You can order your burger while you fill your tank and pay one bill at a combined gas station and fast-food restaurant that brings new meaning to the term gastronomy.
Amoco Corp. of Chicago and Burger King Corp. of Miami teamed up to open the $1.5 million complex on a busy corner in suburban Westchester last week, just in time to see how the idea plays with Labor Day travelers.Fast-food restaurants and gas companies that offer side-by-side service at highway exits are not uncommon, but Amoco and Burger King say this is the first operation where motorists can pump gas while ordering food.
As customers fill their tanks at one of four self-service islands, they can order their Whopper and fries by intercom from a menu posted above the pumps. A recorded message tells customers how to order and hypes the food.
Customers can pay for their gas and food orders inside the restaurant.
"I was going to go gas up, and then go another place to eat," Chidel Taylor of Chicago said Friday as he pumped gas into his Chevy Blazer. "Now I can do both at the same time. They should have more places like this."
Prices were about the same as those in other fast-food restaurants.
Amoco's marketing department has been working on the idea for several years and approached Burger King, said Howard Miller, an area adviser for Amoco.
"This is really the pilot station," Miller said. "If there seems to be a lot of consumer interest in the idea, I'm sure there will be some more somewhere down the road."
"We're trying to develop alternative sites," said Burger King spokesman Michael Evans. "We're taking the restaurant to where the people are."
Burger King built and runs the restaurant and Amoco paid for installation of the gas islands. Each company keeps profits from its side of the operation, although Amoco pays Burger King for staffing the cash register and in turn gets a small percentage of Burger King's gross profits, Miller said.
The idea was a new one to oil and food industry analysts, who had some reservations.
"Personally, if I happened to need gasoline, it's not going to convince me to go in and buy a burger and fries," said Frank Knuettel, an oil company analyst for Prudential Securities Inc. in New York. "But I'm just one person. I may not be representative of the demographics."
Ron Paul, a restaurant consultant, said the idea sounds like a logical experiment in the evolution of the gas station.
Oil companies have become the leaders in the convenience store industry, expanding their fare to include basic groceries as a way to entice more gasoline customers, said Paul, president of Technomics Inc., a Chicago-based restaurant consulting firm.
And fast-food restaurants will try almost anything to build business in a recession-gripped economy, he said.
For example, McDonald's Corp. announced this week that it will be opening an indoor playground, called Leaps & Bounds, in the Chicago suburb of Naperville. The pilot business will emphasize physical fitness and not McDonald's food.
As far the Burger King-Amoco store goes, Paul sees at least one drawback.
"Now the problem is, are you going to wash your hands (after pumping gas) or are you going to eat your burger with high-test?" he wonders.