- Shop Name: Expresso Lube
- Location: Gillette, Wyoming
- Owner: Josh Peterson
- Bay count: 3
- Staff size: 18, including café
- Average daily car count: 45
Take your car for an oil change. Grab a quick breakfast. In most places, that’s a two-stop itinerary. Venture to Gillette, Wyoming, however, and Expresso Lube will be ready to service your vehicle and serve you a meal in one visit.
Part café, part fast oil change shop, Expresso Lube serves drivers and diners alike Monday through Saturday. In addition to oil changes, the automotive service center side of the facility performs fluid checks, filter and battery replacements, transmission flushes, and other services.
The café side, meanwhile, serves up coffee, pastries, and full breakfast and lunch meals, ranging “from classic favorites to innovative new dishes that will tantalize your taste buds,” per the shop’s website. Different flavored coffee specials are posted weekly on the Expresso Lube Facebook page.
Owner Josh Peterson purchased Expresso Lube in July 2023 with virtually no experience in the automotive service industry. Prior to his acquisition, Peterson worked in welding and the extent of his involvement in the automotive sector was performing some work on haul trucks.
“Our economy has ups and downs,” Peterson says. “It’s boom or bust with the oil field and coal mines around town. … I wanted something a little more steady.”
Peterson found the new career path he was looking for with Expresso Lube’s quick lube/café concept. His new venture, however, didn’t play out exactly as he anticipated upon arrival.
“At first, we had some struggles, and I was wondering what I had gotten myself into,” Peterson says.
Those challenges included employees not showing up for work and oil going missing from the shop. Both of those issues led to a lot of staff turnover early in his tenure.
“We got it all straightened out and got the right crew,” he says. “We’re running pretty smooth now.”
Having a built-in coffee shop, though, has been a difference maker in attracting customers, Peterson says. The shop averages about 45 vehicles per day across its three service bays, all of which are capable of handling RVs.
“With the coffee shop side, I feel we get more of the cars in town because they could come in and grab a bite to eat and grab a coffee while they wait for their oil change,” Peterson says “It's kind of a quiet little café. We get a lot of people coming in for meetings and such.”
With a strong staff in place and operations humming along, Peterson says thoughts of adding a second Expresso Lube location are on the menu.
“My goal is to make it a franchise,” he says. “We are looking around the state of Wyoming on where to put another one.”
In the meantime, business continues to percolate on both sides of the shop in Gillette.
About the Author
Tom Valentino
Editor
Tom Valentino is the editor of National Oil and Lube News. A graduate of Ohio University, he has more than two decades of experience in newspapers, public relations and trade magazines, covering everything from high school sports to behavioral health care. Tom’s first vehicle was a 1990 Mazda 626, which he used to deliver pizzas in the summer after graduating high school. Today, he drives a 2019 Jeep Compass, which usually has a trunk full of his daughter’s sports gear. In his spare time, Tom is an avid Cleveland sports fan and a volunteer youth sports coach.
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