How Much Do Convenience Stores Make? Real Profit Data

The average U.S. convenience store took in about $2.25 million in in-store sales in 2025, and roughly $5.38 million once fuel is counted. Net profit is where published figures fall apart. The 5% to 10% net margins quoted across the web sit two to three times above what the channel's strongest public operators reported for their latest full years.

• Why it matters: Benchmarking against an inflated margin number leads operators to misread their own profit and loss (P&L) statement and chase the wrong fixes.
• Who this is for: Single-store owners, multi-unit c-store operators, and finance leads who need comparable numbers rather than industry trivia.
• Who can skip this: Anyone still deciding whether to open a store, and operators outside fuel and convenience retail.
• What you'll walk away with: A clear per-store revenue and profit range from 2025 data, plus the reason published net margins for c-stores disagree by a factor of three.
• Best next step to take: Recalculate net margin on in-store revenue alone, then compare the result with the 42.2% inside gross margin a top public operator reported.

A convenience store sells petroleum, prepared food, and lottery tickets from the same 2,500 square feet. That mix carries the channel through fuel price swings. It also puts three unrelated margin structures on one income statement, which is why "how much do convenience stores make" resists a single answer.

Most published answers give one net margin figure of 5% or 10%. Neither matches what publicly traded operators report, and the gap traces to whether fuel revenue sits in the denominator.

The National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) released its 2025 industry totals in April 2026. Those totals support firmer per-store numbers than either figure, along with a cost breakdown most articles skip. 

How Much Do Convenience Stores Make? The Latest Full-Year Benchmarks

The industry reports its results a year in arrears, so 2025 data released in April 2026 is the most current available. Those totals divide cleanly into per-store averages.

Benchmark (2025)	Figure
Total industry sales	$817.5 billion
Fuel sales	$476.3 billion
In-store sales (foodservice and merchandise)	$341.2 billion
U.S. store count	151,975
Average in-store sales per store	~$2.25 million a year (~$187,000 a month)
Average total sales per store, fuel included	~$5.38 million a year
Average transactions per store	45,160 a month (1,484 a day)
Reported net margin, Casey's General Stores (FY2026)	4.1%
Reported net margin, Murphy USA (2025)	2.4%
Net income per store, both operators	~$242,000–$261,000 a year

What Is the Average Convenience Store's Annual Revenue?

The average U.S. convenience store generated roughly $2.25 million in in-store sales in 2025, or about $187,000 a month. That figure comes from dividing the industry's $341.2 billion in in-store sales by 151,975 locations, as reported by NACS.

A second method lands in the same place. Casey's General Stores reported $6.34 billion in inside sales across 2,944 stores in the fiscal year ended April 30, 2026, which works out to $2.15 million per store.

Two methods landing within 5% of each other give the range more weight than either would alone. For planning purposes, $2.15 million to $2.25 million holds up as in-store revenue at an average-format store.

Add fuel and the number roughly doubles. Average total sales per store reach about $5.38 million a year, though fuel contributes far less profit than its share of revenue implies.

Why Do Reported Net Margins Range From 2% to 10%?

Published net margins for convenience stores range from 2% to 10%, and the spread traces partly to the denominator rather than to operator skill alone. A store that reports margin on total revenue, including fuel, will always look less profitable than one reporting on merchandise alone.

Public filings make the point. Casey's General Stores earned $714.4 million in net income on $17.56 billion of fiscal 2026 revenue, a net margin of 4.1%. Murphy USA earned $470.6 million on $19.4 billion in 2025, a net margin of 2.4%.

These rank among the top convenience store chains in the U.S., operating at a scale most independents will never reach. Neither approaches the 10% figure that circulates in industry write-ups.

The per-store view is more encouraging. Casey's net income divides to roughly $242,000 a store, and Murphy USA's to roughly $261,000. A convergence that tight across two dissimilar formats deserves attention, since Casey's runs a foodservice-led model and Murphy USA a small-format, fuel-led one.

For a single-store independent, expectations should sit lower. Applying a 5% net margin to $2.25 million of in-store revenue produces about $112,000 a year, although that benchmark depends on how the underlying owner-operator data defines revenue and margin.

Why Fuel Sales Distort Every Profit Number

Fuel is the largest line on a c-store income statement and among the smallest contributors to gross profit. The split explains why two stores with matching revenue report different profit.

How Do Fuel and In-Store Sales Differ?

Fuel accounted for 65% of sales at the average fueling store in 2025 and only 38.8% of gross profit dollars. Merchandise and foodservice inverted that ratio, delivering 35% of sales and 57.4% of gross profit. NACS reports both figures in its State of the Industry data.

Industry-wide, the ratio looks different again, because 29,355 of the 151,975 U.S. stores sell no fuel at all. Across all stores, fuel represents 58% of sales rather than 65%.

Revenue growth driven by fuel prices inflates the top line without improving profit, and price declines do the reverse.

That happened in 2025. Fuel sales fell to $476.3 billion from $501.9 billion as average pump prices dropped from $3.30 to $3.11 a gallon, even though gallons sold rose 0.5%.

What Do Fuel Margins Look Like?

Retail fuel margins ran between 28 and 43 cents a gallon at large operators in 2025, before credit card fees. Murphy USA reported 28.1 cents a gallon on 4.8 billion gallons, while Casey's reported 42.6 cents, excluding card fees.

Card fees matter more here than in most retail categories. The industry paid $21.3 billion in credit and debit fees in 2025, a cost that scales with fuel prices rather than fuel volume.

Netting those fees out produces the sub-2% fuel margins often quoted. The figure holds for fuel in isolation and says nothing about the store's overall profitability.

Why Do Fuel Customers Matter More Than Fuel?

A record 64% of drivers who filled up in 2025 also went inside the store. The figure rose six percentage points year over year, reaching the highest share NACS has recorded since 2007. Conversion runs higher still among some groups.

Drivers aged 35 to 49 converted at 75%, and daily commuters at 72%. Drivers over 65 converted at 35%, the lowest of any group.

That reframes the forecourt for an operator. Fuel works as a traffic driver into the in-store categories responsible for 57.4% of gross profit at fueling stores. The other 36% leave without entering, and closing that gap is what digital ordering for convenience stores addresses.

What Drives Convenience Store Profitability?

Gross profit concentrates in a handful of categories, and the rankings shifted in 2025. Category mix explains much of the variance between a store earning $112,000 and one earning $242,000.

Foodservice

Foodservice produced 28.5% of in-store sales and 38.9% of in-store gross profit in 2025, making it the channel's most profitable category by a wide margin. Prepared food alone would rank first in both sales and gross profit if separated from the wider foodservice group.

The margin structure explains the industry's investment in it. Casey's reported a 42.2% inside gross margin in fiscal 2026, well above the 20.2% merchandise unit margin Murphy USA reported on a small-format assortment.

Foodservice also carries costs merchandise does not, including labor, waste, and equipment. Operators weighing an expansion should model those costs rather than applying a blended margin.

Packaged Beverages and Beer

The cold vault accounted for a little over 25% of both in-store sales and gross profit in 2025. More than 80% of that profit came from packaged beverages rather than beer, with energy drinks driving category growth.

Beer sales declined during the year. The shift toward non-alcoholic and functional beverages moved profit toward the packaged beverage side of the vault.

Cigarettes and Other Tobacco Products

Other tobacco products surpassed cigarettes in monthly gross profit per store for the first time in 2025. The crossover marks a structural change in a category that anchored c-store profit for decades.

Cigarettes still move volume, at thin and shrinking margins. Nicotine pouches and similar products carry better margins on smaller baskets.

Both categories sit under federal, state, and local licensing rules. Operators should treat compliance costs and age-verification requirements as fixed operating expenses.

Lottery, ATMs, and Added Services

Lottery commissions, ATM fees, car washes, and propane exchange contribute modest revenue at high margin, and their main value is traffic. Lottery, in particular, draws repeat visits during large jackpots.

These services rarely change a P&L on their own. They matter as reasons for a customer to choose one store over another nearby.

General Merchandise and Private Label

Everyday essentials and seasonal impulse items hold steady demand, and private label products carry higher margins than the national brands they replace. Batteries, over-the-counter medication, and umbrellas turn over without promotional support.

Private label works only with enough volume to justify the program. Independents typically access private label programs through a wholesaler or buying group instead.

Where Does the Money Go? A Look at C-Store Operating Costs

Revenue benchmarks are only half of a comparison. The cost ratios below come from Internal Revenue Service (IRS) tax return data covering 147,351 sole proprietorship convenience stores. They work as a proxy for independents rather than for chains.

One caveat matters. The same dataset reports an average annual revenue of $52,768, which suggests a sample dominated by part-time operations. The ratios are therefore more useful than the dataset's dollar figures for comparison.

Cost of Goods Sold

Convenience stores spend roughly 53% of revenue on cost of goods sold, leaving an average gross margin near 47% in this dataset. Category mix moves this figure more than purchasing skill does.

A foodservice-heavy store will report a higher gross margin and higher waste, which is where convenience store inventory management software earns its keep. A cigarette-heavy store reports the reverse.

Labor

Wages and contract labor together average about 11% of revenue in the IRS dataset. The channel employed 2.75 million people in 2025 at an average wage of $15.04 an hour, or roughly 20 employees a store when divided by the national store count.

Turnover remains the harder cost. NACS put average employee turnover above 100% through 2025, an improvement from the 130% peak in 2021 but still a recurring hiring and training expense.

Rent, Utilities, and Card Fees

Rent averages about 4% of revenue, utilities 2%, and advertising 2%, with supplies and depreciation adding roughly 3% and 2%, respectively. This dataset excludes card fees, which run high at fuel-selling sites.

Total direct store operating expenses reached nearly $166 billion across the industry in 2025. Spread across 151,975 stores, that averages roughly $1.09 million a store a year, or about $91,000 a month.

Expense growth has outpaced sales growth for several years. NACS reports total expenses up 23.3% since 2021, including a 4.2% increase in 2025 alone.

How Should an Operator Benchmark Their Own Store?

Industry averages work as a reference point rather than a goal. Sales per square foot, the metric retail borrows from other channels, tells a c-store operator little, since formats range from an 800-square-foot kiosk to a 5,000-square-foot hyper-convenience store. Two comparisons carry more signal.

Basket Value and Transaction Counts

Industry transaction counts fell 3.0% in 2025 while basket value rose $0.24, and basket profitability declined $0.08. Stores sold more per visit and earned less on each one.

That combination is the clearest warning sign in the 2025 data. An operator seeing flat sales alongside falling transactions is seeing fewer transactions while higher basket values cover the gap.

Gross Profit per Store per Month

Gross profit dollars anchor a comparison between stores or periods better than sales do. Two stores with identical revenue can differ by six figures in gross profit on category mix alone.

Tracking gross profit by category each month exposes mix drift early. Most modern convenience store POS systems report it, exposing the mix drift that erodes foodservice margins.

How Do Loyalty and Foodservice Change the Profit Math?

Both levers act on the same variable: the share of sales a store captures inside the building rather than at the pump.

Converting Fuel Customers Into Store Customers

Convenience stores using location-based digital ordering generate $2.30 more per fueling transaction from guests already on site, according to the 2025 C-Store Loyalty Insights Report. The figure applies to customers who would otherwise have paid at the pump and left.

The arithmetic scales. A store converting 1,000 additional fueling transactions a month at $2.30 adds about $27,600 in annual sales, at merchandise margins rather than fuel margins in incremental in-store revenue.

Loyalty affects basket size on the same visits. Paytronix reports that loyalty member checks average 12% higher than non-member checks, the strongest check lift of any segment it measures.

What This Looks Like in Practice

Pump N' Pantry, a 14-store chain in Pennsylvania, combined a points program with order-ahead and reached 6,000 loyalty members in roughly 13 months. Online orders grew to 20% of overall sales.

The chain's stated goal was moving customers from pump to store, which aligns with the fuel-to-store conversion opportunity NACS quantifies at 64%. Its results appear in a Paytronix case study covering the rollout.

Program design determines whether the lift holds. Paytronix data indicates 95% of guests who visit four times keep returning. That makes the first four visits the window where c-store loyalty programs either work or fail.

Targeted promotion supports the same goal. Location-based offers and app-exclusive deals give a fuel customer a reason to walk inside. Convenience store marketing built around that moment can be more targeted than broad discounting.

Frequently Asked Questions About Convenience Store Profits

How Much Profit Does the Average Convenience Store Make per Year?

Publicly traded operators reported net income of roughly $242,000 to $261,000 a store in their most recent full fiscal years, based on companywide net income divided by store count. A single-store independent at industry-average revenue and a 5% net margin would earn closer to $112,000. Casey's General Stores and Murphy USA produced the higher figures across 2,944 and 1,800, stores respectively.

Scale, foodservice mix, and fuel volume account for much of the gap. Real-estate ownership matters as well, since rent is one of the few costs a chain can convert into an asset.

What Is the Typical Net Profit Margin for a Convenience Store, and What Affects It Most?

Public operator data suggests 2% to 4% when fuel revenue is included in the denominator, and higher when it is not. Casey's reported 4.1% and Murphy USA 2.4% on total revenue, against a 42.2% inside gross margin at Casey's.

Category mix affects the outcome most. Foodservice at 38.9% of in-store gross profit and packaged beverages at over 20% carry the store, while cigarettes and fuel contribute volume at thin margins.

Cost discipline decides the rest. Cost of goods sold near 53% of revenue and labor near 11% leave limited room, and expenses have risen 23.3% since 2021.

How Do Convenience Stores Make Money From Fuel Versus In-Store Sales?

Fuel generates the majority of revenue and a minority of gross profit at fueling stores, while in-store sales show the opposite pattern. At the average fueling store, fuel delivered 65% of sales and 38.8% of gross profit in 2025. Merchandise and foodservice delivered 35% of sales and 57.4% of gross profit.

Fuel margins ranged from 28.1 to 42.6 cents per gallon at the cited large operators before card fees. In-store gross margins ranged from 20.2% to 42.2% at the same companies, although the underlying merchandise mixes differ.

Fuel also drives store traffic: 64% of drivers who fueled up in 2025 entered the store, where higher-margin categories can contribute more significantly to gross profit.

What Is the Average Revenue per Square Foot for a Convenience Store?

In-store sales of $2.25 million spread across a typical footprint work out to roughly $625 to $900 per square foot per year. The range reflects format rather than performance.

NACS classifies stores from kiosks under 800 square feet to hyper-convenience formats of 4,000 to 5,000 square feet, with traditional stores near 2,500 per square feet. A traditional store at average revenue reports about $900 a square foot, while an expanded 3,600-square-foot store would generate about $625.

Fuel complicates the comparison further, since forecourt sales occupy no interior floor space. Sales per transaction and gross profit per store per month track performance more usefully.

How Much Does a Convenience Store Make in a Day?

An average store handles 1,484 transactions a day and takes in roughly $6,150 in in-store sales, or about $14,700 including fuel. Both figures derive from 2025 annual averages divided across 365 days.

Daily variance is wide. Location type, fuel volume, and foodservice program shift the figure more than any national average suggests. A store's own trailing 90 days makes a better reference point.

How Do Loyalty Programs and Foodservice Affect Annual Profitability?

Both move sales into the store's highest-margin categories, which is where annual profit is decided. Foodservice contributes 38.9% of in-store gross profit on 28.5% of in-store sales, so incremental foodservice revenue carries more profit than incremental fuel or cigarette revenue.

Loyalty affects the same equation through frequency and basket size. Member checks run 12% higher on average, and location-based digital ordering adds $2.30 per fueling transaction.

Neither lever is free. Operators should model program costs, foodservice labor, and waste against incremental gross profit instead of incremental sales.

What Does It Cost to Open a Convenience Store?

Startup costs sit outside the scope of these benchmarks, and they vary by format and fuel infrastructure. Operators evaluating an entry into the channel should review licensing, buildout, and inventory requirements separately. The article on how to open a convenience store covers those in detail.

The Bottom Line

How much convenience stores make requires looking at two revenue figures. The average U.S. store generates about $2.25 million a year in in-store sales, and $5.38 million when fuel is included.

Profit requires more care. Fuel revenue in the denominator contributes to the relatively low total-company net margins reported by the two public operators examined here: 2.4% and 4.1%. Per-store net income of $242,000 to $261,000 provides an additional benchmark, although these figures represent large public chains rather than independent stores.

For an independent operator, the gap to those numbers comes down to mix. Foodservice, the cold vault, and the 64% of fuel customers who come inside decide whether a store earns $112,000 or approaches the chain figures above.

Cost pressure makes those decisions increasingly important. Expenses have climbed 23.3% since 2021, transactions fell 3.0% in 2025, and basket profitability declined even as basket value rose.

Take the Next Step

Operators looking to move more fuel traffic inside should start with the levers that carry measurable gross profit: foodservice, digital ordering, and a loyalty program designed around the first four visits. The Paytronix report on choosing a loyalty program for a convenience store sets out how the leading c-store brands structure theirs. Operators who want to explore how these strategies could apply across their own portfolio should book a Paytronix demo.