Evangelisto parts ways with Brandon 1st Stop

By: 
Jill Meier, Journal editor
Ann Evangelisto was emotional as she handed over the keys Monday to Brandon 1st Stop’s new owners, Dan and Becky Bauer.
“This is a tough one,” she said. “So many great people have come through those doors every day for their coffee, their breakfast or a Mountain Dew. You see them every day and it’s become like a family, a neighborhood gathering place.”
Evangelisto, who purchased the convenience store at 600 N. Splitrock Blvd. in 2005, turned Brandon 1st Stop over to the Sioux Falls husband and wife this week. The Bauers bring admirable experience to the business, as they own and operate four convenience stores in Sioux Falls.
Evangelisto will now turn her attention full-time to her other business, the Monarch Steak House & Lounge in Renner, which she’s owned for nearly four decades.
“I’ve owned it 38 years, one month and 16 days,” she said Nov. 16. “That’s easy to figure since I purchased it on Oct. 1, 1979.”
Evangelisto initially ventured into the convenience store business on the advice of her accountant.
“The people there at the time were anxious to get out of it and move onto other things,” she recalled. “But the store did need some help.”
And Evangelisto gave it the boost it needed.
“The sales doubled in less than a year and then doubled again, and I feel very fortunate that it worked out,” she said.
She also gave the business a new name: Brandon 1st Stop.
“It was named Gas & Goodies and I hated that name,” she shared. “Gas & Goodies was a name not very appealing to me, although appropriate since we sold gas and goodies, but I thought some people would define ‘goodies’ in a bazaar way.”
The store’s name was born out of a brainstorming session with the staff.
“We put our heads together and someone suggested Brandon 1st Stop, and we thought the name was perfect,” she said.
In February 2005, Evangelisto brought in the Shell brand, and three years ago, dropped Shell and rebranded to Local.
While Evangelisto sums up her dozen years as a Brandon business owner as “great,” she describes her attempt to gain one of the city’s available liquor licenses in 2012 as “frustrating” and “disappointing.”
Evangelisto had invested substantial time and money into her plan to open a bar and grill and video lottery casino in unused space on the east side of the building.
“It was frustrating and it was just so disappointing. I had planned for that and with the census, I knew we’d be getting another license,” she said. “It would’ve been a great location, a great opportunity for the store and a great opportunity for Brandon to have another establishment and eatery.”
At the time Evangelisto applied for a retail on-sale liquor license, the city-issued license was priced at $8,785. However, the Brandon City Council was in the midst of increasing the license fee to the current $125,000 price. 
“I wrote the check for the license and then someone decided the city could get a whole lot more money for it,” she said. “But at the time, I said that I couldn’t live long enough to pay for that.”
Had Evangelisto been granted a license at the $8,785 price, she likely wouldn’t be parting ways with the business today. 
“If I’d received the liquor license, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation today,” she said. “That was a disappointment that I guess you don’t get over because there was no reason for it to have happened like that.”
While it is difficult for Evangelisto to walk away from Brandon 1st Stop, she said it’s even more difficult to part ways with her staff, some of which have been with her since day one, and others, multiple years. “Brandon has been a good community and the store became a friendly little establishment,” she said. “And it will be hard to say goodbye to them because you kind of ‘adopt’ them.”

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The Brandon Valley Journal

 

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