5 Ohio Gas Station Foods Tourists Refuse to Believe People Actually Buy
A driver from Michigan pulls off I-75 for gas near Cincinnati and orders a hash brown.
The clerk hands it back dusted orange with a peppery seasoning blend, and the smell alone stops him.
He asks if it’s a joke, but it isn’t.
These are the foods Ohio gas stations sell every day that leave out-of-staters checking the label twice.
1. Troyer’s Trail Bologna Rings
Troyer’s Trail Bologna hangs in coolers at convenience store counters across Ohio’s Amish Country, right next to the energy drinks.
First-time visitors sometimes ask the clerk if it’s some kind of local joke.
The Troyer family has smoked these beef rings over hickory wood in the tiny village of Trail, Ohio since 1912, using a recipe the family still won’t hand out.
Trail is barely a town.
The place is so small it never got its own zip code, yet the rings come in plain, hot pepper, and cheddar cheese versions.
Visitors buy extra rings to take home, not just a snack for the road.
Amish Country pulls in day-trippers from across the Midwest.
Many leave with a ring riding in the back seat next to the kids.
2. Grippo’s Bar-B-Q Chips
Pull a bag of Grippo’s Bar-B-Q chips off an Ohio gas station shelf and your fingers turn orange before you’re back in the car.
Out-of-state drivers expect the same chip rack at every stop, stocked with Lay’s and Doritos.
Grippo’s owns that shelf space in Cincinnati instead, and first-time visitors sometimes ask the clerk if it’s a local prank.
Not a prank.
The Grippo family has run the company out of Cincinnati since 1919, though potato chips didn’t join the lineup until decades later.
Grippo’s calls itself the official snack of the Reds, the Bengals, FC Cincinnati, and the Cincinnati Zoo.
Many convenience stores across Greater Cincinnati rack bags of Grippo’s right by the register, ahead of the national brands.
The coating is so powdery it dusts the inside of the bag.
Cincinnatians tip the crumbs straight into their mouths rather than waste them.
3. Duchess Shoppe’s Chicken Tenders
Duchess Shoppe sells chicken tenders from the hot food case at gas pumps across Ohio, next to made-to-order pizza and subs, the kind of menu a diner would run, not a fuel stop.
Tourists pulling in for gas expect a hot dog roller at best.
They don’t expect a hot case built around Duchess Shoppe’s own recipes instead of a franchised menu.
More than 100 Duchess locations run that program across Ohio and West Virginia.
Gas is almost the afterthought.
A driver stopping for gas can walk out with a full dinner instead of a candy bar and a coffee.
Duchess Shoppe’s Crown Card rewards program tracks that stop the same way it tracks a fill-up.
4. UDF’s Buckeye Donut
Tourists who spot a Buckeye Donut in a United Dairy Farmers (UDF) case assume it’s a seasonal special.
UDF bakes it fresh at its own bakery in Blue Ash every day, year-round, a peanut-butter-and-chocolate riff on the state’s favorite candy.
The company put $11 million into that bakery so it could turn out its own donuts, pizza dough, and biscuits instead of buying them elsewhere.
The pumps sit right outside.
The same UDF counter that sells the Buckeye Donut also scoops UDF’s own Homemade Brand ice cream, made by the same family-owned company.
UDF Wasn’t Always a Gas Station
UDF opened its first store in Norwood, Ohio, in 1940, selling milk, butter, cottage cheese, eggs, and buttermilk.
The Lindner family sold dairy on a cash-and-carry basis straight from that one store, years before a single gas pump showed up out front.
UDF added its own gas pumps in 1977, then switched to Mobil-branded fuel at 108 locations in 2001, decades after the dairy counter opened.
5. UDF’s Grippo’s Hash Browns
UDF sells hash browns dusted in Grippo’s Bar-B-Q seasoning, a hot food item that mashes two Cincinnati obsessions into one foil wrapper.
The chain lists Grippo’s Spicy Hashbrowns on its current hot food menu, made fresh in-store alongside its breakfast sandwiches, pizza, and boneless buffalo wings.
That’s peak Cincinnati.
Two regional obsessions share one hash brown, sold from the same register where you pay for your gas.
Order Grippo’s hash browns at a UDF outside the tristate area, though.
The clerk might not know what you’re talking about.
Psst! How much do you know about Ohio’s gas station history? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
Quiz
Ohio Gas Station IQ
Answer these questions on Ohio’s gas station and convenience store history. We bet you can’t get them all right. Prove us wrong?
Englefield Oil, the company behind Duchess Shoppe convenience stores, also runs a taco concept. What’s it called?
Buc-ee's Brought Beaver Nuggets to Ohio This Year
Buc-ee's opened its first Ohio travel center in Huber Heights this year.
It brought its signature snack along: Beaver Nuggets, a caramel-coated corn puff scooped from self-serve bins by the pound.
The Texas chain also stocks barbecue, fudge, kolaches, and jerky under one roof, all sold beneath a mascot named Bucky the Beaver.
That's a different model.
Duchess, UDF, and Grippo's built their followings one gas station at a time, over decades, long before Buc-ee's crossed the state line.
Duchess Started With Three Pumps
Duchess Shoppe traces back to three gas stations Englefield Oil opened in 1961.
F.W. Englefield III started the company with an office in his own basement.
It started small.
His wife, Janet, and a banking partner ran the business alongside him in those early years, long before the hot food case or the pizza ovens.
Sixty-plus years later, Englefield Oil runs more than 100 Duchess stores, a fuel-hauling fleet, and a separate taco concept called Tic Tac Taco.
The company now does over a billion dollars a year in sales.
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