Every so often, history repeats itself closely enough that you can use the past as a map. The story of the car and the gas station is one of those times. Line it up next to the story of the electric car and the charger, and the dates land almost exactly a hundred years apart.

First came the fuel stop

Before 1913, you bought gasoline at the hardware store or the pharmacy. Someone pumped it into a can and you carried it out to your car. Then Gulf opened a dedicated drive-in station in Pittsburgh: a pump, a place to pull in, and a way to get back on the road. It was a real step forward. It also sold fuel and nothing else.

A century later, the electric car went through the same step. Tesla's Supercharger network gave EVs their own dedicated stops. A charger, a place to pull in, and a way to get back on the road. A real step forward. And, again, nothing else.

Then someone noticed the person waiting

The next chapter of the gas era started with someone paying attention.

In 1927, the Southland Ice Company in Dallas sold block ice from docks around the city. At one of them, the operators noticed that people were already stopping by, and started selling milk, eggs and bread too. They kept the doors open after the grocery stores closed. Customers loved it. The company eventually named the idea after its hours, 7am to 11pm, and called it 7-Eleven.

The convenience store came from noticing people who were already waiting.

That same year, Frank Lloyd Wright designed a two-story filling station with a room upstairs where people could sit and watch the road. He saw the stop as a real place, somewhere worth being. (He was a little early. We wrote about that here.)

What that one observation became

The convenience store grew into an industry worth more than $700 billion a year. Today, the fuel stops people actually love, Wawa, Buc-ee's, Sheetz and QuikTrip, are really food and convenience businesses that happen to sell gas. The pumps bring you in. The store is what you remember, and what brings you back.

A hundred years later, same moment

In 2023, the Tesla Model Y became the best-selling car in the world. Of any kind, gas included. The electric car had reached its Model T moment. It stopped being a statement and became simply what a lot of people drive.

And the stops built for it still look a lot like 1913. A parking lot, a post, and nothing for the person at the end of the cord. No coffee. No seat. No reason to come back except the electricity.

That same year, the idea for Cavana came together: a hundred years after the gas era learned to build around the wait.

The difference that changes everything

There's one place where the parallel breaks, and it breaks in our favor. Filling a tank takes about four minutes. A fast charge takes about 27, and many sessions run past 40.

Four minutes is enough to buy a coffee. Twenty-seven minutes is enough to sit down with one, talk to someone, answer a few emails, or let a place become part of your week. The window that created the convenience store is open again, and it's nearly seven times wider.

Where we are in the story

The electric era has its car. It has its first generation of chargers. The third step, building something for the person during the wait, hasn't happened yet at scale.

The habits of a whole generation of EV drivers are forming right now: where they stop, what those stops feel like, what they come to expect. The places built in these years will set the standard for decades, the same way roadside America was shaped by what got built in the 1920s and 1930s.

We're not early. The Model S has been on the road for more than a decade. We're right on time. And we intend to build it right.

Most people drive past gas stations without a second look. Frank Lloyd Wright looked at one and saw a building worth designing.

In 1927, he drew up a filling station for Buffalo, New York. It looked nothing like the sheds going up along American roads at the time. It had a copper roof, tall decorative towers, fuel hoses that dropped from overhead to keep the ground clear, and a second-story room above the pumps where people could sit and look out over the road.

Wright believed the filling station could grow into something much bigger than a place to buy fuel. In his writing about the future of American towns, he imagined roadside stations becoming real neighborhood centers for a country built around the car.

Why it never happened

The idea was right. The timing wasn't.

Filling a tank takes a few minutes. Nobody climbs a staircase to a lounge while the attendant finishes pumping. People pulled in, filled up and drove away, because that's all a gas stop allowed. Wright could design the building. He couldn't give anyone a reason to stay in it.

The Buffalo station was never built in his lifetime. He did get to build one station, the Lindholm Service Station in Cloquet, Minnesota, completed in 1958, with a dramatic cantilevered canopy and a glass-walled lounge upstairs. It's still standing. And in 2014, the original Buffalo design was finally built, indoors, as an exhibit inside the city's transportation museum.

He was right about everything except the car.

Then the car caught up

An electric car changes the one thing Wright couldn't. A fast charge takes about 27 minutes, and often longer. The driver has to wait. Suddenly, a comfortable room upstairs makes all the sense in the world.

Count from 1927 to 2023, the year the Cavana concept came together, and you get 96 years. That's how early Wright was.

What we took from him

Cavana Hubs are two stories, each with a quieter room upstairs that you can see from the floor below. The canopy planned for every location is meant to shelter the person waiting as much as the car. And our team is there because Wright understood the thing that matters most: a stop on the road can be designed for the person, not just the vehicle.

We didn't invent the idea. One of the greatest architects in American history had it first. The battery just gave it the time it always needed.

Ask most people what Wawa is and they'll say a gas station. Ask anyone from Philadelphia and they'll tell you about the hoagies. The coffee. The fact that it's open when nothing else is.

That difference is one of the most important ideas in American retail. It's also the idea Cavana is built on.

It started with ice

Before home refrigerators were common, families bought block ice to keep food cold. In 1927, the Southland Ice Company sold it from docks around Dallas. At one dock, the operators started offering milk, eggs and bread too, and kept selling long after the grocery stores closed for the night.

People loved it. The company rolled it out across its docks and eventually named the stores after their hours: 7-Eleven. Nobody set out to invent a new kind of store. They noticed that people were already stopping, and gave them something worth buying while they were there.

The fuel brings you in

Over the next century, that idea merged with the gas station. Today, the most beloved fuel stops in America, Wawa, Sheetz, QuikTrip and Buc-ee's, are really food and convenience businesses that also sell fuel.

The pumps outside create the visit. The coffee, the food and the clean bathrooms inside are what people choose, talk about and drive out of their way for. Texans plan road trips around Buc-ee's. Nobody plans a road trip around a pump.

The pull goes further than you'd think. Nearly one in four visitors to a modern gas station never buy fuel at all. They come just for what's inside.

Gas is to Wawa what EV charging is to Cavana. The fuel brings people in. The food brings them back.

Charging skipped the store

Public charging mostly got built the other way around. Chargers went in wherever the power happened to be, and everything else was left to chance. Some ended up at the back of shopping centers, on the theory that drivers would wander into whatever was nearby. What drivers usually found was a long walk across a hot lot, the same few options, and nothing designed around a half-hour wait.

Meanwhile, drivers are ready to spend. 91% of EV drivers make a purchase when retail is available. The time is there. The appetite is there. The store just isn't.

More time than any store has ever had

Here's what makes charging even better suited to the Wawa idea than gas ever was. A gas stop takes about four minutes. A typical charge takes 27. That's nearly seven times as long as a convenience store has ever had with a customer, and the customer can't leave early.

That's a lot of time to do something good with. A real coffee instead of a to-go cup. A table instead of the driver's seat. A few minutes of quiet instead of another scroll through your phone.

So we're building the store first

Cavana is a hospitality management company that operates EV charging as its anchor service. The café, the Marketplace and the lounge upstairs are the heart of every location. The Superchargers out front are how you arrive.

And like Wawa, you won't need to be buying fuel to come in. The café and the shop are open to everyone, so Cavana can become a stop for the whole neighborhood, not just the drivers who happen to need a charge.

A hundred years ago, an ice dock in Dallas paid attention to the people who were already stopping. We're doing the same.

Plug in. Check the app. Sit there.

Maybe walk across the lot for a sandwich somewhere. Maybe call a friend for a ride and come back later. Maybe just stay in the driver's seat with the air conditioning running, scrolling until the battery says you can go.

For a lot of EV drivers, that's what charging looks like today. And strangely, it's not getting better, even though the chargers are.

Better hardware, unhappier drivers

The charging industry has fixed a lot. Failed charging visits are down to 14%, from around 20% a few years ago. Nearly every major automaker has adopted the same NACS plug, ending one of drivers' oldest complaints. Chargers are faster than ever.

And yet satisfaction with fast charging dropped again, to 654 out of 1,000, ten points lower than the year before. When the equipment keeps improving and people keep getting less happy, the equipment was never the whole problem.

Most of that comes down to cost. Drivers are paying more for the same parking lot and the same post, with nothing around it worth the money.

Fixing the plug was the easy part. The hard part is the 27 minutes after you plug it in.

What drivers keep asking for

Read what EV drivers write online, in forums, owner groups and comment sections, and the list is remarkably consistent. It's been the same list for years.

• A clean bathroom
• Good coffee and something to eat
• A place to sit that isn't the car
• Shade from the sun and cover from the rain
• Air for the tires and a vacuum
• Light after dark
• A real person around if something goes wrong
• Room to pull through with a trailer

Not exactly a big ask. Gas stations have offered most of it for decades.

The workaround tells you everything

One of the clearest signs came from watching drivers. Friends and family pulling up in gas cars, taking the EV driver somewhere else for half an hour, then dropping them back off. When people invent a workaround like that, they're telling you the stop was never built for them.

It's about feeling safe, too

At night, the problem gets more serious. Many charging stations are unstaffed, dimly lit and tucked in the far corner of a lot. For a lot of drivers, especially women charging alone, that's the moment owning an EV feels least comfortable. It's one of the most common reasons people give for hesitating to go electric.

Same 27 minutes, better place

Now picture the same half hour at a Cavana. You plug in and walk a few steps to a café where someone is making coffee. There's a real bathroom. A table by the window. Fast WiFi if you need it, a quiet corner if you don't. A Host notices the gas car blocking a stall and handles it before you've even noticed. When your car is ready, you finish your coffee anyway.

The minutes are exactly the same. The place is what changed.

Twenty-seven minutes is the most predictable part of an EV driver's day. We think it should be the best part.

For most of the twentieth century, daily life ran through places people went without needing a reason. The diner before work. The hardware store where you spent twenty minutes talking to someone who knew your name before you paid. The lunch counter. The barbershop.

You went there to be somewhere, among people. And it mattered more than anyone realized at the time.

Where did they go?

Most of those places are gone, or changed beyond recognition. The diner became a drive-through. The hardware store became a big box. The coffee counter became an app and a pickup shelf. Each replacement is faster and cheaper. Something real got lost along the way.

You notice it in small moments. When "where do you like to hang out?" takes longer to answer than it should. When you've lived somewhere for three years and don't know the neighbors. When the closest thing you have to a regular spot is a coffee shop that's tolerating you until the table turns over.

Why the replacements keep failing

Plenty of places have tried to fill the gap. Almost all of them ran into one of two problems. Either they couldn't pay for themselves, or they couldn't give people a real reason to stay.

• The coffee chains became the default office for people with laptops, then started taking out the tables and chairs, because one coffee over three hours doesn't pay the rent.
• Libraries are among the most generous public spaces we have, but they depend on public budgets, and they ask for silence.
• Bars build real community, but they leave out anyone who doesn't drink, and they leave out families.
• The mall, at its peak, was where teenagers met friends and families spent Saturdays. The stores were the excuse. When the stores left, the gathering went with them.
• The gas station, as Frank Lloyd Wright learned, was simply too quick. A few minutes at the pump leaves no room for anything to happen.

Every place that lasts needs two things: a reason to stay a while, and a way to pay for itself while you do.

A charging stop has both

Here's what's different about a charging stop. The first condition is built right in. Your car needs about half an hour, and you have to wait. Nobody has to invent a reason for you to stay, or make you feel guilty about it.

The second condition comes from the business itself. When the café, the Marketplace and the membership keep the lights on, nobody needs to hurry you out to make room for the next sale. The room can be welcoming because the business works.

It helps to be on the route, too. A Cavana near home and work, on the road you already drive, can do some of what the mall used to. It gives people a reason to be somewhere together, at a moment when they've already stopped.

Earned, never announced

We're never going to tell you Cavana is your spot. No place can say that about itself and mean it. That's something a guest decides, usually without noticing. The third visit in a week. A Host who already knows the order. The morning someone comes in with a full battery, just because they wanted to be there.

All we can do is build the right conditions and hold them every single day. Warm light. A clean room. A real welcome. Enough time. The rest is up to the people who walk in.

Buildings talk. Not out loud, but you can hear them if you pay attention.

The interstate highways said the country was worth crossing, and its people worth connecting. The national parks said beauty belongs to everyone. The great train stations of the early 1900s said that even ordinary travel should feel like arriving somewhere.

When New York's original Pennsylvania Station was torn down in 1963, people mourned it like a person. They'd lost a beautiful building, and with it an idea: that a public place could be designed around the dignity of the people passing through.

What a charging station says

Now listen to a typical charging station. No one there. Nothing to do. Built for the car, barely aware of the driver. The message is easy to hear: we know you have to stop here, and we didn't think very hard about what that means for you.

Nobody meant to say that. It's what happens when a place is built to solve a technical problem and nothing more. But drivers hear it anyway, every time they sit in a dark lot waiting on a battery.

"You had to stop here. No one particularly cared that you did."

What we want ours to say

Cavana starts from the opposite place. The half hour a driver spends with us is time a person is choosing to give to a place. It deserves a building designed for them first, ahead of the car, the grid and the spreadsheet.

We want every Cavana to say one thing before anyone speaks: we wanted you here. The warm light says it. The clean bathroom says it. The person behind the counter says it. The flag out front says it.

Why it matters now

Right now, the habits of an entire generation of EV drivers are being formed. What feels normal in these first years becomes what everyone expects. And once an expectation settles in, it takes a generation to change.

The gas era got some of this right and a lot of it wrong. The best of it, the great diners and the road stops people still love, was built by people who cared. The rest was built by people solving a problem. The electric era will be the same mix. We intend to be on the right side of it.

The case for taking people out of a business is simple. People are expensive. They're hard to schedule and harder to scale. A kiosk never calls in sick. An app never needs training. Run the numbers and automation wins almost every time.

The numbers are real. What they miss is everything they can't measure.

Think about the places you love

Which businesses do you actually remember? Which ones do you go back to because you want to, tell your friends about, and drive a little out of your way for?

Almost always, they're the ones that kept people in the building. Wawa kept its people. Buc-ee's kept its people. In-N-Out kept its people. So did the diner where the cook knows your order, and the coffee counter with that one barista who always gets it right. People are what made those places matter to other people.

Anyone can put a charger anywhere overnight. Nobody can buy a team that cares.

A bet on what's becoming rare

Every year, more of daily life gets handed to screens. Order at the kiosk. Pay in the app. Report the broken charger to a support queue and hope someone reads it. As that becomes normal, a person who greets you, remembers you, and fixes the problem right in front of you becomes rare. And rare things get noticed.

That's our bet. As everything that can be automated gets automated, the places that kept their people will matter more, not less. With half an hour to spend, drivers will choose them.

What that looks like at Cavana

Our Hosts are here every day from 6am to 10pm. They're chosen for warmth, trained properly, paid well enough to be proud of the job, and dressed in uniforms designed with the same care as the building.

They handle the practical things, too. When a stall acts up, a Host sees it right away. When a gas car blocks a charger, someone deals with it. When a regular walks in, someone already knows what they'll order.

Running a business this way costs more, and it's harder to grow. We think it's worth it. We think you will too.

Somewhere along the way, "premium" came to mean fewer people get it. Scarce, expensive, behind a velvet rope.

We mean something different.

Premium for everyone

The classic American diner was premium in all the ways that mattered: hot food, fast service, a counter stool and a cook who might know your order. It was for everyone. The national parks are premium, too. Landscapes so beautiful they stop you in your tracks, and they belong to everyone.

The quality that makes something worth having doesn't need a barrier to entry. At Cavana, premium means raising the floor. Every driver who pulls in, member or not, walks into a room that was clearly built with care. Clean, staffed and designed, the kind of place that tells you someone thought it through.

The standard is high. The door is open.

So why is there an upstairs?

Because some people want more. More quiet, more time, a deeper connection to a place they visit every week. That's a real want, and the Oasis Lounge is built for it.

But membership never makes the ground floor worse. The ground floor is already excellent. Upstairs is simply more of it. And you can always see the room above from the room below, so everyone knows exactly what's there.

Why it matters

More and more, the quality of an ordinary day depends on what you can pay. The airport has lanes. The stadium has tiers. Every app has a premium plan.

We think there's something worth defending in a place built with real care for everyone who shows up. Care as the standard, for everyone. That's the balance we hold at every Cavana: genuinely excellent, and open to every driver.

An American flag flies at every Cavana. It's one of the few things about our locations that will never change, whatever the market, the season or the budget.

People sometimes ask why. Here's the answer.

A promise, made in public

The flag is a promise out front, where everyone can see it and hold us to it.

To our team, it says they work for a company that holds itself to something. To our guests, it says this place was built with intention, by people who believed it should mean something. To anyone driving past, it sets an expectation that we have to meet every single day.

It carries no political message. It belongs to everyone who walks through the door.

The standard this country used to keep

Forty years ago, an ordinary American business held itself to a standard without needing a mission statement. The sign was lit. The floor was clean. The person at the counter knew your name, and the product was worth the price. That was just normal.

Then, gradually, it slipped. A thousand rounds of cost-cutting. A thousand decisions to let something slide because the customer probably wouldn't notice. People noticed. They've just learned to expect less.

Cavana is a bet on America. On what this country is capable of when it decides to care.

A view from someone who arrived

Our founder, Bryan Mario, was born in Havana. He grew up on stories of a grandmother who spent decades in hospitality, back when it was treated as a serious craft. When he came to America, he found a country capable of extraordinary things, and a lot of everyday businesses running far below what it's capable of.

Chick-fil-A, Wawa and Buc-ee's have already proven the standard can be met, and that customers reward it. Cavana intends to prove the same thing at the charging stop.

So when you walk in and find the light warm, the bathroom clean, the team present and the room exactly as it was built, you're seeing what the flag means.

Light has a temperature, measured in Kelvin. A candle flame is about 1,800K. The old incandescent bulbs that made living rooms glow sit around 2,700K. Most parking lots, offices and gas station canopies run at 4,000K or higher: that cold, bluish white that makes everything look like a hospital at midnight.

Every light at every Cavana sits between 2,700 and 3,000 Kelvin. Inside and outside. Downstairs and upstairs. At 2pm and at 2am.

Why warm

Warm light is how a place says welcome before anyone else does. It's the glow of a restaurant window on a dark street, or a porch light someone left on for you. It flatters faces. It makes wood, brass and velvet look the way they were meant to.

Cool light makes a room feel like somewhere you wait. Warm light makes it feel like somewhere you stay.

Never cool. Never blue-white. At every location, at every hour.

Why it never dims

A lot of charging stations go dark at night. An empty lot, a dim corner, nobody around. For many drivers, especially women charging alone, that's exactly when an EV feels least comfortable to own.

So at Cavana, light is a safety standard first. The lot, the stalls, the walkways and the building stay fully lit all night, in the same warm light as the afternoon. We choose busy, visible sites with clear sightlines. And during our hours, people are always on site.

You'll see it from the road. That's the point.

You know the gas pump that starts talking at you the second you lift the nozzle? The waiting room TV you can't turn off? We're not doing that.

Every Cavana has screens on both floors. Some show our own content. Some carry brands. None of them will ever make a sound.

Silent, visual, and part of the room

Before advertising could shout, it had to earn your attention. A good print ad or a great poster did it with nothing but a strong image and a few words. That's the standard we hold every screen to.

Anything on a Cavana screen should add to the room the way the furniture does, as if it was always meant to be there. No sound. No interruptions. Nothing competing with your coffee or your conversation.

If it adds to the space, it runs. If it doesn't, it doesn't.

Why we won't bend on it

We treat this as a rule, and we won't negotiate it. Protecting the experience is the whole job, and the experience is why you're here. A quiet room is worth more to you, and to the brands that want to meet you in it, than a loud one.

Brands that want to reach our guests adapt their work to meet this standard. Those that won't, don't advertise at Cavana.

The best names in American business stopped describing a product a long time ago. Howard Johnson's orange roof meant family road trips. A Pennsylvania convenience store named itself after the Ojibwe word for Canada goose, Wawa, and turned gas stops into a ritual. Texans plan vacations around Buc-ee's.

Most charging names tell you exactly what they do. They're accurate, and they're forgettable. We wanted a name that described a feeling.

A question from dad

It started with a simple question. Bryan's dad asked him what he actually pictured when he imagined the place.

Bryan's answer: a shaded structure, for the car and the people in it. He'd been caught in the rain at a charger once, standing next to his car with nowhere to go. All he'd wanted was some cover. Something like a cabana at the beach.

Then it hit him. Cabana, with a V.

Cabana, with a V

That one letter does a lot. Cabana is an everyday word. Cavana is ours. And the V tucks the vehicle right into the name, for anyone who looks closely.

Kuh·ba·nuh. Exactly like cabana. But Cavana.

One letter from Havana

Say it out loud and you might hear something else, too: one letter away from Havana, the city where Bryan was born, and where his grandmother spent decades in hospitality. Nobody planned that. It was just there, and it stuck.

Why it sticks

Say it and you'll notice it's easy to remember. The strong first syllable is the same pattern as Google, Starbucks and Target. The hard "K" sound at the start grabs your attention, like Coca-Cola and Kodak. And the three soft A's give it a rhythm, like banana or Canada. Nobody hears Cavana and thinks of anything cold or industrial. It sounds like somewhere you'd want to stop.

The real test

You don't search the web. You Google it. The best brands become part of how people talk.

We'll know the name has done its job when someone says "I'll meet you at Cavana" and nobody asks what it is, or which one.

Most memberships read like a credit card comparison chart. Gold gets this. Platinum gets that. And every month you quietly ask yourself whether you're using it enough to justify the price.

We think about Cavana membership differently. It's a passport.

Start with your home Cavana

Your membership begins at one place: your home Cavana, the one on your commute. It's where the team learns your name and your order, where you head upstairs to the Oasis whenever you like, day or night, and where you can reserve a stall so it's ready when you pull in.

For a lot of people, that's everything they'll ever need. And we want that one location to be so good that it's worth it every single day.

Then, every door we open

As Cavana grows across Florida, a network membership will open the upper floor of every location we build. And they won't all be the same.

The Oasis in Orlando might lean social and lively. A location on the Space Coast might feel more like a beach club. Another might have a rooftop terrace. Every one will have its own name and its own character, all held to the same standard. You won't need to plan around which is which. You'll pull up, head upstairs, and belong there.

Every new Cavana makes your membership worth more. You don't pay a cent extra.

The club on your commute

Private clubs have worked this way for years: one membership, a whole collection of places, each one different. The catch is that most of them need a plane ticket.

Cavana will be on your way to work.

Points that go further

Members earn points on everything, from coffee to snacks to visits. You can use them toward charging, or redeem them with our travel, hotel and lifestyle partners, where they stretch even further. Network members will also get monthly charging credits that stack up over time.

No membership required downstairs

One thing will never change: you'll never need a membership to charge, eat, use the WiFi or stay as long as you like. The ground floor is excellent on its own. Membership is simply more of Cavana.

Membership names, pricing and final benefits will be announced before our first Hub opens. The network membership arrives with our second location.

We're a Florida company, and we're building for Florida first. Here's why this is the place to start.

The drivers are already here

Florida has an estimated 460,000 registered EVs as of early 2026, more than any state except California. Roughly one in eight new cars sold here is electric. And Central Florida is where it's all growing fastest: EV registrations there jumped 46% in a single year.

A lot of them can't charge at home

The first wave of EV drivers were mostly homeowners with a garage and a charger on the wall. That's changing. In Orlando's urban core, 60.5% of residents rent. As more of them go electric, public charging becomes their only charging, and they deserve somewhere good to do it.

Florida never takes a season off

In colder states, charging drops off in winter. Florida drives all year round. And the heat makes a comfortable stop matter even more. Twenty-seven minutes in a parking lot in August is a very long time.

75 million visitors a year

Orlando is one of the most visited places on earth. Many of those visitors pick up an EV at the airport and have to charge somewhere they've never been. The first great stop they find is the one they'll remember, and tell people about.

A region that's building

Central Florida is in the middle of one of the biggest growth spurts in its history. Disney is expanding. Universal's Epic Universe opened in 2025. SunRail is extending toward the airport and Disney Springs. MCO has a new terminal. The NeoCity tech campus is bringing new jobs to Osceola County. The region's population is expected to pass six million by 2030.

Every one of those projects puts more people on the same roads. We're building right into it.

Where we go from here

Our first Hub is being built in the Orlando area. After that come Tampa Bay, the Space Coast and the I-95 corridor, and from there, the rest of the state: Palm Beach and Broward, Jacksonville, Fort Myers and Naples.

Each step starts only when the one before it is working. One Cavana done right beats three done halfway.