> often you can pay by card at the pump.

That’s definitely an innovation that creates convenience but does it really change the commercial function of the station much? You are still essentially transacting for fuel, which is what gas stations have done for decades. My guess is while a lot of stations provide that ability out of customer demand, but the owners would probably rather the customer come in and buy the over priced soda and Doritos along with the gas purchase. I don’t think owner-operators make hardly anything on the fuel sales.

With my comment I was thinking more along the lines of overall footprint of the station and what products are being sold. I think self-service pushed the ability for stations to service more pumps and with a person anchored to a register inside instead of outside attending to the pumps, it allowed the ability of stations to expand to more a mini-mart concept easily where more profitable products (to the station owner) are sold.

EV charging might help bring people into the food, but i suspect you don’t “turn tables” fast enough to make EV charging beneficial enough to bringing enough people inside to warrant devoting a lot of space to that activity.

In Oregon self-serve only became legal a few years ago so we still have plenty of full service stations and attendants to this day.