Tacos: Sunoco's latest fast-fuel offering

Sunoco is dishing up a new way for customers to refuel at its convenience stores:

Tacos.

Up to now, it's been best known for its gasoline, but on Friday, the retail fuel marketer is marking the grand opening of its first Laredo Taco Co. outlet at an APlus store in Greensburg, in Western Pennsylvania. The first Philadelphia-area taco store is set to open next month in Chester County.

This venture into fresh, made-to-order food - while not novel in convenience-store circles - is new territory for Sunoco, whose mainstay business has been motor-fuel sales.

Since Sunoco was sold in 2012 to a Texas company that merged its retail network with the Stripes convenience-store chain two years ago, the retailer with deep Philadelphia roots has begun to take on a bit of a twang.

Sunoco is importing the Laredo Taco Co. concept from Stripes into its vast network of APlus convenience stores in the eastern United States, hoping to boost sales with repeat visits from hungry customers.

"Fresh food is really the growth driver for this business," Sunoco spokesman Jeffrey Shields said.

While America consumes less gasoline each year - improvements in vehicle efficiency are a long-term drag on fuel sales - retailers see great commercial promise in the nation's appetite for fast food.

Laredo Taco is attempting to build on the fresh fast-food trend. Tortillas, salsa, and meats are prepared fresh on the premises, Shields said. These are not the shrink-wrapped microwave burritos of another era.

Breakfast tacos, typically made from eggs and meat, are priced at $1.79 each, or two for $3. Lunch and dinner tacos are priced at $2.79 each or two for $5.

"Laredo Taco also drives sales of other items, sales of beverage and other high-margin food and merchandise goods for most customers who come in for the fresh handmade tacos and other Mexican food," Robert W. Owens, Sunoco's chief executive officer, told investment analysts in November.

The Stripes chain, which has its headquarters in Corpus Christi, Texas, created the Laredo Taco Co. brand in 2001 and now operates about 450 restaurants at its outlets in Texas, New Mexico, and Oklahoma.

Though Laredo Taco's chow has not yet achieved the cult status of the Wawa hoagie, it has its admirers.

"I seriously did not expect to find some of the most delicious tacos I have ever had inside a gas station taco place," Sarah H. of Richmond, Texas, wrote on the Internet review site Yelp.

Sunoco plans to open seven Laredo Tacos in Pennsylvania this year and several others in Southern states. Shields said heavily trafficked company-owned stores were chosen to test the market.

The first store in the Philadelphia area is nearing completion at an existing APlus market at Gap Newport Pike and Newark Road in Kennett Township.

It's a daring choice for a location - right in the heart of Chester County's mushroom-growing country, which may have more authentic taquerias per square mile than any other place in Pennsylvania.

"I think the competition in Texas should prepare us for any market," Shields said.

Megan Giambrone, a Sunoco engineer who is supervising the conversion of the Chester County site, said the restaurant will consume about half of the 4,200-square-foot building. The convenience store is expected to reopen by the end of February, though the restaurant will not begin serving food until the staff is trained.

The eastward expansion of the Laredo Taco chain coincides with the final phase of the complicated merger of Sunoco Inc. and the Stripes chain into a new corporate entity, of which Sunoco L.P. Energy Transfer Partners, Sunoco's parent company, owns 46 percent.

Traditionally, Sunoco earned about 65 percent of its profits from fuel sales, while Susser Holdings, the Stripes chain owner, earned only 35 percent from fuel.

With tacos moving east, Sunoco's gasoline is moving west. Stripes outlets in Texas have begun to rebrand their gasoline pumps with Sunoco's iconic logo, to take advantage of the nationwide exposure gained through sponsorship of NASCAR racing.

Through several other recent acquisitions, Sunoco's domain now stretches from the East Coast to Hawaii, and the corporate headquarters is being consolidated in Dallas.

Sunoco has become the nation's sixth-largest convenience store chain, with more than 1,500 stores, according to CSPNet.com, a trade publication. 7-Eleven is No. 1.

amaykuth@phillynews.com

215-854-2947@maykuth