DETROIT – A Detroit convenience store that was once home to the Rusty Keg Party Shoppe features more than beverage coolers and snack foods. Najv Jaboro’s BP store has the added element of style, complete with a stone checkerboard floor, spacious aisles, an exposed-duct ceiling, Coffee Beanery lattes, Krispy Kreme doughnuts and aisles of grocery items, reports the Detroit Free Press.

According to the news source, gasoline proprietors “have long understood that gas serves as the carrot that brings customers inside for cigarettes, gum and other sundries.” That notion is why Jaboro and other metro-Detroit retailers are adding style and reworking existing locations to “emphasize the total shopping experience” by supersizing the spaces and incorporating “sleek” interiors designed to “turn heads and steering wheels into their lots.”

Detroit retailers are making large investments to increase the overall look and ambiance of the stores as a way to compensate for slim profits on gasoline sales, which some retailers say hover around 3 cents a gallon, notes the news source.

Gary Ptasznik and Shakir Alkhafaji, who are opening a “fancy Shell station” in Farmington Hills, told the news source their total investment would amount to about $3 million. They set out to create a “head-turning structure” that looks less like a gasoline station with stylistic features such as a façade made from Syrian limestone, granite countertops and custom-made cabinetry, ceramic-tiled restrooms, second-floor offices, fresh foodservice and Coffee Beanery products and an interior painted in muted tones of mustard-yellow and blue.

“It's going to be the Taj Mahal of all the stations,” said Ptasznik.

NACS spokesman Jeff Lenard told the news source that “sprucing up” stores is not only good for business, but it can also help cultivate a loyal consumer base.

“Loyalty at the pump is much more for price than for brand, and that is a quantum shift from a generation ago,” said Lenard. “Now there is loyalty to a brand inside the station: the coffee, the sandwiches,” he said, adding that retailers make a higher profit selling a 12-ounce cup of coffee than on 12 gallons of gasoline.