Gas stations are a lot bigger these days, and there’s a new reason for them to keep growing: electric vehicles.
As battery-powered cars become more common on roadways, more gas stations are installing chargers alongside old-fashioned pumps. But E.V. charging takes time, so gas station operators are turning their stores into shopping centers where people can spend time — and money — while they wait for cars to charge.
Doing so often means supersizing the business. Buc-ee’s, which has 51 locations primarily in the South and is working with Mercedes-Benz to offer E.V. charging, has stations as big as 75,000 square feet.
“What you are seeing is retailers preparing for what is to come,” said Kevin Hart, the chief sales officer at Upside, which works with retailers, including convenience stores and gas stations, to offer customers rewards on their purchases.
“The last thing they want is you coming, plugging in your car to an E.V. charging station and sitting in your car, so they have to create a shopping experience,” Mr. Hart said. “That is not how they thought 15 years ago.”
But the sheer size of the businesses has turned off some communities that don’t want the heavy traffic, bright lights and 24/7 activity.
In southeast Michigan, the City Council in Livonia voted in January against plans to raze a former Rite-Aid building in order to build a Sheetz, a Pennsylvania-based chain with over 700 locations and E.V. charging stations at 100 of those sites. In 2022, a plan to turn a vacant parcel in Creve Coeur, Mo., into a QuikTrip, which has over 1,100 stores mostly in the South and is rapidly expanding into the Midwest, went all the way to the State Supreme Court before it was denied. In 2021, Buc-ee’s withdrew plans for what would have been a 57,000-square-foot station in Orange County, N.C., after community pushback.
And this year in Denver, the City Council passed an ordinance banning new gas station construction within a quarter mile of another gas station, saying that the land could be preserved for community needs like affordable housing.
The mega gas station versus community battle is taking place more frequently as these fuel centers move into downtowns and residential areas. They used to exist mainly along highways as rest stops where their huge square footage wasn’t a problem. But now, they are taking over blighted parcels and cutting into a realm once dominated by fast-food chains.
Some of the expansion has accelerated because of tax breaks from local governments eager for sales revenue. And once a gas station is in an area, more will pop up. Wawa, a chain with 1,100 locations mostly in the Northeast and Mid-Atlantic regions, for example, tries to open clusters of stores in markets that it is already in.
Gas stations weren’t always so controversial, but they also weren’t always so large.
Sheetz’s stations have expanded more than 1,000 square feet over the past 20 years ago, said Travis Sheetz, its chief executive, and are on average 6,000 square feet. QuikTrip’s sprawling stores are often over 7,000 square feet and double as restaurants with full kitchens, drive-through lanes, seating and slushy machines.
These stations are “much different,” than they used to be, said Forrest Morgeson III, an associate professor of marketing at Michigan State University and the director of research emeritus at the American Consumer Satisfaction Index.
“These are big gas stations, often with a few dozen pumps, bigger storefronts, a lot of parking,” he added.
The transition from fuel sites to the gas-station-restaurant-convenience store model has been underway for decades. Because gas stations do not make much profit from gas itself, and raising its price will just push people to get gas elsewhere, food and drinks are easy ways to make money while also differentiating them from their competition.
Many of the biggest gas stations offer food that has almost a cultlike following. At Sheetz, the mozzarella sticks, mac-and-cheese bites and chicken sandwiches are what bring people in — not gas. Wawa is known for its hoagies. Customers go to Buc-ee’s for the beef jerky. And Casey’s, a gas station with 2,900 outlets in the Midwest, is the nation’s fifth-largest pizza chain by volume and offers specials like pulled pork sandwiches on Hawaiian bread. It started its private-label snack and drinks in 2021 and now has hundreds of products, such as chips with sweet corn or jalapeño Cheddar flavor.
While some gas chain owners may say food was always part of their business model — Wawa, which was founded in 1964, didn’t start adding gas pumps to its food locations until 1996 — sales from food at gas stations have more than doubled in 20 years. In 2023, food was nearly 26.7 percent of in-store sales at gas stations compared with 13.1 percent in 2003, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores, a trade association (2023 was the last full year of the association’s data).
“The business has matured to the point where it is a total food service experience — customers expect seating, drive-through,” Mr. Sheetz said. “We are looking ahead, and we are looking far ahead, and we are preparing for a future when gas demand will decline.”
Sheetz stores have been leading the trend that bigger is better. Aside from the addition of drive-through lanes and more indoor and outdoor seating, the chain’s enhancements include larger restrooms, expanded cooler space and increased kitchen capacity, Mr. Sheetz said.
Craig Dunaway, the chief operating officer of Penn Station East Coast Subs, said his restaurant chain was fending off gas station businesses like Sheetz.
“Convenience store operators have elevated the quality of their food products over the past five to 10 years, and it has the potential, especially as more consumers continue to eat on the go or in a hurry, to take market share from traditional restaurant operators if the traditional operators assume convenient stores are not direct competitors,” he said.
When communities object to Sheetz’s moving in, the company isn’t fazed, Mr. Sheetz said. It knows there are communities that want its business, and it works with officials to find locations that are a good fit, he added.
For example, the City Council in Farmington Hills, Mich., rejected Sheetz’s proposal this year to take over a space once occupied by Ginopolis, a restaurant that called Elizabeth Taylor and Bob and Delores Hope its customers, after several contentious meetings.
“There was tremendous amount of correspondence not wanting that development to take place,” said Gary Mekjian, city manager of Farmington Hills.
“I have been city manager for over four years and been with the city for 15 years — that is one of the longest meetings I can remember,” Mr. Mekjian said, adding that it was past midnight before the Council agreed to reject Sheetz’s plan.
But in nearby Romulus, the chain has gained a foothold and has been welcomed.
Jeremy Taylor, 37, who has lived in the city for 20 years and often walks to the store, said he went “all the time.”
“It’s been a long time since we’ve had something this good in Romulus,” he said. “There’s nothing out here.”
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