This article outlines:
Why customers already see your store as a restaurant, whether you've branded it that way or not
How convenience stores lose sales and guest data without online ordering
How Family Express and Kwik Trip turned their foodservice build-out into real digital revenue
For a long time, "gas station food" was a joke restaurant operators told at QSR conferences. The idea of a convenience store competing for a guest's lunch order felt about as threatening as a vending machine competing with a steakhouse.
Convenience stores set out to sell gas, cigarettes, and a decent cup of coffee. But somewhere between adding a made-to-order pizza oven and a drive-thru lane, they have become something else: a restaurant that also happens to sell fuel.
Just look at Buc-ee’s: what started as a pit stop with clean bathrooms now has food critics and influencers reviewing its offerings.
That’s the direction the whole category is heading, and the data backs it up.
Foodservice isn't a side hustle for convenience stores anymore
Convenience store operators already know foodservice matters to the bottom line. Here's the proof:
- Technomic's Rich Shank shared that 95% of c-store operators now call foodservice a strategic priority, and 80% say it's vital to their total store's success.
- A 2025 survey found that more than half of convenience store customers are picking up hot food items once or more a week, up from 45% in 2023.
- Food's share of in-store sales has more than doubled over the past two decades, climbing from 11.9% in 2004 to 28.5% in 2025, per NACS data.
Customers already see convenience stores as restaurants
68% of consumers already believe c-stores are just as capable as restaurants of offering fresh, quality food, according to Shank's research. Plenty of brands have earned that perception, with investments in better kitchens, better menus, and store designs that feel less like a pit stop and more like a destination.
However, attracting customers is only half the job. If a customer wants the food but can't order ahead, they either wait in line, skip the trip, or find the brand through a third-party delivery app that takes a cut of the sale and keeps the guest relationship for itself. After investing so much in making people want the food in the first place, that's revenue and guest data walking out the door.
How online ordering investments pay off for convenience stores
For operators wondering whether layering online ordering onto a foodservice build-out is actually worth it, two convenience store brands have already answered that question.
Family Express, which operates more than 80 stores across Indiana, built its reputation on made-to-order pizza, breakfast bowls, and boneless wings, then added online and in-store kiosk ordering to match. The result: a 164% increase in digital revenue, a 103% increase in order volume, and a 45.3% jump in average basket size. "When guests order and pay online, they can customize their meals more easily and simply grab their food and go," said Thierry Lyles, Family Express's digital marketing manager.
Kwik Trip, with more than 700 locations across the Midwest, saw similar movement after adding mobile ordering and delivery: a 70% increase in digital sales and a 50% increase in order volume, alongside a 30% jump in third-party delivery orders. As David Jackson, the brand's digital marketing and loyalty manager, put it, online ordering helped Kwik Trip "become a bigger food destination."
Both brands turned kitchen investments into measurable digital revenue.
The kitchen gets convenience stores in the game. Online ordering helps them win.
If your store has already added made-to-order food, a breakfast menu, or a drive-thru, you're not behind the curve. You're in good company, right alongside the brands already proving it pays off.
The next challenge is the same one restaurants have been solving for years: once a customer orders food from you, how do you get them to come back and order it again? Family Express and Kwik Trip both found that answer sits less in the kitchen and more in the systems behind it, like online ordering, guest data, and loyalty, built for a brand that increasingly looks and runs like a restaurant, even if it still sells fuel out front.
The question isn't whether convenience stores can compete with restaurants on food. Guests already think they can. The question is whether they're set up to capture it.
The gas station joke is officially over.
