Benn Stancil on benn.substack

So a couple people who actually work at gas stations reached out, and their answer was very much 1, and not at all 2. They said that customers don't really "retain" in a traditional sense, and that you essentially have to treat every customer as a new one (ie, it's all about how do you attract a new customer, and not about how to keep ones that come once coming back). But, as one person put it, the business of gas station is "gas, cokes, and smokes." You can't really do anything about gas margins, costs, prices, or anything; you're just a price taker. So all the variability is in the other services you have, how good your store is, etc. So it's almost like the gas is just a low margin business that's going to get a certain number of people to consider parking in your store's parking lot; the rest of business is trying to figure out how to get those people into your store.