I wonder if the business owners really understand this issue.

Yes, the question was directly about gasoline prices, but they are indeed dependent on crude oil prices. So the question could have been how they are affected by rising oil prices.

Unless your business idea is to sell ideas from a public speakers corner, you're affected.

In the block where I live there's a small shop specialicing in cheese, they've got it all there. Cheese doesn't (hopefully) contain gasoline so they might be one of the 13-percenters above. An acute oil shortage or price rise though would propably put some of the cheese manufacturers out of business, and rising the remainings prices. Add to that increased transport costs to get the cheese from the manufacturers to the shop. Throw in increased rents and electricity bills to keep the cheese cool. At this point I wouldn't be surprised if the prices doubled, at the same time they would be offering less of a variety than before. And people in general would have a tighter economy basically due to the same reasons as above, thus bying less cheese...

No they don't pay no gasoline bills but energy prices DO affect them.