The employees at Cocomile on Pape Avenue want to let you in on a secret.
They have cheap gas.
The station is offering to keep dropping its gas prices a few cents off the regular price to save their customers money and draw more business.
“We check what the price is everyday and bring our pumps down a couple cents,” owner Greg Markakios said. “We do it to help out our customers but it also takes out the competition.”
With gas prices fluctuating over the past few months, consumers have been worried about having enough left for other essential purchases after chunks of their paycheques go to gas.
“It gets so nerve wracking sometimes,” said Elisa Bennett, a driver filling up at the Esso station at O’Connor Drive and Coxwell Avenue. “Sometimes half my paycheque goes into gas and I can’t afford my whole groceries list.”
Your ‘buddy’ in finding the cheapest gas
Helping stretch those dollars is a website that finds the lowest-priced gas in different areas of Toronto.
“With the longest gas price decline coming to an end in late September, we’re working hard to make finding cheap gas easy for our customers,” said Patrick De Haan, spokesperson for GasBuddy.
You just type your area into GasBuddy.com and the site tells you which gas station near you has the lowest prices.
“We’ve made it as easy as possible for our customers to use,” said De Haan. “The website is almost constantly updated by users. We make sure that every station is checked and every submission has the date and time of submitting. So when you’re looking for a gas station, you know that the price is recent.”
On this day of writing, for example, the top three gas stations to go to in East York are Esso and Circle K at 61 Overlea Blvd., Esso and Circle K at 561 O’Connor Dr., and Shell at 705 Don Mills Rd. All three gas stations are selling regular fuel at 143.9 cents, as posted on GasBuddy four hours ago.
Plan your cheapest route
Other cheap gas websites exist but GasBuddy.com has developed a reputation as the best.
“I’ve tried the other sites, but none are updated as fast as GasBuddy,” said Jeremy Bishop, an avid user of the website. “It’s the most trustworthy because it’s so fast. But it also helps you plan trips. We use it whenever my family and I drive to the states.”
GasBuddy.com offers a tab to help plan a drive and shows which gas stations have the cheapest gas along the way.