Sheldon Ellig, who owns the chain, told the newspaper that adult magazines were previously removed from six Stop-N-Go stores. Others pulled the magazines this past week.
"We have had a number of people ask us to take them out, so we're saying, even though we have some customers that are going to make a scene that we don't have them, we have to deal with the majority of the customers [image-nocss] that come into our store," he said. "So, all we're trying to do is we want to keep everybody happy, and we want to minimize the problem."
Ellig wouldn't confirm whether the move was companywide, but said, "We're not going to want to discriminate."
Stop-N-Go has more than 20 locations in North Dakota and Minnesota, according to the company's Web site.
"We're having people getting involved in drugs and getting involved in sex-oriented crimes, and we're having all that type of stuff, and where does it start?" Ellig told the newspaper. "It starts with the parents having control of their children, and they don't always have control. It's not that they don't want to, but I'm just saying to myself, it's not easy to raise a family today."
Stop-N-Go isn't the first convenience store in Fargo to shed its adult magazine section, according to the newspaper.
Kum & Go was purged of porn two or three years ago after an e-mailed edict from corporate headquarters, said Clark Ridgway, manager at a store in Fargo.
Ridgway said he's not sure why the decision was made, but he said it hasn't hurt the business.
A manager at a competing convenience store in Fargo, who declined to give his name because official statements must come from his corporate office, called it a "big statement" for Stop-N-Go to pull the magazines, which he said are a high-sales, high-profit item.
"That would be like pulling cigarettes," he said.
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