Gas Station Dining Can Be a Community Game-Changer

Seoul Food D.C., profiled in Ideas 2 Go, is a model for creating an urban feel in suburbs.

November 18, 2014

WHEATON, Md. – In a recent article, The Atlantic’s CityLab blog takes a look at the new crop of restaurants in gas stations and suggests that these businesses may just help the suburbs become more authentically urban.

Author Amanda Kolson Hurley uses the example of Seoul Food D.C., located in an Exxon Tiger Mart in the Washington, D.C., suburb of Wheaton, Maryland. (Seoul Food D.C. was profiled in the NACS Ideas 2 Go video series last year, view their video here.) Originally launched as a food truck, Seoul Food D.C.’s owners Anna and John Goree signed a three-year lease with Exxon early last year, in what has proved to be a win-win for all parties.

As Hurley writes: “The gas-station owner gets help with overhead costs, the Gorees get a cheap space with guaranteed foot traffic, and customers get to eat delicious food in a surprisingly pleasant environment. … But there's one more beneficiary of this gas station-restaurant pairing: the urban realm. Or to be more precise, the suburban realm.”

According to the article, while the typical landscape of gas station canopies doesn’t do much for the overall suburban environment, largely because gas stations often seem to be extensions of the road itself, the addition of a gas-station restaurant “lets locals experience this corner not as a handy service site, but as an actual place. … Businesses like Seoul Food take something utterly generic—the corporate, hyper-branded gas station—and individualize it.”

In addition to creating a sense of place, the restaurants also encourage customers to engage more deeply with the neighborhood, while bringing increased economic activity and affordable dining options to a community. In the case of Seoul Food D.C., the location has been so successful that even local city planners see it as a model for other suburban businesses.

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