In a BP gas station on busy Granada Boulevard in the small town of Ormond Beach, Florida, +add food is an unexpected find. It’s an upscale bowl concept with polished concrete floors and butcher block tables for lingering over made-from-scratch bowls brimming with fresh ingredients like garbanzo salad, kale slaw, avocado scallion mash and apple curry vinaigrette.

What's missing from our roadways are stores with character, personality and flavors.

There’s kombucha on tap sourced from a North Florida family-owned company, grab-and-go bowls and pita, “thoughtful” packaged snacks and a cold case stocked with an extensive offer of local craft beers, wine and other refreshing beverages.

+add food was launched by three young professionals who’d worked together at a high-end restaurant in Tampa and dreamed of striking out on their own. The trio moved to Ormond Beach and scored a high-visibility location—a BP station/convenience store that was closing its doors. The idea was to take this small store and offer a place for people to feel at home.

“We wanted to treat this like it was our awesome restaurant, and we weren’t going to be lazy about this,” Sara Afshari, co-owner, said. “At first I thought ‘how will people get past the fact we’re in a gas station?’ If you have really good food with people who care about the food and nurture it, then people will come,” she said.

Ultimately, the partners felt good about the location. “Rather than taking a giant risk renting for $30 or $40 a square foot, we took this chance in a gas station.”

FOOD 101

The marketing is all grassroots. Afshari tells people, “I know we’re in the BP—it’s weird, but stop in. People come in and wonder, ‘How am I eating this in a gas station?’” she said. Because of that, first-time customers often don’t know what to order, so Afshari helps them decide. “It’s important to educate people about your food,” she said.

“We are all fine-dining chefs and hospitality workers” from various backgrounds, she explains. “You have to be passionate about food. You have to want to taste all the different things and explain it to people so they can understand the taste of it.”

The Keto and Persian Bowls are customer favorites. “Keto is made for people on a low-carb diet. It gives them something different with lots of flavor so they can follow the diet in a delicious way,” Afshari explained. The bowl is a combination of rosemary thyme mushrooms, smoked pork, avocado scallion mash, Kalamata olives, Chimichurri with cauliflower broccoli rice. “We have seasonings here that are different. You don’t expect saffron in a c-store. We marinate chicken in onion water; it’s a Middle Eastern trick,” she said.

Healthy Food Tastes Great

There’s a hospital around the corner from the store, and before there was any marketing for this unique gas station, doctors and nurses discovered the food and became regular customers.

The c-store now offers Monday through Saturday delivery with a contactless payment option, or customers can pick up their orders to go. In addition to individual-size bowls, the menu includes family-size meals. Chefs are baking up dark chocolate chip banana bread and empanadas, too.

Not only is the food at +add food healthy, but nothing here harms the environment. Afshari said, “All of our containers are compostable as we take the environmental impact of our business seriously.”

+add food is part of the landscape of the town. “What’s missing from our roadways are stores with character, personality and flavors. If there was a +add food at every corner it would give big chains some competition. We add character to neighborhoods,” Afshari said. “You’ll never walk into a big box chain and go, ‘Wow what did I just have?’ We’re anything but bland!”