Pre-Meal for Apr 22, 2026The Popcorn Advantage

Happy Wednesday!

My friend Don Miller texted me a picture of a gas station recently, unremarkable in every way except for one detail: a popcorn cart with a red-and-white striped awning, tucked in between the pumps.

Whenever you fill your tank at the Blue Harbor Pointe car wash and Shell station in Mandeville, Louisiana, they hand you a free bag of popcorn. And I think it’s brilliant.

Gas stations are, by every measure, a commodity business. There’s no meaningful reason to choose one pump over another, and certainly no emotional one, which is why most people default to deciding by price—especially these days.

Add some popcorn to the equation, and you’ve given me a reason to be selective. For a bag of popcorn, I’ll drive a little further or wait for a break in oncoming traffic so I can zip across the street—and that’s doubly true if I’ve got squirmy “No more errands!” kids in the back seat.

A bag of free popcorn turns a commodity into a choice, and an everyday chore into a little treat.

Buc-ee's built a cult around this principle at scale—turn a necessary gas stop into a destination. But this Shell station is proof that you don't need 74 pumps or a brisket-carving station to pull it off. In fact, the cost to execute is negligible.

In a category where everyone else in town is competing on price alone, the popcorn is an advantage so clear it feels almost unfair—though the only injustice is that the others didn’t think of it first.

Have a good service,

Will

P.S. Thanks, Don! (And if you see a pre-meal out in the world I should know about, hit me up: will@unreasonablehospitality.com)