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Some of America’s best coffee isn’t hiding in trendy cafés anymore. It’s popping up in and behind gas stations, inside convenience stores and on the edges of parking lots nationwide.
In Denton, Texas, the best new lattes are served piping hot out of a yellow food truck hidden behind a Shell station, the Dallas Observer recently reported.
The Flower Shop Coffee Co. serves coffee in perfectly balanced flavors such as pecan pie, s’mores, pretzel-mint and pumpkin French toast, along with seasonal options like Gingerbread Toast Crunch, according to the outlet, which dubbed the spot a “hidden gem” despite its location in a tiny parking lot with no seating.
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And Denton isn’t the only town rethinking where “good coffee” belongs. For years, chains like Wawa and Buc-ee’s have reset expectations for what gas station coffee can be and helped dismiss the idea that quality coffee can only be found inside cafés.
From Rhode Island to Massachusetts to Kentucky, more shops are bypassing traditional cafés and setting up shop in gas stations and former fuel stops.
The trend is brewing largely in rural areas, said Stephanie Summers-Mayer, an HSN guest host who owns Pickle & Perk, a craft coffee and pickleball café housed in a former gas station, with her husband in Ironton, Missouri.
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“These spaces already sit inside people’s routines,” Summers-Mayer told Fox News Digital of gas stations. “When you bring something thoughtful into them, people seem to notice immediately.”
Choosing an unconventional location doesn’t always mean it’s cheaper, either, Summers-Mayer noted.
“Opening in an unexpected place meant we had to be excellent,” she said. “There was no coasting on location or trend.
“Our space had history and visibility long before it was a café, and that foundation helped us build something meaningful on top of it.”
In Rhode Island, growing collaborations between Abid’s Village Gas chain and local businesses have turned gas stations into hubs for small food operators, allowing cafés like Brewology to expand with multiple satellite coffee shops, including a second location that opened earlier this year, according to reports.
And just to the east, Sturbridge Coffee House in Massachusetts opened a new location in April, according to its website and reports, inside a Noble gas station, bringing its handcrafted drink menu to a convenience-driven setting.
Meanwhile, in Massachusetts and Kentucky, former gas stations are being repurposed into neighborhood coffee shops.
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In Dayton, Kentucky, Elliott Coffee opened inside a former one-pump service station.
“There’s something about being tucked away in a neighborhood,” owner Elijah Knapp told the Northern Kentucky Tribune.
In Wareham, Massachusetts, an old gas station on Main Street was transformed into The Blue Foot Café, a Hawaii-inspired coffee and smoothie shop where owner Katie Gallagher said she wanted to create “something different that no other place in Wareham offered.” She converted the long-vacant site into what local radio station FUN 107 described as “welcoming” and “adorable.”
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Barista Magazine covered the trend of cafés transforming retro gas stations in 2021.
“We were tired of driving to the city to experience something outside the existing chains and coffeehouses,” Conor VanBuskirk, owner of Upshot Coffee Brake Shop, which is located in an old auto shop in St. Charles, Missouri, told the outlet.
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While training suburban employees to become baristas took time, VanBuskirk said it was worth the effort to create something “so special [that] people from the city would drive out to the suburbs once in a while and enjoy what we have to offer.”
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