Convenience Store and Gas Station all in one really nothing new

When you pull up to a new sleek Convenience  store /Gas  station and get a gallon of milk  or cigarettes etc. It really is nothing new.
In fact in the early days of driving you might also get your car fixed. or pick up your prescription.
 back in the day many towns consisted of a couple essential business often in combination with one another.
Many drug stores functioned as gas stations with pumps put front and a small lunch counter inside and many grocery stores served as gas stations and some repaired cars as well as had restaurants attached.

Verona Gas and Grocery store combo now just car repairs

My dear friend in Erie Pa. Ceora grew up in just such a combo grocery gas station in Union City Pa.  while her mom her and her sisters took care of the grocery store there dad was outside pumping gas and doing minor car repairs. Like many store owners they lived in an upstairs apartment .
Stand alone gas stations where a rarity almost all offered some type of mechanical repairs
 and many which had grocery stores attached  later dropped the grocery and became full time  repair garages as super markets came into being.
I remember when I was a kid stopping and getting grocery's at a gas /grocery/ coin laundromat in W. Sunsbury Pa.  while  on our way to go camping in Butler county with my scout troop.
But thats the way it was out of necessity to make a living back then .
there was a combo grocery and gas station/ garage  down in Verona near where I live which is now a full time garage and one of my customers cousins runs an Italian restaurant in Bridgeville which they did not realize was once a grocery store /gas/ repair garage.   It was also not unusual to find  dairy stores  combined with bars  located in the rear.
as well . Even today look at modern Drugstores like Walgreen which offer everything.
One time I had a small Foodland Supermarket I took care of the alarm and he was many things to the community he sold  money orders, stamps and cashed checks  he was the community's bank, and post office all rolled into one.
You had to do it because this is how you survived.
But almost all this small combo stores are gone now as  community's grow and big box stores are rampart and cost's prohibit running a small stand alone combined  grocery store  gone are the corner stores and stand alone  butcher shops  and many other business as taxes and regulations and not being able to buy in quantity to get price breaks prohibit these types of business. A real shame .