![]() After all, the first self-serve grocery store, where customers picked items instead of handing over a list to a clerk, didn’t exist until 1916. “There is growing recognition in the petroleum industry that the auto has revolutionized all retailing-except the retailing of the gas station! It is even seeping into the awareness of this industry that car traffic is now shopping traffic, and that more cars, driven by men as well as women, stop at gas stations every day than drive up to any other outlet, including perhaps the food outlet! No other retailer so completely wastes such a remarkable traffic count as does the gas station!” But in 1964 the time was ripe and the possibilities for self-service fueling were fertile. ![]() Legendary advertising and marketing executive E.B. Weiss in the 1964 book, Management and the Marketing Revolution Gas stations had dabbled in self-serve before the 1960s. In 1947, Frank Urich opened the first self-service gasoline station in Los Angeles. The unbranded station featured rows of gleaming pumps and girls on roller skates who zoomed around to collect money and reset dispensers. At these early self-serve stations, the pumps ran by a mechanical computer that allowed an attendant to manually turn the pump back to zero for each new customer. The worker also collected money and returned for customers who pumped their own fuel. Some unbranded stations switched to this type of self-service for gasoline, but the idea didn’t catch on with many retailers at the time. The major oil companies continued to compete with one another via unique gimmicks-such as gasoline-pump shaped salt and pepper shakers-and promoting clean restrooms. And customers remained very loyal to particular fuel brands. ![]() John Roscoe initially wanted nothing to do with remote access self-service gasoline. He had opened his first convenience store in 1957 in Denver and by 1964 was operating a chain of 12 stores in the area. ![]()
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