C-Stores Won the Foodservice War. Now They Have to Run a Kitchen.

Summary

• In Q3 2025, 15% of c-store prepared food visits were converted QSR occasions. In 38% of those cases, the consumer had specifically considered McDonald’s first, according to Technomic’s February 2026 Future of Convenience Stores report.
• C-store foodservice grew 5.7% in 2025, outpacing QSR’s 4.7% growth. The food quality perception gap has narrowed from 13 points to 11 points since 2022; brand loyalty trails QSRs by just 2 points.
• 55% of c-stores and 72% of chains are now actively hiring professionals from restaurants and foodservice to run their food programs.
• Some chains are going further: RaceTrac acquired Potbelly locations in 2025, and industry analysts expect additional restaurant acquisitions by c-store operators in 2026.
• The structural problem: c-store equipment was specified for grab-and-go throughput across limited dayparts. These same machines are now running restaurant-level volumes from morning to night, in staffing environments with less operational redundancy than a dedicated kitchen.
• The competitive gain is real. The operational infrastructure required to protect it is the story the data has not yet caught up to.

 

For the past decade, convenience stores have targeted quick-service restaurant customers. They have enhanced their coffee offerings, introduced made-to-order sandwich stations, invested in pizza programs, upgraded food displays, and provided additional staff training. These initiatives are all part of a concerted effort to position convenience stores as true competitive options to QSRs.

They have won.

New data from Technomic, published in late March 2026, confirmed what operators on both sides of this competition have felt for years. In Q3 2025, 15% of all prepared food and beverage visits to c-stores were occasions where the consumer had also considered a quick-service restaurant but chose the c-store instead. Among those consumers, 38% had specifically weighed McDonald’s.¹ They compared, and they chose the c-store.

That is a genuine competitive victory. The question now is whether the equipment running those programs can sustain it.

How a Decade of Investment Paid Off

The quality gap between c-store food and restaurant food has been closing steadily, and the numbers now show it. In 2022, 54% of consumers rated QSR food as “excellent” versus 41% for c-stores, a 13-point gap. In 2025, that spread had narrowed to 11 points.¹ Brand loyalty is following the same arc. In 2022, QSRs led c-stores in strong brand loyalty by 5 percentage points. By 2025, that gap was down to 2 points.¹

These shifts do not happen because consumers lower their standards. They happen because c-stores raised theirs. And the investment behind the improvement has been deliberate. According to the same Technomic report, 55% of c-store operators and 72% of chains are actively hiring professionals from restaurants and broader foodservice to build and run their food programs.² They are not repurposing convenience store staff. They are recruiting people who built careers in professional kitchens.

The menu ambition that has followed reflects it. Programs like Casey’s BBQ Brisket Pizza, QuickChek’s made-to-order breakfast sandwiches, and Alltown Fresh’s smoothie lineup are not gas station food with a rebrand. They are food programs with culinary intent, developed with the same discipline a restaurant chain would bring to a new menu tier.²

Some operators are going further than hiring and menus. RaceTrac, one of the largest c-store chains in the Southeast, acquired Potbelly restaurant locations in 2025, embedding a restaurant brand directly into its operations. Industry analysts at C-Store Dive identified in January that further c-store acquisitions of restaurant concepts are a likely 2026 storyline.³ The competitive posture has gone from “compete with restaurants” to “own one.”

C-store foodservice grew faster than QSR for the second consecutive year in 2025. The food quality perception gap is 11 points and closing. The brand loyalty gap is 2 points. The competition is no longer theoretical.

Winning Customers Is One Problem. Feeding Them Is Another.

Here is what the competitive data does not show: the kitchen behind the counter.

Convenience stores were built around a specific operational model. Fuel at the pump. High-turn packaged goods on the floor. A foodservice area offering coffee, fountain drinks, and grab-and-go items across a limited window of the day. The equipment that supports that model, roller grills, hot holding cases, fountain machines, coffee brewers, refrigerated cases, was designed for that load. Sized for it. Specified for it.

That model no longer describes what a competitive c-store food program looks like in 2026. Today’s programs run breakfast sandwiches, lunch build-to-order, afternoon snack, and evening pizza. They run espresso machines and smoothie blenders alongside traditional fountain. They hold hot food for impulse customers who may arrive at any point across a 12- to 16-hour window. The equipment doing all of that work is, in many stores, the same equipment that was doing a fraction of it five years ago.

Technomic was careful to name this tension directly in its own report. “C-stores are not restaurants,” it stated, noting that restaurant foodservice equipment and labor structures are built specifically around food production, while c-store foodservice runs inside a retail environment with competing demands on space, staff, and resources.² A chain operator quoted in the report made the operational constraint plain: “They don’t understand our space and labor limits.”²

What Reliable Equipment Really Means

The Technomic data on why consumers chose c-stores over QSRs is instructive here. Of those converted occasions, 66% were impulse or unplanned visits rather than scheduled meals.¹ Impulse customers are passing through. They did not plan to stop. They saw the food program, made a decision in seconds, and walked in. If the program is unavailable because a piece of equipment is down, that customer does not wait. That transaction does not reschedule. It simply disappears.

Food safety adds another dimension. Hot holding equipment running at continuous load for multi-daypart programs needs to hold consistent temperature to stay compliant. A roller grill that drifts out of range, or a refrigerated case that starts running warm, creates not just a revenue problem but a regulatory one. Health code exposure can affect a store’s operating status well beyond the foodservice counter.

None of this is a reason to pull back from the investment. The competitive case for c-store foodservice is well established and the data is moving in the right direction. But winning market share from McDonald’s and sustaining it are two different challenges. The first is a strategy question. The second is an operational one. And the operational answer starts with keeping the equipment that delivers the food program running at the performance level the new business model and the customer now expects.

C-stores won on ambition. The next competition is decided in the kitchen.

Footnotes

1. CSP Daily News / Technomic, “Convenience stores are stealing share from quick-service restaurants,” Chuck Ulie, March 24, 2026
2. CSP Daily News / Technomic, “Convenience-store foodservice operations are becoming more like that of restaurants,” Chuck Ulie, March 27, 2026
3. C-Store Dive, “8 trends that will define convenience retailing in 2026,” January 6, 2026
4. C-store foodservice growth figures: CSP Daily News / Technomic, “Inside the Convenience-Store Playbook to Beat QSRs,” Heather Lalley, February 25, 2025