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Editor’s Note: This article is part 5 of PMQ’s 2026 Pizza Power Report. You can scroll down to the bottom to navigate to the next section of the report.
By Rick Hynum and Charlie Pogacar
Gas station pizza has been here for decades, but most pizzeria owners never saw it as a serious threat: greasy slices with rubbery cheese and a dry, tough crust, hardening under a heat lamp for hours, crying out to the desperately hungry. That’s changing now, as the inaugural PMQ Pizza DELCO Report, released in March 2024, revealed.
That report looked at how 10 leading pizza chains performed across 600-plus mystery shops. Shoppers rated large and mid-sized chains on speed of service, pizza temperature, quality, employee friendliness and overall satisfaction.
Research partner Intouch Insight also included two convenience store (c-store) chains to benchmark a fast-rising competitor that’s increasingly eating into pizzeria profits. While Casey’s has long built its reputation on a strong pizza program, newer entrants like Wawa recently jumped into the category as well.
Many operators may assume their pizza’s quality gives them an unassailable edge—that c-stores can only nibble at the margins. But they won’t like this: Intouch Insight found that mystery shoppers didn’t just enjoy c-store pizza as much as chain pizza—many actually preferred it. C-stores earned an 86% approval rating, edging out large chains (85%) and mid-sized chains (83%).Of course, context matters.
Of course, context matters. The approval scores came from just two binary questions: Was the pizza hot? And did you enjoy it? Since the c-stores didn’t offer delivery, every pizza was picked up fresh—and received a 100% “hot” rating. In other words, it wasn’t always apples to apples.
Still, perception is reality. Most c-stores serve only hot, ready-to-go pizza. If a customer compares that to your lukewarm delivery pie—and enjoys the c-store’s more—who’s going to tell them they’re wrong?
