History of Hess in Lancaster County + Hess in Central PA + Former Tom's Warwick Center

For today's post, we have quite a few things to take a look at, including a unique former Tom's Convenience Store. To start, let's take a look at the history of Hess in Lancaster County, plus how CR's Friendly Markets fueled Hess' Central Pennsylvanian expansion.

Part 1: Hess in Lancaster County

Lancaster saw its first Hess service stations, at 5 Hartman Bridge Road and 1704 Columbia Avenue, in the 1960s.

Grand Opening ad for the Columbia Ave location - Lancaster New Era - May 5, 1967

Just over two decades earlier, in 1942, Carlos R. Leffler, Inc was founded in Richland, PA as a fuel and propane distribution business. In 1981, the company opened its first convenience store, known as CR's Friendly Market, around Reading, PA.

By the late 1990s, Hess operated three locations in Lancaster County, the aforementioned Hartman Bridge Road and Columbia Avenue locations as well as a station on Furnace Hills Road in Lititz (more on that later on).

By 1999, Leffler had grown its CR's Friendly Markets chain to 65 stores throughout Central Pennsylvania. 55 of the 65 stores were sold to Amerada Hess, Inc in 1999, including all 16 of its stores in Lancaster County. There was only one article I could find about the sale, which I've included in its entirety below:

Leffler Selling off Family Businesses, CR's Markets Going to Hess - Fuel-Distribution Firm has Buyer, too

The family of the late Carlos R. Leffler is selling its businesses, which include 16 convenience stores and fuel-distribution operations in Lancaster County.

Petroleum giant Amerada Hess Corp. has agreed to buy the CR's Friendly Market convenience-store chain.

Another national, public company will buy the gas, fuel oil, and propane-distribution business, said John Byler, son-in-law of the businesses' founder and president of two of the family's firms. He declined to name that buyer and said only a tentative agreement has been reached.

"We just think it's a good time," Byler said, explaining why the family decided to sell the firm Leffler founded in 1942. "We just think the economy's very good."

Byler declined to reveal the companies' sale price.

He said both buyers will likely retain the existing staff of the Leffler operations. The businesses have almost 300 employees in Lancaster County, including about 50 in fuel distribution and about 15 at each store, Byler said.

The Leffler companies, based in Richland, Lebanon County, employ about 950 people, said Byler, of Lancaster.

Byler said Amerada Hess will buy 55 of the 65 CR's Friendly Markets, including all the Lancaster County locations. The other 10, he said, are leased to other parties.

Carl Tursi, a spokesman for New York City-based Amerada Hess, said, "This will give us a chance to create a nice presence in your area."

The company already operates three Lancaster County gas stations under the Hess name, at 1704 Columbia Ave. and 5 Hartman Bridge Road in Lancaster and 699 Furnace Hill Pike, Lititz. Nationally, it has about 600 stations or stores.

Tursi said the two firms have reached an agreement, but have not yet closed the sale. It should be completed within about 60 days.

"We have been interested in expanding our retail marketing along the east coast," Tursi said.

"We'll want to redo things, put up new canopies," Tursi said, adding that the stores will be renamed Hess Express, the name used by Hess's own growing convenience-store arm.

Hess's trademark green-and-white colors will be used at the stores once the transaction is complete, he said, and other upgrades are likely.

With CR's markets, Hess will acquire one of the largest string of convenience stores in Lancaster County. Turkey Hill Minit Markets has more than 50 stores in the county.

In early 1998, Uni-Marts bowed out of the local market after leases on its 22 stores ended. Many of them now operate under the name Getty Mart. Sheetz has made inroads into the market by establishing four stores here.

Amerada Hess produces and distributes gasoline, kerosene, heating oil, diesel fuel, natural gas and other products from New England to Texas. It had 1998 revenues of $6.59 billion and a net loss of $458.9 million.

Byler said it makes sense to sell both arms of the Leffler companies at once, since the stores were outlets for the gasoline it distributes.

"If we were going to sell anything, we were going to sell everything," he said.

Its Lancaster County locations include the main propane division office in Intercourse, plus fuel-distribution offices at Mount Joy, New Holland, and on Ross Street.

Byler said the buyer of those businesses may continue to use the Leffler name and could expand operations.

"We hope the business goes on for a lot of years," Byler said.

Byler said the family operates four businesses. He serves as president of Petroleum Products Equipment Co. and ABE Oil Co. Inc. ABE is its Shell oil division which owns the real estate where CR's markets are located. Hess will acquire that real estate, Byler said.

Patrick Castagna of New Holland, the other son-in-law of the late Leffler, is president of Carlos R. Leffler Inc. and CR's Friendly Markets Inc.

Company founder Leffler, who died in 1994, was a longtime supporter and member of the board of trustees of Elizabethtown College. His widow, Georgiana Leffler, died in 1996. That same year, Elizabethtown College dedicated the 900-seat Carlos R. and Georgiana E. Leffler Chapel and Performance Center.

As mentioned in the article above, Hess went on to remodel all of the stores to its new "Hess Express" nameplate by the end of 1999.

CR's Friendly Market in Berwick, PA while being converted to Hess - Press Enterprise - April 15, 1999

Back to Hess' locations in Lancaster County. As part of the Leffler purchase, Hess gained ownership of a station at 1792 Columbia Avenue in Columbia, however this location was never branded as a CR's (likely due to its lack of a convenience store).

Former Leffler Gas Station in Columbia - Lancaster County Property Records

As part of the expansion of its "Hess Express" concept, all Hess service stations in Lancaster County were demolished and rebuilt in the late 1990s and early 2000s (except the Lititz location). These remodels occurred in 1998 at the Hartman Bridge Road location and in 2001 at both of the Columbia Avenue locations.

In 2002, a new Hess Express opened at 5387 Lincoln Hwy in Gap. That was the final Lancastrian expansion for the company.

Things went smoothly for about 13 years, until Speedway purchased all of Hess' retail operations. All of Lancaster County's Hess stations were converted to Speedway in March 2015.

A Floridian Hess Express being converted to Speedway - Mrx Spd on Vimeo

In 2020, 7-Eleven purchased Speedway from Marathon Petroleum for $22 Billion. The stores that were not sold to 7-Eleven were rebranded to Marathon gas stations. In Lancaster County, where the convenience stores became Baltimore, MD-based High's, four locations were converted. They were: both stores in Lititz, the Mount Joy store, and the Columbia store. The rest are still operating as Speedway, although mostly just in name at this point as 7-Eleven has replaced most of Speedway's private label brands with its own.

Part 2: CR's Friendly Markets

As mentioned above, CR's Friendly Markets were convenience stores around Central Pennsylvania. The chain was headquartered in Richland, Lebanon County. The first opened in 1981 in Reading, PA. 55 of the 65 locations were sold to Hess in 1999.

The final two CR's Friendly Markets were the stores at 550 E. High Street in Elizabethtown and 742 Walnut Street in Lebanon.

The Elizabethtown location remained open until 2012 when the owner was caught selling illegal drugs.

The Elizabethtown CR's after closing - Lancaster New Era - February 2, 2012

The Lebanon location, however, is still open at the time of writing.

Now, I wish I could have tracked down all 65 of the former CR's locations, but after exhausting all means of research, including newspapers, telephone books, city directories, taxpayer records, and more, I could only find 58 of them.

Out of those 58 locations, three posed a strange problem for me while researching. I found addresses online for the Richland, Frackville, and Pine Grove stores. All three featured the CR's building design, but there was a Speedway operating down the street, also with the CR's design. I really have no clue what happened here. If you have any ideas for what happened, please let me know in a comment below. Anyways, here's the 58 locations I was able to find, in both list and map form:

Note that the above list and map may be updated without notice.

Part 3: Former Tom's Warwick Center

One of Hess' pre-CR's-purchase stores in Lancaster County was a store at 699 Furnace Hills Pike in Lititz. While researching this location, I came across a newspaper from 1997 which read "Tom's Warwick Center Exxon." I hadn't known that Lititz ever had a Tom's, so this was pretty exciting for me to find. Anyways, here's the history of Tom's Warwick Center.

In 1989, this station was built as an Exxon following the company's design of the time. One thing that I couldn't figure out is if this had a Tom's from the start or if it was added later on. Anyways, it continued to operate as an Exxon until around 1998, when it became a Hess (although the Tom's c-store continued to operate). It remained that way until about 2004, when it was sold and became a Sunoco. The convenience store is now "Stop & Shop" (although it has nothing to do with the grocery store chain in the New England area. Don't ask me how they got away with that!) Now it's time for some photos.

Tom's Warwick Center - Loopnet - 2004?

This first photo - which I was excited to find - shows the station and store before becoming Sunoco and "Stop & Shop." I assume this photo is from 2004 when the building was being sold.

February 27, 2022

This second photo shows the convenience store and gas station today. It's a pretty standard Sunoco so I won't go into much detail about it.

Part 4: Photos

Over the past four years while photographing retail in and around Lancaster County, I've photographed quite a few former CR's and Hess locations, so I'll put them here.