Posted on 05/11/2015 8:36:18 PM PDT by nickcarraway
The hottest new pizza places are convenience stores
Pizza chains these days are watching customers drive right by, then filling up on pizza when they fill up at the gas station.
Market research company the NPD Group says that the amount of pizza dough and crust shipped to convenience stores shot up by 27% in only a year. We’re collectively buying 20% more servings of pizza from these outlets than we were a year ago, while servings at traditional carry-out pizza chains are just treading water.
Convenience stores have ramped up their food offerings and gotten more aggressive at courting people outside their core customer base of young to middle-aged blue-collar men, says NPD Group restaurant industry analyst Bonnie Riggs.
“They’ve placed a lot of focus on food service and food ready for immediate consumption,” she says. “They’re competing directly with other fast food concepts now.”
Jeff Lenard, spokesman for NACS, the National Association of Convenience Stores, says fifth-biggest pizza seller in the country — behind Dominos, Pizza Hut, Papa John’s and Little Caesars, respectively — Casey’s General Stores, an Iowa-based convenience store chain.
According to NACS, convenience stores sold $40.6 billion worth of food prepared on-site, coffee and fountain drinks in 2014, an annual increase of around 10%. That’s roughly 20% of all sales, and prepared food makes up a growing percentage of the industry’s profits.
One way they’ve done this is by doubling down on the variety and quality of food they offer, Riggs says. Chains like Wawa and Sheetz are attracting millennials and women
(Excerpt) Read more at time.com ...
Since moving to CT/NY area, I've never seen so many pizza joints in my life. It's seems that the entire NYC metro area is eating pizza.
I have had a few at 7-11....not the best pizza at all but they will do in a pinch and you are starving like a hostage then perhaps you could eat it.
For many years now, TIME Magazine has been pointing to things that don’t involve/concern me and referring to those things as trends affecting “us.”
Our local gas station coffee is better and cheaper than the coffee store stuff. So is McDonald’s coffee.
Funny, I was thinking the same thing. They also have to run the occasional “everybody is going to just die if Facebook crashes” story.
I may live in a bubble (northwest Philly suburbs). There are so many mom and pop pizza places around here, I don’t know anyone who buys anywhere else — frozen, convenience store, or chain. The chains do have stores, but I don’t know who their customers are. I won’t eat a pizza with sausage that looks like rodent turds.
There was a pizza place in the same building as the gas station on the next exit west of our small town in NJ. They had THE best calzones!
In New Mexico there was a 7-11 type store where I lived for a month doing some work. They had THE best pork ribs!
The finer quality and taste will be most appreciated by the Amish flash mob children in the more urban environments. It will go well with the free Skittle and Tea.
The way they’re making sales is bundling: a slurpee and a hot dog for 2 bucks, a coffee and a donut for 2 bucks, and so on.
Hell yeah I’m going to jump on a chili/cheese 1/4 lb dog and a Big Gulp for two bucks when I have to get gas anyway before I can get where I need to go.
And they’re also adding cold Grab & Go sandwiches, salads, fruit cups, puddings etc. that the EBT crowd wipe out.
I enjoy their coffee whenever I'm passing through the area.
I use my Costco Amex card to buy gas for my 160 mile a day commute (lots of cash back for gas purchases). I can’t remember the last time I actually went into the store attached to the pumps. Has to be at least a decade ago.
“Why We Can’t Get Enough of Gas-Station Pizza”
For me, it’s that wonderful gassy aroma that sometimes gets absorbed into the pizza.
Out here in the boonies, Hunt Bros. Pizza is a delicacy. It’s a few bucks more than Little Scissors but much better quality and made fresh to order.
The first time I ever used a microwave oven was in 1976, heating a pizza at a convenience store. Still remains the one and only time I ever bought a pizza at such a place.
Before that moment in time, I saw convenience stores primarily as outlets for comic books, baseball cards, Icees, and pinball-machines. Usually tend to think of convenience stores as a fairly modern staple, but our city’s chain of stores actually had old neon signs and dated back to the late-1940s. The 7-11 (Southland Corporation) bought them out during that aforementioned year of 1976, and introduced the pizza and microwave oven.
Yep. Casey’s c-store pizza is wildly popular in Iowa. A town of a few hundred people will order 20 pizzas a night.
But in NYC, people do a great deal of walking.
Yeah, but most pizza in the NYC area today is mediocre to crap. Italians don't even operate most pizzerias today. Mexicans and Middle Easterners do. Over the past several decades large numbers of Italians left the area.
“There was a pizza place in the same building as the gas station on the next exit west of our small town in NJ. They had THE best calzones! In New Mexico there was a 7-11 type store where I lived for a month doing some work. They had THE best pork ribs!”
The finest BBQ buffet in the state of South Carolina (maybe the whole south) is located in the little unit at the right end of this convenience store/gas station located close to the middle of nowhere.
http://cookingwithlittlebuddy.com/po-pigs-bo-b-q-edisto-island-sc-review-100-mile-bbq/
Have they suddenly become EBT?
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