Hybrid C-Store Award: The Woods Diner

Michael Buzalka

Binghamton University
Binghamton, NY

Opened: Spring 2010
Gross Sales/Day: $4,300
Hours: 8 a.m. - 1 a.m. (M-F), 11:30 a.m. - 1 a.m. (Sat.-Sun.)

When The Woods Diner applied for the title of “Hybrid C-Store Award” Winner, it wasn't kidding. The store is not just a hybrid of a traditional c-store and a foodservice outlet, but of the past and the future.

Located in the College-in-the-Woods residential community on the Binghamton campus, it opens in the mornings as a standard c-store (see hours above) but in the evening it morphs into a classic 1950s diner (the diner operation opens at 8:30 in the evening during the week and 7:00 on Fridays and Saturdays) to provide students a retro malt shop hangout complete with milkshakes, burgers and hand-cut fries that have become campus legends. To complete the picture, there is a classic checkerboard tile floor, neon signage and — most striking — a replica '57 Chevy front end on one wall and a side profile of a '55 Bel Air on another.

That's all in the past, though. The present and future are well represented by the digital menu board, two digital self-ordering kiosks that allow easy customization of orders and even a web portal that lets students order certain standard c-store products online.

The Woods Diner is small — only about 400 sq.ft. — but mighty where it counts. Weekly sales have run as high as $30,000, leaving the $6,000 the previous concept in that space generated in the dust of history…