September 30, 2007
Oct 01, 2007

Get your gizzards at your local gas 'n go. With profits from gasoline sales dwindling, some convenience stores are moving up the food chain, selling not only the usual coffee and plastic-wrapped sandwiches, but also freshly prepared hot items that range from eggs and pancakes to pork chops, pizza and, yes, even chicken gizzards.

Gasoline is still the mainstay of Florida's gas marts, providing 71 percent of their total revenue, according to the Florida Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association. But once customers leave the gas pumps and enter the stores, they spend almost as much on fresh-made food as they do on soda or beer.

"How many convenience stores are doing food service these days? As many as possibly can," said Jim Smith, president of the Tallahassee-based trade group.

Smith said the food trend is helping convenience stores offset shrinking profit margins on both gasoline sales and some of their packaged grocery items.

"Convenience stores are getting more price competitive," Smith said. "The days of the $4.69 jar of mayonnaise at the convenience store are over."

Fresh food also prolongs visits by customers who otherwise might gas up with a credit card and then drive off without entering the store, he added.

The fast-food sideline works especially well in stores that have room enough for grills, ovens, refrigerators and prep tables and are situated close to major employers, Smith said.

"It helps if you have a lot of foot traffic from workers coming in for breakfast or lunch," Smith said.

That formula works just fine at Ready Foods Citgo, a Daytona Beach gas-mart where cook Alvin Cotton and his helper, Sue Scaife, fry up about 150 to 200 take-out meals daily.

"This place started with the idea of being a one-stop business for people going to work," owner Jay Patel said. "They could get their gas and then come in for their gallon of water or juice and get something to eat, too."

But gasoline profits have been hurting lately, he said in an interview last week. "I'm selling gas today for $2.79 a gallon and that's the same price my supplier charges me. There's nothing left over to pay for the labor. That has to come from things we sell inside the store."

Since launching its food counter several years ago, the store at 895 N. Nova Road has developed a crowd of regulars, many of whom telephone in their orders as early as 6 a.m.

"Our customers are great," Patel said. "The early ones will be waiting at the door when we get here. They help us bring in the newspaper bundles and get the coffee going."

Patel, 27, took over the station two years ago after helping relatives operate other stations in Orlando and Fort Myers. While food is not his most lucrative store item --beer, soda, cigarettes and check-cashing all bring in more --the meals still generate about $400 to $500 a day, he estimated.

"Thursdays and Fridays are our busiest days for food," he said. "Those are paydays for a lot of our customers."

Saturdays are growing in popularity, with some people stopping for breakfast and others pulling in later for ribs from a barbecue wagon in the parking lot.

Plumber Greg Hill said he stops by for lunch two or three times a week. "It's cheap, it's convenient and they give you big portions. And the people are nice, too."

Cotton, a trained cook who previously worked at restaurants and nursing homes, changes the menu every day, sometimes featuring items like ribs, pork chops, fried rice, beef casserole and catfish. But day in and day out, the favorites are fried chicken and a gizzards-and-livers combo dish.

"People really like their gizzards," Cotton said. "I have one customer who comes all the way from Palm Coast because he says mine are better than what he gets up there."

Cotton and Scaife, who have been operating the grill for seven years, know most of their customers by name and food preference. They joke with them as the customers wait patiently in line to get their orders plopped into Styrofoam containers.

The pair work for Patel and get paid an hourly wage, plus tips left in a gallon jar. "We do pretty good on the tips," she said.

Getting reliable short-order cooks is the biggest challenge for gas station owners who want to branch into foodservice, said Bernie Simpkins, who once was the fried chicken king of Florida's Atlantic Coast highways. Back in the 1970s and '80s, his S&S Enterprises gas-station chain in Cocoa sold its "Fancy Fried" brand of fresh-cooked chicken at more than 100 stations from West Palm Beach to Jacksonville.

"It was a very nice, high-margin business for us. Our motto was, 'If the colonel had our recipe, he'd be a general,' " said Simpkins, referring to his competition with KFC. "But it was a very labor intensive process, and you had to have the right people supervising it. Most of the help made just a little over the minimum wage, so there was a lot of turnover."

Simpkins sold his chain to Napco, a Tulsa, Okla. company, in 1989 and the chicken business fell off. Napco switched to frozen chicken pieces in an effort to simplify the preparation, but the new version flopped, Simpkins said. Only one station, located in Okeechobee, still sells the original Fancy Fried line.

Some area stations, like Allison's Amoco and Deli in Port Orange, and the Handy Way gas-mart in Samsula, operate the same way as Ready Food, using their own employees to operate grills.

But most stations, according to Smith, solve the labor problem by farming out their foodservice business to a separate concessionaire --either a fast-food chain like Subway or Blimpie's, or a local independent.

Such a partnership has helped build a lively pizza business at a Circle K gas station in Orange City. Dan's Pizza City moved into a 400-square-foot area of the station about two years ago, replacing another pizza operation that had folded.

Dan Antonaccio, whose main pizzeria occupies its own storefront in Port Orange, said he barely knew where Orange City was when a Circle K manager first approached him with the business plan. But within a few months, Bill Pierson, Antonaccio's branch manager, was turning out pizza, strombolis, calzones and other Italian recipes at the 1030 Saxon Blvd. location.

Antonaccio said the pizza shop started as just a small sideline, with gas customers buying a slice or two of pizza on impulse. Now the shop has become a destination in its own right.

"We're selling dozens of pizzas every Friday and Saturday night," Antonaccio said. "People pumping gas out front use their cell phones to call in their order. We're probably pulling in 1,000 people a week into that station."

tom.brown@news-jrnl.com

GAS MART SALES

Convenience stores get about 71 percent of their revenue from gasoline pumps. Here's a breakdown of revenue per category for merchandise sold inside the store:

CIGARETTES 34%

SOFT DRINKS 14%

FOOD SERVICE 12.1%

BEER AND WINE 12%

CANDY 4%

SALTY SNACKS 4%

MILK 2%

SOURCE: Florida Petroleum Marketers and Convenience Store Association


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