INDIANAPOLIS – Increasingly, aging gasoline service stations turn to remodeling to jumpstart their business, the Indianapolis Star reports. Currently, across the country, service stations are rebuilding with bigger and better convenience stores that offer customers premium coffee, cafes serving freshly prepared food and other conveniences.

Converting an older location to one with a larger convenience store can boost the business’s bottom line because of the higher profit margins for inside sales. "Convenience store retailers can make more on a 12-ounce cup of coffee than in a 12-gallon tank of gas," Jeff Lenard, NACS spokesperson, told the newspaper. "This is a street fight for customers. This is expensive real estate in fast-growing communities, so they have to get the maximum returns.”

What convenience stores sell inside has begun to change as well; more chains are focusing on serving freshly prepared food to an increasingly sophisticated clientele. The National Restaurant Association reports that retail food sales, including fresh food sales at convenience stores, is a $25 billion business. "It's one of the hot, up-and-coming areas within foodservice," Hudson Riehle, senior vice president of research for the association, told the Dallas Morning News. "It has raised the baseline expectation among consumers about where food service exists."

"Fresh food is growing, absolutely, and it continues to grow," John Vaughan, fresh food category manager for 7-Eleven, told the newspaper. "It's the customer lifestyle. What we have to offer is convenience."

7-Eleven debuted new food items, including papaya-mango fruit cups with chili-lime spice and turkey Capicolla wraps with basil spread, to appeal to a more sophisticated palate, the newspaper reports. During its latest “University of 7-Eleven” program, the company unveiled its new menu offerings to employees and franchise owners.

The trend to serve fresh food is driven by convenience store owners needing to find high-margin options to take the place of gasoline sales and cigarettes. "With cigarettes, the margins are not that large, and there are all these regulations and restrictions that are making it more challenging each year to sell them," said Lenard.

Fuel brings in 70 percent of sales at convenience stores selling gasoline, with cigarettes accounting for 10 percent, he said. "It becomes critical to grow that other 20 percent. If you're looking long term, you have to look at the potential challenges" related to cigarettes sales.

"With [fresh] food, you can attract a whole new segment of customer, particularly females," Lenard told the newspaper. More convenience stores will be trying out fresh food, he said adding, “If you're not looking into fresh food, you probably need a good reason why you're not."