HACKENSACK, N.J. – For years Jill Marks and her business partners pondered the idea of opening a drive-thru convenience store in their home town of Ridgewood, New Jersey. By taking over an old bank, that vision has become reality, reports NorthJersey.com.

Marks, along with her husband and their partners David and Michelle Hartman, converted an old bank into a Quickie Mart convenience store that features three drive-thru lanes that once catered to cash-checking and money-withdrawing customers. The news source notes that by leasing a site already approved for drive-thru services, the group was able to bypass many hurdles town the town zoning board requires.

“That was my business plan – to take over merged or acquired banks that already had the drive-through capability, so it would be easier to get a permit,” Marks told the news source.

For customers such as Geri Abdoo, who discovered the Quickie Mart and its drive-thru services while shuttling a group of girls to soccer, basketball and football games, the convenience store fills a much needed void.

“For years we’ve been saying, ‘We need a drive-thru.’ We always thought this would be a perfect place. And here it is,” Abdoo told the news source.

Bringing drive-thru convenience to Ridgewood may resonate with consumers like Abdoo, but the partners of Quickie Mart may face the hurdle of attracting enough consumers to make the store profitable.

“One of the challenges is that when customers see a drive-through they treat it as a fast-food drive-thru, in that they don’t know they can also get a bottle of ketchup or diapers or aspirin or whatever they might need,” NACS spokesman Jeff Lenard told the news source. 

Lenard commented that less that 1 percent of the nation’s 140,000 convenience stores offer drive-thru services, although it is a concept that is catching on.

“People almost expect drive-through now. They have drive-through banks, you see drive-through pharmacies, drive-through fast food. Why not drive-through convenience stores?” Lenard told the news source, adding that most families who frequent convenience like having the option of drive-thru services to purchase single items such as a gallon of milk – especially when the kids are asleep in the car.

According to Lenard, emerging technologies will likely make drive-thru services more efficient for the convenience channel, such as the ability to text message orders and have them ready for pick up at the drive-thru window.

The partners at Quickie Mart, which began serving customers in July, are reaching out to the community and building a customer base by implementing marketing strategies that target busy parents, such as sponsoring youth soccer and baseball teams and distributing fliers at area nursery schools.

“I wanted to create something I could build and eventually leave to my children,” Marks told the news source. “It's not an original idea, but it's a great idea.”