Sheetz puts the gas in gastronomy

On Route 322 in Ephrata, Pa., a new Sheetz location tempts drivers with popcorn chicken and fried pickles, 24 hours a day.

Behold the convenience store, the place off the highway or just down the road where we unsheathe our lunch from heavy plastic and clutch restroom keys attached to blocks of wood. It is where we shuffle in the morning cold while we gas up the SUV. It is part of our pop culture, from Apu's Quik-E-Mart and the seditious Dante and Randal in Clerks to Chevy Chase telling his son in National Lampoon's Vacation that he is so hungry he could eat a gas-station sandwich.

And yet change is afoot. To find it, the best place to go is Altoona, Pa., the home of Sheetz, one of the largest and fastest-growing convenience-store operators in the country, with 440 outlets and annual revenues of $7 billion. The brash and sprawling Sheetz clan is at the leading edge of an effort to remake convenience stores into something tastier and more wholesome, built around prepared food rather than chips, gas, and cigarettes. One indication of the upgrade: Sheetz, the home of the shmuffin and the shmiscuit and the shmagel, was among five winners of the 2012 Golden Chain Award from Nation's Restaurant News, the first time a convenience store made the cut.