four years, were back in the black.

Heartland continued to acquire troubled franchises in the chain over the next couple years, boasting growth rates of 30 percent and 40 percent for 2004 and 2005, respectively. The growth slowed to 11 percent in 2006, when the company was sold to hedge fund GSO Capital Partners, but CEO Steve Wiborg says his company is back on track. With the purchase of as many as 20 stores by this past June, the company’s growth rate should again approach 30–40 percent for 2007.

While Heartland’s growth was previously based on acquiring faltering restaurants from other franchisees, Wiborg says the future will see the company building more stores of its own.

“Most of our growth rate going forward will be in new store development,” he says, adding that Heartland is ramping up to add around 6–8 new stores per year.

But don’t expect to see Heartland Burger Kings popping up in your neighborhood unless you’re located in their established territories of Michigan, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, North Carolina, and South Carolina. Wiborg says the company plans to continue growing in existing markets, with primary focus on the Carolinas.

With more than 281 travel centers in 40 states coast to coast, Pilot Travel Centers is the undisputed king of convenience on the road.

The Knoxville, Tennessee-based company began with one family-owned gas station in 1958, built its first convenience store in 1981, and opened its first travel center—a kind of gas-station-convenience-store-truck-stop hybrid—in 1981. In 1988 Pilot again reinvented itself, opening a travel center housing a quick-service restaurant concept to give hungry travelers a true one-stop shop for all their needs on the road. Now every Pilot Travel Center contains at least one restaurant, according to the company’s Web site.

Today Pilot boasts a base of at least 262 restaurants, including franchises of Arby’s and Subway. And that base continues to grow. Pilot doubled the size of its operations by acquiring Williams Travel Centers, another chain of highway convenience stations, in 2003, and the company recently extended its reach internationally, opening a travel center in Ontario, Canada, in 2006. According to Pilot Corporation’s Web site, two more are slated to open soon.

While for many franchisees rising gas prices have been a major complaint, pain at the pump might not hurt so badly for Pilot, which is co-owned by Marathon Petroleum Company, the nation’s fifth-largest oil refiner. Pilot Travel Centers reported at least $11.6 billion in revenue from 2006, including more than $240 million from restaurant sales.