It's not your imagination — there are thousands of convenience stores dotting the North Jersey landscape and more "coming soon."

The convenience store craze is officially on.

With their multiple pots of scalding-hot coffee and heat lamp food offerings, c-stores have been sprouting up in the Garden State at a double-digit yearly pace since 2010.

There are 3,229 convenience stores in New Jersey today. Of those, about half sell gasoline. In 2009 there were 2,695 convenience stores. That's a 20 percent increase in 10 years.

"And that’s pretty good considering that convenience stores are 34 percent of all retail stores," said National Association of Convenience Stores spokesman Jeff Lenard, who provided the numbers.

The end, it seems, is nowhere in sight.

Wawa opened a new store in Hackettstown on Friday. That makes its 251st in New Jersey. In Augusta, a Wawa is set to replace famed The Chatterbox Drive-In restaurant, and in Butler hearings will begin soon for a new store on Route 23.

"We plan to continue opening new stores throughout New Jersey," said Lori Bruce, a Wawa spokeswoman. In fact, Wawa is planning to open 60 stores next year across its multi-state chain. The company projects nine new stores in New Jersey, currently Wawa's largest state of operations, Bruce said.

"Every new store we build brings not only new construction jobs during the store development but 40-50 new associate positions with competitive wages and benefits," she said.

Wawa and its top competitor, QuickChek, have replaced the heat lamp food model with freshly prepared sandwich options.

There are QuickCheks aplenty in New Jersey, with a new "millennial-friendly" version that opened in Hackensack in June. A QuickChek and a Wawa were recently approved for Belleville.

There are 142 QuickCheks in New Jersey. 7-Eleven eclipses Wawa and QuickChek with its 366 locations in New Jersey. In fact, a new 7-Eleven franchise — home of the Slurpee — is born every three hours somewhere in the world, according to its website.

More:First 'millennial-friendly' QuickChek in Bergen County opens in Hackensack

More:Woman jumps in to pay Keith Urban's bill at Wawa in South Jersey

More:It's not just Amazon Go: 6 amazing ways technology will transform how we shop

7-Eleven actually owns the phrase "BrainFreeze" in honor of "the world's favorite frozen drink." Where are the most Slurpees sold in the world? Well, that would be Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, followed by the greater Detroit, Michigan, area.

7-Eleven claims it was the first convenience store to sell gas.

Remember Garden State Farms? Sal Risalvato does. He's executive director of the New Jersey Gasoline-Convenience-Automotive Association. The group represents mom-and-pop c-stores and 7-Eleven.

Garden State Farms dotted the Garden State. Its stores still do, but since the 1980s they have been known as Krauszer's, Risalvato said. "Then one by one the Krauszer's started closing up. Krauszer's used to be a pretty big chain," he said.

In the 1980s, about 100 Krauszer's called New Jersey home; today there are maybe 20, Risalvato said.

Garden State Farms was sued over milk prices in the 1960s and a helipad in Hawthorne in the 1970s.

New Jersey is also home to Krauser's without the "z," mini-marts, Tiger Marts, Quick & Fresh, Grab & Go, Circle A, Circle K ... You get the picture.

It seems like there is a convenience store on every corner. And one across from the one on every corner. And one kitty-corner from the other one.

Are there too many?

"I don't think so," Risalvato said. "I think that they're growing because of the word 'convenience.' Our society has geared everything towards convenience. And they're popular because of the convenience."

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Lenard said that when somebody goes to one of the c-stores it's because "they want it now," not 20 minutes from now.

"They go to a convenience store and take that right-hand turn because they're thirsty now," he said. "They take that turn into the convenience store because they're hungry now. They go to the store because they need gas now."

Gas, tobacco products, and coffee — those are what sell the most, according to the NACS.

"Coffee, coffee and coffee," Risalvato said.

They aren't buying beer and wine though, he pointed out with some frustration.

"In New Jersey you can't. We'd like to change that because of the word 'convenience.' Because if you were there filling up with gas, you want to run inside and pick up your six-pack, instead of having to make another stop somewhere else," Risalvato said

Beer is No. 5 on the top-seller list for c-stores despite New Jersey's being left out of the party.

Convenience stores in America experienced a 15th straight year of record in-store sales and a fourth straight year of $10 billion-plus in pretax profits, according to the NACS.

They've come a long way and will continue to evolve, Lenard said. In the 1960s convenience stores had vacuum tube testers for customers to use when trying to figure out which tube was broken on their Zenith television, he said.

"It wasn't so long ago that some of those impulse items around Christmastime on the list was [photo] film, and that's nowhere to be found now," he said.

There may be a time when core convenience store items such as gas, cigarettes and soda become niche sales, Lenard said.

"I think the cool thing is five years from now convenience is going to be entirely different on some level," he said. "Some of it will stick and some of it we'll just fondly remember, or maybe not so fondly remember. It's going to center on convenience, whatever that is."

Online shopping

As the internet and smart phone apps continue to disrupt and reinvent the retail experience, will convenience stores be immune?

"As people talk about the retail apocalypse, and certainly the move towards online shopping, the underlying news is thatsmall-format stores continue to thrive, especially convenience stores and dollar stores," Lenard said.

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Convenience stores out-convenience the internet, he said.

"With the internet, the fastest you're ever going to get as of now is 20-30 minutes for a delivery," he said.

Lenard acknowledged that some disruption may already be happening.

Filld is a company with an app that delivers gas to customers' cars rather than the other way around. Filld currently operates in five cities. Forget bragging about not pumping your own gas, Jersey; this is a game-changer.

So if drivers aren't going to a gas station/convenience store to fill up on gas, will the stores suffer?

What if gasoline makes way for alternative fuels, such as with electric vehicles? Will that effectively kill the convenience store as we now know it?

"There are about 17 million cars sold a year and a couple hundred thousand are electric, so it's going to take a while to replace the fleet," Lenard said in response. "The Ford F-1 series is still the No. 1 car in America, and it's been that way for 36 years."

"The other thing that may keep convenience stores going a while is just that human interaction," Lenard said. "There is still something to be said for that corner store where they know your name and they say hi."

Bruce said relationships and a sense of community are key for Wawa.

"Our stores are places where customers create lifelong relationships with our associates," she said. "We think the relationship between our associates, communities and customers feels more like family rather than a transaction."

Bruce said customers are so connected to Wawa that people have proposed marriage in stores. There was recently the paying-it-forward moment with singer Keith Urban at a Wawa in Medford.

Changing with the times

Amazon Go is transforming how people shop and reinventing the concept of "grab and go." With these new cashier-free convenience stores, waiting in line to pay for items may become a thing of the past.

With the use of cameras and sensors and smart artificial intelligence behind the scenes, customers grab items off the shelf and simply walk out as their account is charged and a receipt emailed.

Bloomberg reported that Amazon is planning to open 3,000 Amazon Go stores by 2021, and Microsoft is also said to be readying cashier-less stores. Amazon Go is already eyeing airports.

Other convenience stores are taking note, Lenard said. "You never want to be blindsided," he said.

What about a store that travels to you?

Toyota has envisioned autonomous storefront cars that bring products to the customer. Toyota is teaming with Uber, Pizza Hut and Amazon to start, but the first live demonstration of Toyota e-Palette won’t be until the Tokyo Olympics in 2020.

Follow Jai Agnish on Twitter: @JaiAgnish. Email: agnish@northjersey.com.