You Can Fill Up in More Ways Than One at New Breed of Service Station

Regular, ethyl or cafe latte?

At Charles Khalil’s gas station, you can now sit down at a table and sip cappuccino while filling your tank.

It’s on Los Angeles’ Westside, naturally, offering not merely premium coffee but gourmet cheese, fine wine, fresh flowers and holiday gift baskets.

Khalil is not the only gas dealer to trade in his grease rack for a $15,000 espresso machine. Gas dealers throughout Southern California--who once relied on Blue Chip stamps, free glassware and other giveaways to attract business--are finding new ways to appeal to customers’ tastes.

At a Unocal station at the Grapevine, customers can order a Nathan’s Famous hot dog over a “talking pump.”

The economic benefits of trying to refuel humans, not just machines, are clear: 16% of restaurant meals sold in the United States are ordered from automobiles; 10% are eaten in the car, according to a Chicago-area marketing firm, NPD Crest, which tracks the consumer habits of 13,000 households.

It is not clear whether the automobile is moving or stopped when the meal is being eaten.

That’s why car makers added cup holders.

And consider this new product arriving just in time for Christmas: a bib for commuters. It absorbs spills and contains a wide pocket to catch crumbs. (Rolls-Royces have trays for back-seat passengers, but no one has yet proposed trays in front.)

Of course, gas stations for years have sold items such as cigarettes, chewing gum and soda pop. But sales of food and other specialty items gained popularity only during the oil shortages of the 1970s. Stations underwent a transformation, from places where a friendly attendant would pump your gas, clean your windshield, check your oil and give you Blue Chip stamps to a place where you pay first to a stone-faced attendant behind a high-security window and then serve yourself.

Perhaps speculating that energy-conscious drivers would want to avoid buying gas and then driving elsewhere for food and groceries, Arco opened its first AM/PM Mini Market in 1975 at the corner of Brookhurst Street and Trask Avenue in Garden Grove. It’s still there (though no one has proposed that it be declared a landmark like Brentwood’s famous Spanish Colonial-style gas station), and these days Arco rakes in about $500 million a year from sales of items in nearly 900 AM/PM Mini Market in five Western states.

“We don’t open stores now that have just gasoline,” said Arco spokesman Al Greenstein. “It is simply not as profitable.”

“Anything and everything that is a convenience to the consumer is being tried,” said Trilby Lundberg, publisher of the Los Angeles-based Lundberg Letter, which tracks petroleum and consumer trends.

One new trend is fast-food restaurants at gas stations. Rally’s hamburgers are slung at a Unocal in Lakewood. Dunkin Donuts are sold out of a Mobil in Brentwood. And at a Texaco in Carson--across the street, ironically, from the Arco refinery--customers can buy a Subway sandwich or a Taco Bell burrito, withdraw cash from an ATM, shop for groceries . . . oh, yes, and fill their tank.

The idea of selling cappuccino at a gas station began in the Pacific Northwest, according to industry officials.

“It’s fairly big up there, and it’s just now coming down here in Southern California,” said Ron Sharp, merchandising specialist for Chevron USA Products Co. Indeed, cappuccino carts have shown up at some stations in Riverside and San Diego counties.

But few gas dealers have gone as far as Khalil, whose Mobil station is at Olympic and Westwood boulevards.

Khalil said he got the do-it-yourself cappuccino machine because he wanted to improve the gasoline buying experience--and maximize his bottom line.

“I can see the trend,” said Khalil, a Lebanese immigrant who admittedly doesn’t know how to change a tire.

“When you think of a gas station, the first thing you think of probably is the smell. Gas stinks,” he noted. But now, the smell of brewing coffee wafts through the air.

“I want to create something that truly fits the neighborhood.”

A cup of cappuccino or cafe latte sells for $1.50. A single espresso is 99 cents.

But don’t stop at the cappuccino machine, said Khalil, who invites visitors to see the bathroom. It is decorated Grecian style with imitation marble tile and plaster columns and automated sensors that activate the sink and toilet.

Khalil’s wife, Kaaren, said the couple is contemplating a “cut-through” window where the magazine rack is now, installing a deli there so you can yell out your sandwich selection from the pump and get it after your fill-up.

Unocal is testing a TV screen on gas pumps at a station in Saugus. The talking screen instructs customers how to use the pump, but also plays commercials--without, they insist, subliminal advertising.

So far, however, there have been no reports of Southern California gas station owners imitating their British counterparts.

In some British stations, motorists are treated to a free five-minute massage of the head, shoulders and hands aimed at “alleviating stress and combatting road rage among drivers.” British officials point out that road rage was first identified in America.