BOSTON — Forty percent of consumers said they fear needing to use the restroom but not knowing where to find a clean one—a 3% increase from last year, according to GasBuddy’s 2019 summer travel survey. Despite this increase, however, cleanliness ratings for convenience-store restrooms have actually jumped 6% since 2017.
Boston-based GasBuddy collected data between September 2016 and April 2019 for this report. Brands needed to have at least 20 locations in a state to be included in the analysis.
“The reputation of gas-station restrooms has cleaned up significantly in the past three years, with brands making concentrated efforts to make their facilities sparkle,” said Frank Beard, convenience store and retail trends analyst for GasBuddy. “In fact, companies like Maverik and Sinclair respectively doubled and tripled their share of states with the top-rated restrooms in the span of a year, further proving the competition is overflowing at gas-station restrooms nationwide.”
Here are the top-rated c-store restrooms by number of states, according to GasBuddy …
QuikTrip had the top-rated restrooms in four states—Georgia, Kansas, South Carolina and North Carolina—which was good for second place.
Kwik Trip, Sinclair and Irving Oil all won in three states, resulting in a three-way tie for third place. Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin voted for Kwik Trip; Montana, North Dakota and Oregon voted for Sinclair; and Irving won in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont.
There was also a three-way tie for two-state winners: Holiday had the top-rated restrooms in Alaska and Michigan; Cumberland Farms won in Connecticut and Rhode Island; and Sheetz took the top spot in Ohio and West Virginia.
Eighteen brands won the restroom polls in one state: MAPCO (Alabama), Kum & Go (Arkansas), Rotten Robbie (California), Kelley’s Market (Illinois), Casey’s General Stores (Indiana), Pilot Flying J (Kentucky), RaceTrac (Louisiana), Pride (Massachusetts), Hy-Vee (Missouri), Murphy USA (Mississippi), Bucky’s (Nebraska), Chevron (New Mexico), Stewart’s Shops (New York), Shell (South Dakota), Speedway (Tennessee), Buc-ee’s (Texas), BP (Washington, D.C.) and Aloha Petroleum (Hawaii).
Get today’s need-to-know convenience industry intelligence. Sign up to receive texts from CSP on news and insights that matter to your brand.
CSP’s Top 202 details the largest chains in the convenience-store industry and the biggest M&A stories of the past year. Welcome to a deep dive into the c-store landscape.
Category sales performance in Beverages, Candy, General Merchandise, Packaged Food/Foodservice and Snacks.
The industry’s largest distributors by sales volume
Corporate retail news affecting the convenience-store industry
The latest information on products and trends in the convenience-store and foodservice industries.
Peek inside new convenience stores to uncover the best in retail store design across North America.