Youre on a road trip, you gas up, you venture inside for a pick-me-up... and youre either dazzled or depressed. The convenience store game ranges from quite nice, and Ill happily snack up to Oh dear God, how will I get the bacteria off the bottom of my shoes? Theres a hierarchy to convenience stores, and if you know what youre looking for, you can drift down the road another mile for a more fortuitous landing. Thats where the inaugural American Customer Satisfaction Index Convenience Store Study 2024 comes in.

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　　This study ranks all the gas station store brands by looking at metrics like what kind of cooked food is available, how fast service is, whether you can preorder by app, what kind of merchandise is sold, where the store is located, what its hours are, and whether rewards programs reward repeat visits. Its based on 5,710 surveys of customers chosen at random and contacted via email between March and September 2024.

　　Some say convenience stores may even give McDonalds a run for its money. The top-performing convenience store brands are now on par with fast food chains in terms of food quality and variety, offering customers a wide range of fresh, gourmet options, says Forrest Morgeson, associate professor of marketing at Michigan State University and director of research emeritus at the ACSI. For the particular metric of cooked food quality, Wawa, Buc-ees, Caseys General Stores, Kwik Trip and Sheetz meet or exceed fast food chains.

　　The number one convenience store in the U.S., according to this study? Its Wawa. If you havent heard of this store, its found on the East Coast, centered in the Northeast and the South. The second place store is QuikTrip, whose stores are found in the midwest (not to be confused with the store that sounds the same but is spelled differently, Kwik Trip, which is the No. 2 midwestern store and is #7 nationally). And in third place is Buc-ees, which is a southern chain. Westerners, your Circle K and 7-Eleven dont make the top 10; theyre at No. 11 and No. 13, respectively.

　　Heres the list of the top 15 convenience stores in the U.S.: 1. Wawa

　　2. QuikTrip

　　3. Buc-ees

　　4. Murphy USA

　　5. Caseys General Store

　　6. Sheetz

　　7. Kwik Trip

　　8. BP

　　9. Cumberland Farms

　　10. Speedway

　　11. Circle K

　　12. Racetrac

　　13. 7-Eleven

　　14. All others

　　15. Shell