Coffee Review: Pilot Travel Center Gas Station, with Photos

cup of pilot gas station coffee outside of travel center
Read on to learn all about the coffee at Pilot Travel Center gas stations.

by Lars H

On a road trip from Memphis to Dallas, I had the opportunity to stop for gas at a Pilot Travel Center gas station, which is a major gas station chain with more than 800 locations around the United States that serves both passenger vehicles and also big rig trucks. Here’s the coffee situation at Pilot.

Pilot gas station coffee price menu
Prices in mid 2023.

The price of the coffee at Pilot is not bad, but not awesome. It’s a good deal for the large coffee, but just ok for the medium and not very good for the small. I still went for a small anyway, because I had already started out the day with coffee and didn’t want to overdo it with caffeine.

coffee station inside the Pilot gas station
You can choose from batch brewed coffee from the Bunn machines or individual grind and view coffee from the Schaerer Coffee Art C machines.

When I found the coffee station inside the Pilot, I was pleased to see that they serve coffee from reliable, good coffee equipment. The batch brewed coffee comes from workhorse Bunn machines that always make adequate and reliable coffee, along with Swiss made Schaerer bean-to-cup machines that grind and brew individual coffees from a touch screen.

Only one of the Schaerer coffee machines was operating when I visited this Pilot, and only two choices were available on the machine that was working, leaving me to pick between “mystery” and decaf. The other machine that wasn’t working had Machu Pichu Peruvian coffee, Pilot House, and an extra dark Sumatra.

There were a lot of choices of coffees on the Schaerer, but one of the machines needed service and would fail and give an error message when you tried to brew from it.

The other machine supposedly had three coffee choices to pick from, but the Columbian option was totally empty. I had intended to order the Pilot House coffee, but was stuck with the mystery “bean to cup” stickered beans, because the only other option on the functioning Schaerer machine was decaf.

So not a good experience at this particular Pilot, but at least I was able to buy a bean-to-cup coffee and was not forced to use the Bunn. I’m sure the Bunn coffee was fine, but since they weren’t maintaining the Schaerer machine very well, I wondered how often they were making coffee for the Bunn machine and if it might be stale.

Bunn coffee machines at a Pilot gas station
There were 3 choices on the Bunn machines, flavored French Vanilla, 100% Columbian, and Pilot House.

I saw someone else get coffee from the Bunn machines while I was there, but I wanted to try the grind and brew machines instead, so I did not try any of those Bunn coffees.

Pilot House ground coffee in a bag
I really wanted to try the Pilot House ground coffee, but it was not working on the Schaerer machine at the time that I got my coffee so I ended up with a different coffee instead.

The fact that Pilot sells their ground coffee in bags tells me that it must be pretty good for people to want to buy it to make at home. I wish I had been able to try it. I did not see the price of the bags.

The mystery choice I made from the one operating Schaerer grind-and-brew coffee machine was good coffee. Traditional chocolate and nuts tasting notes that the average coffee drinker in the United States tends to prefer. I give the coffee a thumbs up and was happy with it. It comes out at a great temperature from the Schaerer machine, and they have styrofoam cups that keep the coffee nice and warm. Not a fan of using styrofoam, but I’ll admit that the cups keep the coffee warm longer than paper cups.

Hopefully my experience with the poor maintenance of the Schaerer machines was a fluke, and normally all the coffee choices are working at most Pilot locations.

The coffee that I did get was good, and I would drink coffee at any Pilot if I was stopping for gas there.

Leave a Comment