With its gas station spot and top Yelp rating, Kech Cafe gets pumped
To Harry Kechejian, the Shell gas station at Talbert Avenue and Brookhurst Street in Fountain Valley looked like the perfect spot. Freeway-close, it offered accessibility and visibility.
So three years ago, Kechejian, 43, decided to turn the vacant Subway eatery inside the gas station’s Circle K convenience store into a cafe offering healthy alternatives to fast food.
As antithetical as it may sound, gas stations around the country have inspired restaurateurs to launch businesses. Apparently the pairing of food and fuel makes business sense.
And apparently Kechejian understood that formula. Kech Cafe, a family-run business operated by Kechejian with his mother and sister providing culinary assistance and his brother bringing marketing expertise, was rated No. 24 on Yelp’s Top 100 List for restaurants in the U.S. in 2015.
“We may be a simple sandwich shop, but we’re making the best of what we have,” Kechejian said.
At Kech Cafe, customers can fuel up on gourmet dishes and top off their tanks in one stop.
Gourmet restaurants have long wanted to be in locations where people gather, and one key spot is a gas station, said Jeff Lenard of the Assn. for Convenience and Fuel Retailing. According to a 2015 Consumer Fuels Survey, 35% of gas customers go inside the store.
Gas-station restaurants also create a sense of place, encouraging customers to engage more with the neighborhood while bringing increased economic activity and affordable dining options to a community.
Kechejian, who worked for 10 years in management at Starbucks and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, said he was undaunted by the thought of serving food where cars are serviced. It turns out filling stations are sitting on prime real estate for restaurants.
“I know my abilities,” he said. “When you’re truly friendly and you connect with people, you’ll succeed at anything.”
The secret to his well-received reviews and constant foot traffic, he said, is the cafe’s friendly environment and menu of specialty wraps, salads and pizzas.
The casual restaurant, which primarily sells to-go orders but also has seating indoors and outdoors, offers food prepared daily by Kechejian, a few employees and his mother, Aroussiak, known as Mama Kech, who purchases produce three to four days a week.
The Kechejians, who are Lebanese-Armenian and moved to the United States in 1980, remembered growing up in Mama Kech’s kitchen. Their father isn’t part of the daily running of the business; he works at Appliance World in Garden Grove.
Mama Kech’s signature recipes of green olive tapenade, potato salad sans mayonnaise or egg products and kidney bean mushroom salad remain favorites among customers.
Patrons looking to lose weight, Kechejian said, favor the cafe’s $6.99 wraps since they’re rolled in lavash, a soft, thin, unleavened flatbread. The entree comes with two side salads and dip and carrots. Dieters, he said, like that the large portion can be split and saved for another healthy meal time, he said.
“It’s a lot of food, and we take care of people who come here,” Kechejian said.
Mike Freeze, who visits the cafe two to three times a week, waited in line Monday afternoon to purchase an Americano coffee, one of his favorites on the menu. He presented his loyalty punch card, which bears the phrase “Your loyalty makes you royalty.”
Freeze, who moved to Fountain Valley a year ago and is founder of Freeze Frame Productions, said he looked up restaurants in the neighborhood on Yelp and found Kech Cafe boasting five-star ratings.
“I thought, ‘It’s in a Shell. Really?’” Freeze said. “But I get it. It’s fresh and it’s a family business. It just doesn’t make sense to go anywhere else.”
It’s Kechejian’s mission, he said, not only to provide delectable food but also to build relationships with customers. The combination has proved a winner.
To determine Yelp’s top places to eat in 2015, the company analyzed which places were the most popular and well-reviewed throughout 2014. Unlike the previous year, when Yelp based the best places to eat on almost 10 years of reviews, its data science team weighted a review’s influence by the time that had passed, with reviews written in the last few years counting the most. Older reviews decreased in influence.
The new approach, Yelp said, resulted in a list that was a blend of still-popular classics and up-and-comers garnering positive attention.
Ryan Cox, a community manager for Yelp in Orange County, works to grow local Yelp communities and connect people with local businesses. He said locals favor Kech Cafe for its variety of quality and inexpensive food and customer service.
“Harry relates to people on a personal basis, and people recognize that he wants to get to know them,” Cox said.
“I think it’s great that restaurants like this, especially it being in a gas station, is found on Yelp,” Cox added. “It means that you can get a great meal at an unexpected place to eat.”
Customers alerted the Kechejians to their inclusion among Yelp’s Top 100. They saw Kech Cafe’s name featured on television news and called the restaurant.
Kechejian, who was on vacation in late January, received a phone call from his mother telling him the news. He said he never asked customers to write reviews on Yelp. He appreciated what they wrote, but he didn’t pay too much attention to his scores on the site.
“I was never a big-time Yelper, but it’s helped us tremendously,” Kechejian said.
Customers would like him to expand in Orange County, but Kechejian said he wants to ensure that the growth makes sense.
“I’d rather stay small and treat everybody like family members,” Kechejian said before introducing himself to a new customer in line and talking up the cafe’s signature lavender lemonade. “I just want people to have a great experience and remember it.”
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If You Go
What: Kech Cafe
When: 7 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Mondays to Fridays and 8 a.m. to 6:30 p.m. Saturdays
Where: 17966 Brookhurst St., Fountain Valley
Information: (714) 968-1122 or kechcafe.com
[For the record, April 9, 6:20 p.m.: A previous version of this post said Harry Kechejian worked for 20 years in management at Starbucks and Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf. The correct figure is 10 years.]