Published December 10, 2009
By Pratik Joshi, Herald staff writer
WEST RICHLAND — It’s always a day at the beach at Smitty’s Paradise, the most tropical convenience store in the country.
The West Richland business recently won the Best Interior Design award in a nationwide contest sponsored by Convenience Store News, a trade publication, for its island paradise look and feel.
Smitty’s Paradise, at 1400 Bombing Range Road, also has a gas station and car wash. But inside, its bamboo-covered ceiling gives the store a definite tropical quality that the magazine described as “Tommy Bahama meets Starbucks in Margaritaville.”
The store, which opened in July 2008, has a raffia-covered tiki hut inside, a Caribbean mural and a large picture of Pacific Ocean waves and surfboards above the cooler doors. The restrooms even have decorative palm trees.
Employees wear Hawaiian shirts to enhance the beach feel, and soon the store will play Hawaiian Christmas music.
“Store sales are exceeding our expectations,” said Rod Smith, who owns Smitty’s with his brothers, Doug and Rick.
They chose the theme to reflect the nearby crossroad Paradise Way, Smith said.
“We thought, ‘That’s a natural theme,’ ” he said.
The idea was to make fuel-buying a fun experience for customers, Smith said.
The brothers also own R.H. Smith Distributing Co., a more than 60-year-old firm which provides fuel and convenience products to customers between the Cascades and the Columbia River.
The brothers and their wives worked with Paragon Solutions, of Fort Worth, Texas, to come up with the store’s design. The cost of decorating the interior with a tropical theme was about 5 percent of the total project cost of $2 million, Smith said.
He said he thinks the store’s welcoming feel has helped it become the No. 2 money maker for the company. With annual sales of about $4.2 million in the last financial year ending in September, it’s only behind the company’s Yakima store, which opened in 1986 and has a restaurant, Smith said.
Smitty’s has a Quiznos within the store, and a “green” car wash adjacent to it.
Smitty’s car wash uses 80 percent less water and 30 percent less energy than a typical car wash, and the cleaning agents it uses contain no phosphates and are biodegradable, Smith said.
One of the exterior car wash walls also sports a paradise-themed mural, about 12 feet by 35 feet.
The mural is based on a drawing, selected from 150 submissions by art students at Enterprise Middle School, Smith said, adding a Columbia Basin College art teacher and her students painted the mural.
Smith said his company has planned similar store projects in Yakima and the Tri-Cities.
“We’ll continue to have theme-oriented designs,” he said.
Additional news stories can be accessed online at the Tri-City Herald.