Ask somebody in Baltimore where to get good fried chicken and there is a decent chance they name a gas station.
Not ironically. Not as a joke about low standards.
They mean it, and they will argue about it.
That is a strange sentence, and it describes one of the most quietly brilliant business models in American retail.
Because a gas station is not really in the gasoline business. It has not been for a long time.
Gasoline is one of the worst products you can sell. Almost no margin. A price posted on a sign twenty feet tall so every competitor can undercut you before lunch. Customers who compare to the cent.
So why does anybody build one?
Because of what the fuel pump does, not what it sells.
Let me take this apart, because once you see the structure you will never look at a gas station the same way again.