Retail Forever

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 gro...

We've featured quite a few Tom's Convenience Stores here on Retail Forever over the past year, and before starting this post, I'll link them all here: Enola Etters Shrewsbury York (E. Market St) And now, continuing that series, we find ourselves at another of their former stores, which has quite a history. So, without further ado, let's get started on today's spotlight, store #11.  TOM'S #11 Opened:  2000 Address:   1954 Old Philadelphia Pike Photographed:  February 2022 / March 2022 Tom's #11 was the York-based chain's entry into Lancaster County. But to fully understand what happened here, we must go back to 1982, when Shipley-Humble, Inc opened a new type of gas station, the first of its type in Lancaster County. What made it so special, you may ask? What if I told you it sold two brands of gasoline. The new station would sell both Arco ...

1. Tom's Newberrytown - 2180 Old Trail Rd, Goldsboro, PA As far as I can see, this location was never actually branded as a Tom's. But it had the color scheme and appeared on the Tom's website, so........ Tom's c-store with Exxon gasoline, later converted to Exxon completely. Before the Tom's pattern design thingy was removed from the convenience store. (Google Maps Streetview) 2. Tom's E Market St - 2335 E Market St, York, PA Closed around 2006? Demolished in 2008/2009 for Giant Gasoline. Former Tom's, shortly before demolition (Google Maps Streetview)

TOM'S #9 Opened:  1997 Address:   459 N. Enola Rd Photographed:  August 2021 Remember that Tom's convenience store in Shrewsbury , which was featured on this blog back in July? Well, here I am at another Tom's, this time in Enola. If you're interested in the history of Tom's, I went into detail about it in the Shrewsbury post , so if you want some background on Tom's, I'd recommend you go check that out! Tom's #9, another store of the Pointed Roof design, opened in 1997, a year after Shrewsbury. Around 2012, many Tom's stores were converted to Sunoco, but this one was only converted halfway. The convenience store was rebranded to Sunoco A-Plus, however, the gas pumps continued to operate as Tom's. But then everything changed. Again. The Enola store was one of over 1,000 to be purchased by 7-Eleven in 2018 and by 2021, it has been completely converted to 7-Eleven. Tom's #9 - October 2008 - Likely the original appearance (Google Maps Streetview...

UPDATE (01/07/2022): The Shrewsbury Tom's has now closed, and may be replaced with a Royal Farms. History of the Tom's chain Tom's is a convenience store/gas station chain based in York, PA that once had stores throughout Central Pennsylvania. Created in 1994 by Shipley Energy as a way to distribute its gasoline, Tom's once operated 27 stores throughout Pennsylvania, namely in the York, Lancaster, and Harrisburg areas. But that number has since been reduced to one and a half. Around 2012, Shipley sold 14 of its 24 remaining Tom's stores to Sunoco, rebranding all of the stations and leaving just 10 Tom's stores in operation. Stores continued to close, until around 2015 when an Exxon in Dover, PA rebranded its gasoline pump canopy to the Tom's name (the convenience store had already been branded as a Tom's for some time before this change), marking the first Tom's opening in about eight years and the final Tom's expansion for the compa...