Kanwar Singh and his brother Ajay bought a gas station in Carolina Beach, North Carolina, in 2012. The Sunoco station on the coast near Wilmington was your average fill-up stop for five years, until the Singh brothers added foodservice in 2017.

“We played around with ideas for what direction to go in. Being on the beach, we wanted to cater to the masses and do a simple concept. My brother Ajay said, ‘Let’s do burgers, Philly cheesesteaks and hot dogs,’” recalled Kanwar. “We rebuilt the kitchen from scratch and had to redo a small section of the store.”

Just a short year later, after a devastating storm took out one of the store’s canopies, that burger concept would become the best—and only—thing the store offered, transforming the gas station into the Island Burgers & Bites restaurant that now has a line around the block.

A Stormy Change

In September 2018, Hurricane Florence made landfall on the coast of North Carolina. The large and slow-moving Category 1 hurricane produced record-breaking rainfall and flooding across the eastern part of the state, and 100-mile-per-hour winds destroyed buildings—including one of the Singh brothers’ canopies. “We took the canopy down and just ran gas with no canopy for a year,” said Singh.

But the store’s food concept was becoming more successful, and parking had become an issue as customers flocked to Island Burgers & Bites. So instead of replacing the canopy, “We took the fuel out. We’d had two canopies with gas and a small diesel aboveground tank. We capped the fuel dispensers off and added a big outdoor deck that overlooks the marina,” Singh explained.

For the small site, the payoff was big. “Removing the fuel canopies totally opened up the whole site. It was a bold and risky decision, but we like to gamble,” he said.

To read more on Island Burgers & Bites, check out the August 2024 issue of NACS Magazine.