Jeff Lenard:
Obviously you struck a nerve talking the first time we had you about gas station chicken. Today we’re going to expand across all kinds of cuisines. For those who didn’t hear the previous episode, give us a recap of what you do when you hit the road.

Stafford Shurden:
I started out just in Mississippi but I go all over the south now and have gotten out of the south a little bit. I go to gas stations and eat really good food at gas stations. And I think the beauty of it is people don’t expect it. And especially the small towns, the people from there love to see their hometown on Facebook or YouTube or wherever I put it.

Jeff Lenard:
What’s your trick to finding some of these places with amazing food?

Stafford Shurden:
When I started, I went to the places that I knew of that were close to me, and it was kind of crazy because immediately I started getting a large following and now it’s all word of mouth. Social media is what my granddaddy did in business and that’s talked to everybody, he didn’t do advertisements. He just talked to the people that he knew, and now we have a much bigger group. So it kinda works the same way. All of these people are in this community of people who love gas station food, and they’re like if you like that burger, you need to try this place. And so 90% of the reviews I do today are from word of mouth through social media.

Jeff Lenard:
So there are 2,409 gas stations in Mississippi. And if I had to guess, you’ve probably gone to about 5% of them.

Stafford Shurden:
Not quite that much, I’ve done 130 something reviews that have made it on, so if I hit a bad spot, I don’t publish it.

Jeff Lenard:
I want to get to a couple quotes that I’ve seen in some of your videos online. You talking about having the deli and also being a farmer, what are the challenges that you faced? Is it labor? Is it supply chain?

Stafford Shurden:
It’s labor first and second supply chain. We can work around the supply chain most of the time. I’m sure people in the industry are already figuring out the problem with potatoes and what I keep hearing is they will run out. We will run out of potatoes. Your customer sometimes doesn’t understand that that’s a huge issue, but the labor thing for me has been the most difficult because so many times we’re shorthanding on the farm and in the restaurant the same day. I hadn’t done as many reviews this summer because as the farming season’s gone on, I’ve been stretched thin. So I’ve done fewer and fewer reviews, but we I’ve got five or six in the can as they say.

Jeff Lenard:
What are you growing and any challenges with the weather?

Stafford Shurden:
We’ve had a very dry year. We typically can irrigate 100% of our crops and my t-shirts all say cotton soybeans and rice. I grew up on a cotton soybean and rice farm. So Sheridan farms for years was primarily cotton. In 2001, we got away from cotton and we went strictly into grain. So now we grow soybeans, rice and corn. Now this particular year with the issue with fertilizer, because it was a question if we were going to be able to get fertilizer, I want 100% soybeans. It made it a lot easier for me as, you know, the labor shortage and all of that. But we’ve had a really dry year. We typically irrigate once or twice, maybe three times and I’ve irrigated eight times this year. So that’s the expense we really didn’t want to have. Plus that’s one of the things that’s kept me really busy this summer.

Jeff Lenard:
I saw pictures online. It looked like things were nice and green, but fingers crossed that until harvest, you never know, right?

Stafford Shurden:
Yeah. We’ve got a beautiful crop and that ability to irrigate has been phenomenal cuzbecause I’ve stayed on top of it and made sure those crops are growing really well. We look to have plenty of crops in the United States. There’s going to be a global issue, but in the states I think we’re going to be fine.

Jeff Lenard:
Let’s transition to some of my favorite quotes or at least three quotes I saw you online posting about, some places you visited. There was a Valero station and your quote was ‘this makes me question everything you know about food.’ What do you mean by that? What was special about that one?

Stafford Shurden:
He uses fresh, local, raw ingredients, we’re talking about a real chef in a gas station cooking chef-inspired burgers and stuff like that. And as much as I’ve traveled, I don’t see a lot of that kind of stuff in gas stations. Most of what you see is the plate lunches, the fried chicken, we all know what typically you see and then you get in this place and it’s like something that should be on the cover of a magazine. This guy layers his flavors. A lot of c-stores in the south, they’ll have a cook come in in the morning, do all their breakfast, all their chicken and put their chicken out, and then you’ve got an empty kitchen the rest of the day. And what this owner figured out in this chef was, I’ve got this empty kitchen. So he lets this chef come in and do his thing in this fully functional commercial kitchen. You go in any five star restaurant, the equipment’s basically the same stuff. So the only difference is ingredients and talent. So there’s nothing stopping some of these c-stores from doing something very similar to that. And I guess that’s what clicked with me is you don’t have to do meatloaf and fried chicken. You can do really cool stuff. And that’s what they did.

Jeff Lenard:
And that’s something that we’ve heard with food trucks that have been tired of being chased with parking tickets or having difficulty in finding a place to be for the day or a rain disrupts everything and nobody shows up. You’ve heard that some of them have located to gas stations and taken over something that previously was a sandwich prep area. You put in all the kitchen equipment and you can operate in roughly that same space. It’s actually bigger than what they have in a food truck. And you see some of these places with amazing food. Now, this guy wasn’t breaking out the tweezers and stuff like that for putting the finishing touches on things, was he?

Stafford Shurden:
No, it was, you said food truck and that’s the perfect comparison. You would totally expect to find this in the food truck. But he was doing stuff like he layers flavors, all his cheeses are smoked locally. His bread is made by a bakery down the street. He’s grinding his own hamburger meat. I mean he went way above and beyond and making sure every element of whatever he’s putting in front of you, he thought about every single ingredient on there. And how does that add or take away from the dish? And that’s something you see in a high-end restaurant, but I call it man food. It’s a big old burger at the end of the day. Best burger I’ve ever eaten is at that gas station right there.

Jeff Lenard:
How do you, think about saying something positive? Take us behind the curtain.

Stafford Shurden:
I don’t even think about it. I just eat it and whatever comes out of my mouth comes out of my mouth. I guess I got that from my mom. She’s a talker. My dad was not so much of a talker, but you know, I’m rarely left absence of words. I think that’s one of the things people like is that it’s just gut reaction. It’s not something I thought about, this is real. There’s no editor. It’s just me. So what you see is what you get.

Jeff Lenard:
Camera, tripod and truck. That’s all you need, and some food.

Stafford Shurden:
That’s it.

Jeff Lenard:
You were at a Jefferson Country Store, and you said you can’t explain what places like this mean to you. I think that touches a lot of things that relate to convenience stores and gas stations across the country.

Stafford Shurden:
I go to taquerias at gas stations in Mississippi now, which 15, 20 years ago, you’d never seen. So I don’t wanna lament that at all because that’s a beautiful thing. Those are great places, but at the same time, every now and then I’ll step into a store and it’ll be like stepping into a time machine in a beautiful way. You look at this one guy behind the counter that owns the store in there flipping burgers. We’re in a situation where I don’t think you can recreate that. He’s the third owner of this business. It’s in the middle of nowhere on a little country road, literally two churches on either side of it. It’slike we had those kind of places in when I grew up and we don’t have them anymore. And you know, what’s the likelihood that he’s the last owner? Probably pretty great. So if you don’t go now to places like that, there’s a real likelihood you don’t get to go to places like that.

Jeff Lenard:
You’re probably right. That if he doesn’t have somebody to pass it to, it’ll become something else, something different. Those are the treasures. And if I recall from a picture, there was a lot of stuff going on. It was a busy looking place, it was sensory overload, wasn’t it?

Stafford Shurden:
Well, it’s an old country store that we know in the south. And I have a theory about how some of these places came to being. We’re rural, we’re agriculture-based economies in the south. Some of them before gas stations were around were commissaries. They were on-farm commissaries that sold a little bit of everything. You might even say a general store. And then they progressed into selling gas and then other things happened.

Jeff Lenard:
You’ve also expanded to different cuisines. You posted something recently about you were looking for recommendations for Vietnamese food in some gas stations and you found some. You had great fried rice, another place you were talking about how good the deer sausage was at a store. So you’re right, it’s way more than mashed potatoes and meatloaf, fried chicken. You’re finding all kinds of interesting things out there.

Stafford Shurden:
I do most of my reviews in Mississippi, but there’s subtle differences between different parts of the state and the Gulf Coast is a perfect example of that. You’ve a huge influx of Vietnamese fishermen, and hey’ve expanded into, Vietnamese bakeries, restaurants and c-stores and gas stations. And so there’s some great gas station food down there, I had no idea and a viewer turned me onto it. And a friend of mine that writes for the paper down there says, you’ve gotta check out this Vietnamese food. So that’s one of the things I’ve been searching out. And then you go an hour north and you start getting a little more like Louisiana and it’s deer sausage. Then you get into the Delta fried chicken and the Northeast part of the state is almost Appalachian. It’s amazing how if you don’t travel, you don’t know that there are these subtle differences. You just think everybody’s like you, but even in a small state like Mississippi, you do have that.

Jeff Lenard:
And you’ve taken your daughter on at least one of these trips. Do you have anybody else who says next time you hit the road, can I go with you?

Stafford Shurden:
Actually a lot of people ask me that and I’ve taken my daughter. Mary and I went 1,100 miles in my truck all the way to Key West, Florida, which was a fun experience for both of us. And then my younger daughter’s been to several with me and I’ve had a few guests along the way. Jeremy London, who was in “Party of Five” and some other stuff lived in Mississippi, and Wright Thompson who writes for ESPN has been on the show. A good friend of mine, a businessman over in Cleveland, Mississippi, has been on the show. So I try to do that as much as I can. It’s a little harder than you think getting everybody’s schedule together. So that’s why a lot of times it’s my daughters, because I can just say, ‘Hey, come on. We’re going somewhere.’

Jeff Lenard:
You’re from Drew, Mississippi, which is where Archie Manning is from. And there’s been some other famous quarterbacks with a Manning name, Eli Peyton…can we break some news and can you talk about how some of those guys are going to come on the show?

Stafford Shurden:
Archie and I talk occasionally, he has no idea that I do Gas Station Review, but he, would be the dream guest and I’ve thought about asking him. He lives in New Orleans and there’s a lot of great places in New Orleans. I could go with him, so probably when I get a little further, get a few more viewers, I’ll ask Archie to do it. I have talked to Eli a couple of times. Peyton’s my age. I can remember them coming to Drew when I was a kid and visiting their grandmother, who I knew very well. Archie’s sister taught me in high school. We have a lot of common people, but he probably will end up on the show. I think he would say, yes, he’s such a gentleman. He’s everything that you think that he is watching him on TV, Archie Manning’s that guy.

Jeff Lenard:
We had Archie speak at the NACS Show 15 years ago, and when he came out, one of our board members threw him a football and Archie held onto it for about three, four seconds and he threw it back to him and said bad things happen when he holds onto a football too long. He was a great speaker and then we had Peyton a couple years ago also. Great speaker, just great stories. So six degrees of separation, anybody who knows the Mannings and wants to connect people, let’s get them all there on the show and, drive around and visit some of the places in New Orleans or Mississippi or wherever.

Stafford Shurden:
I’ve thought about that before actually would I want to fly somewhere, rent a truck and drive around, which would be simple enough. I driven 1,100 miles from my house to Key West Florida and 1,100 miles back. And the great thing of doing it that way is that I caught a lot of places along the way. We had a schedule and we went to certain places and slept like three hours a night in a hotel but I have thought about flying places and, renting a truck because that would be so much simpler.

Jeff Lenard:
Are, are you optimistic when you visit these places? Labor shortage, all these other things that we’re facing?

Stafford Shurden:
One of the interesting things that I found is, and this is just my thought process, but for years after World War II, we shipped out a lot of things that we used to do here. That seems to be turning around, especially in Mississippi. And I don’t know if this is happening everywhere, but in Mississippi you have this bespoke type industry coming back where people are making blue jeans. As a cotton farmer growing up on a cotton farm, all the textiles were here and then they all left and went overseas and now that stuff is coming back. And there’s a hat maker in south Mississippi that I’m friends with. people are becoming craftsmen again, and I think that’s such a beautiful thing. I don’t want to assume that it’s happening everywhere, but I think that’s coming back, that people are finding passions in the stuff that they do. And I think that’s a beautiful thing. I think we’re gonna be okay.

Jeff Lenard:
I think it relates to what you see with a lot of trends. People want experiences and they’re willing to have something that they really feel passionate about that fits their lifestyle, their brand, as opposed to a whole bunch of stuff. So those kind of things have definitely changed. That’s cool to see that Mississippi is one of the places where you’re seeing this reexamination of how you can do things local.
We look forward to more episodes and more stories. Thank you once again for joining us today, Stafford, and we hope to talk to you again soon.

Outro:
Convenience Matters is brought to you by NACS and produced in partnership with Human Factor. For more information, visit convenience.org.

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