Why are so many gas stations popping up in South Carolina? Owners think you need more. (2024)

Greg Parker loves getting this question.

“Do we really need another gas station?”

The owner of the Parker’s Kitchen chain wants so badly to end the stigma that comes with his business.

“Gas stations are what our grandfathers had, the place where you had your car worked on and refueled, and every transaction included checking the air in your tires and your antifreeze,” Parker said. “What we offer is far different.”

Parker, along with the owners of Refuel, Spinx and BlueWater Market, are changing the model with modern neighborhood stores that are brighter, cleaner and emphasize fresh food and where they say general merchandise revenue outweigh fuel sales nearly 4 to 1.

So yes, Parker believes we need more. A lot more.

But please, don’t call them gas stations, he requests. Call them convenience stores.

“The average person buys gas every seven to 10 days,” said Eddie Buck, owner of locally based BlueWater, which operates about 20 stores between Charleston and the Hilton Head area. “We’re trying to establish a reason you would come to us four days a week.”

While the cigarette, beer, gasoline model is still alive, that’s not the clientele these convenience retailers are after.

They want to be the place you grab a morning cup of coffee and sit outside and read the paper. The bathroom you bring your kids to on a road trip or use to change your baby’s diaper without grimacing. The one-stop where you buy your last-minute gallon of milk or your salad for lunch, fresh fried chicken for dinner.

Mark Jordan, a Mount Pleasant resident and the CEO of Refuel, purchased his first store in 1999. Today, the company has swelled to 237 locations across the Carolinas, Texas, Mississippi and Arkansas.

Fresh food is his second-biggest seller.

At Savannah-based Parker’s Kitchen, employees are dedicated to determining how much chicken to cook given a particular community and time of day, its founder said.

“We’re using AI tools to give us predictive analytics that will say to drop 28 chicken tenders in now because we know in the next 20 minutes, that’s how many are going to be eaten,” Parker said.

He also hired a director of real estate, Amanda Thompson, to oversee the acquisition of every brick-and-mortar location, analyzing the traffic, the investment, the demographics.

Parker has opened 25 stores since 2020, with plans to open more than 50 in the next three years.

Buck has two more BlueWater locations planned for this year, including the Summerville area near Cane Bay.

Stewart Spinks, owner of Greenville-based Spinx, has another five coming soon in Inman, Greenwood, Mount Pleasant, Boiling Springs and Johns Island.

Jordan expects eight Refuels to come online this year, having opened a Summerville location May 14, and 10 more to follow in 2025.

“The answer to most questions about why we do what we do ends in convenience,” Jordan said.

“We locate where we locate for the customer’s convenience, we sell the things we sell for the customers’ convenience.”

On the corner

These so-called c-stores typically take up the best corners to be the most accessible to customers, but also because the owners can afford it, said Justin Ross, vice president of Charleston commercial real estate firm Lee & Associates.

Smaller operators can’t pay for the corner spot at Ashley River Road and Sam Rittenberg Boulevard in Charleston or the end of Bees Ferry Road and Savannah Highway in Johns Island like Parker’s Kitchen can.

“Some of these hard corners have more value to the convenience store than they do to other users,” Ross said.

Plus, the more the bigger operators build, the more efficient they become at developing their sites quickly and efficiently. It’s formulaic, he said.

“They’re going in areas that are growing,” Ross said. “They’re not building in areas that are going backwards.”

A business like that, if done right, only grows its profits as more and more residents move to nearby communities, he added.

“The people that are developing these large residential communities want us involved,” said Parker of Parker’s Kitchen. “We play a really vital role in the functioning of neighborhoods.”

And the owners are determined to blend into communities better these days. Parker’s is known for its bright whitewashed brick and landscaped exteriors. The Nexton Refuel is fitted with wooden plank siding and tin roofing architecture to reflect the rest of the neighborhood, and its Daniel Island location has a fireplace and a covered porch with iron tables and chairs.

Parker’s plan is to be considered a “third place,” a term coined by Ray Oldenburg in the early 1990s.

Home is first in ranking of where people spend the most time. Work is second. The third is made up of gathering spots like cafes or parks — and possibly convenience stores if the owner can change your mind.

Parker predicted that the stores that feel unsafe and unkept, with filthy parking lots and filthier bathrooms, uninviting staff and unhealthy food options won’t last.

“Over time, we end up cleaning up communities and building beautiful stores,” he said. “It makes everybody either step up their game to compete with us or convert their property to something new.”

That’s how Spinks made a regular customer out of West Ashley resident Katie Lombardi.

The mom of two used to take her boys — Jack, 7, and Sam, 5 — for slushies at a nearby 7-Eleven now and then, but deteriorating accommodations and increasingly rougher clientele caused her look elsewhere.

Then Spinx on Glenn McConnell Parkway opened. What started as a “let’s just check it out” quickly became a weekly after-school tradition.

“We loved our Friday slushy tradition, but the machines were often broken at 7-Eleven, and it was pretty dirty in the food and drink area,” Lombardi said. “We switched to Spinx where it’s noticeably cleaner and the machines actually work.”

Her sons now look forward to this trip, cheering on their way every week.

And that’s exactly what Parker, Jordan, Buck and Spinks want. To be a destination families look forward to visiting. One you hope comes to your community.

“We’re competitors, but at the end of the day, we are trying to be a service to the community,” Buck said.

Convenience factor

When Spinks founded his first operation in 1972, he knew time was essential to the American family. One of the first to introduce pay-at-the-pump conveniences, he also introduced a drive-thru grocery at his third South Carolina location in 1978.

“You could get gas, pull up to the pay window and order anything from milk to bread to eggs,” he said.

“I had food service and a car wash on the back of the lot, and all those things were strange to a customer back then.”

Over time, those gas stations grew sophisticated, able to technologically deliver one-stop services. A place where the value of convenience supersedes all.

Jordan of Refuel said he knows consumers can go to a Costco and save a few bucks; he also knows they don’t always have the time or energy.

If anything, the pandemic only exacerbated how daunting a grocery store can be when shoppers need a single item or need it quickly.

“We sell a lot of the same things that big stores, grocery stores and drug stores do, and for competitive prices,” he said.

Convenience stores are also open rain or shine. Sometimes they’re providing food to first responders and supplies to families in need.

Last year, Jordan lost a Refuel in Mississippi to a tornado and recently finished rebuilding it. The store is now the center of the community of 1,000 residents because it’s one of the few that’s been able to reopen and offer them necessities.