We had a big family dinner planned: a hamburger at a gas station.

Okay, that’s dramatically oversimplifying and downgrading the experience for literary effect. We recently went to Dash In’s newest store, in Chantilly, Virginia, for the debut of the new Spike Burger, created by celebrity chef and restauranteur Spike Mendelsohn. It is an awesome menu addition by a company that already has an impressive foodservice offer.

We were looking forward to the experience—and we’re not alone, according to NACS State of the Industry data. Foodservice accounts for more than one in four dollars spent inside convenience stores and more than one in three profit dollars. And by all accounts these numbers are expected to increase over the next decade.

There are some very passionate advocates for the quality of our industry’s food. In early March, we brought together two of them for a road trip around Lafayette, Louisiana. One of them you already know: Al Hebert, otherwise known as the “Gas Station Gourmet,” celebrates great food at a gas station/convenience store every month in this magazine. The other, Stafford Shurden, started a video series called Gas Station Tailgate Review. He visits stores and samples their fare, using his truck’s flatbed as his on-camera dining room table. He’s clearly tapped into something with these videos, some of which have been viewed around 800,000 times.

The passion of Al and Stafford was contagious. We didn’t just eat food and film it, we talked about it and asked questions. How is it prepared? Where do you get your ingredients? How do you develop your menus?  And who comes in for the food—and from how far? For the record, the answer to that last question, in some cases, is an hour away. Most of all, we celebrated what these stores mean to the communities they serve through their food.

The big idea isn’t that you should start selling boudin or cracklins or plate lunches to replicate the amazing food at the stores we visited. The idea is to create your own restaurant-quality food offer that thrills customers, who will probably buy a lot more than just a meal. The ideas in this annual foodservice issue of NACS Magazine will help you define how to create an upscale offer, or to just “kick it up a notch,” as Louisiana native Emeril Lagasse often says.

Of course, not everyone is aware of the great food at gas stations across the country. The Buffalo Bills created what they thought was a fun TikTok video asking players what they would eat at the gas station if it’s 2:00 a.m. and they are starving. A few players suggested some packaged snacks and drinks, then defensive tackle Ed Oliver jumped in and passionately said he would get a three-piece fish-and-fries meal from Y-Not Stop. To which teammate Kingsley Jonathan asks, “From a gas station?” Y-Not Stop was one of the places we visited on our road trip. The food was great. Sounds like we need to invite Kingsley on our next trip there. Ready, Al and Stafford?