When it comes to satisfying consumers’ cravings for lunch and dinner, convenience stores have it all over traditional restaurants by offering a wider variety of fresh foods through both proprietary and co-branding programs.
By Marilyn Odesser-Torpey, Associate Editor
Foodservice may be the new superstar of convenience store sales, but Lance Harris, owner of nine Leebo’s Get ‘n Gone locations in Louisiana, recognized its potential as a business builder as far back as 40 years ago.
That’s when he opened his first store, complete with a full-service deli and fried chicken offering. And for the past 20 years, he has also been growing the quick-service restaurant component of his stores.
“Back when I started with foodservice, people thought I was crazy,” Harris said. “But I have found through the years that, when it comes to variety of fresh food offerings, the more the better.”
Seven of his stores offer a proprietary program called Flatheads’ Fried Chicken.
“Our fried chicken program has given us a better marketing presence and has become associated with Leebo’s in these areas,” he said.
For this concept, everything from the chicken to the sides is prepared fresh daily in the stores’ kitchens. Tenders are a consistently popular meal- and snack-time item. A new enthusiastically-received offering is a jalapeño pepper stuffed with cheese wrapped in a chicken tender and bacon. It can be ordered baked or deep fried.
Flatheads’ also features a $7.99 “plate lunch,” which includes an entrée-size portion of chicken, two sides and a biscuit. Sides are rotated in and out on a daily basis except for some standards, which include red beans and rice and mashed potatoes.
Five of the Leebo’s stores co-brand with Naughty Chile Taqueria, which offers a menu of made-to-order tacos, burritos and burrito bowls.
“We studied our market areas and found that consumers, especially Millennials, want more variety,” Harris said. “Co-branding partners like Naughty Chile allow us to keep adding to and enhancing our foodservice.”
Six of the stores co-brand with Hunt Brothers Pizza. The pies, which arrive at the stores already sauced and sprinkled with cheese, are topped to order. Leebo’s sells the pizza as a 12-inch whole and by the one-quarter “hunk.”
“Hunt Brothers has the flavor profiles that our customers like best,” Harris said.
Some of the stores have multiple foodservice operations, depending on their square footage and what other options exist in the surrounding market areas. Harris said he is also open to adding more quick-service partners in sites that have the space and market demand.
“Over the past 18 months, we’ve been seeing really nice growth during lunch across all three concepts, especially with our Flatheads’ plated lunches,” Harris said. “For dinner, we emphasize our family-size chicken dinners and Hunt Brothers pies.”
MIX & MATCH SUCCESS
After a slow start to fresh dinner foodservice over the years, Swiss Farms Stores, which has 12 (soon to be 13) drive-through markets in suburban Philadelphia’s Delaware County, hired Justin Vignola as director of fresh food/new product development last July. After putting together a team, including graduates of some of the nation’s top culinary schools, the chain debuted an extensive selection of mix-and-match, heat-and-eat entrees and sides in January.
“Our market area is mostly made up of busy families with parents having little time to make a full meal at home,” Vignola explained.
Customers can choose from 10 main dishes for $7.99 and side dish for $4.99 each. Most of the entrees are large enough to feed two people. Among the best-sellers so far are slow-roasted pulled pork covered in Swiss Farms’ Signature Tea Cooler barbecue sauce, bacon-wrapped meat loaf and chicken vegetable lo mein.
“We wanted to make the pricing consistent, so it would be easy for customers to mix and match items,” he said.
Sales of the dinner entrees started out slowly as customers got used to seeing such an array of fresh, in-home replacement meals at Swiss Farms, Vignola said. But over the first month, volume increased 150% and sales rose from between $16,000 and $17,000 per week up to over $26,000.
To give the program a boost, Swiss Farms has been using a variety of media, including mailers, radio and high value coupons (e.g. $2 off any purchase of two entrees on family night meal deals every Thursday); back-lit menu boards at the drive-through as well as sampling outside of the stores. The strongest days for dinner sales to date are Friday and Saturday.
Lunch at Swiss Farms still revolves around fresh, made-to-order hoagies, composed salads, hot melt sandwiches and the company’s hand-cut regular or cranberry chicken salad.
Vignola said he is also working on expanding the selection of heat-to-order items that customers can eat on the go.
Vignola noted that since the meal program has been available, incremental sales of tea coolers and other drinks along with other incremental items such as milk, bread and cereal have increased.
CONSISTENCY SELLS
A combination of co-branded and proprietary offerings allows Cubby’s Convenience Stores to offer a variety of foods for lunch and dinner. There’s a Godfather’s Express in 20 of 36 Cubby’s stores, which are located in Nebraska, Iowa and South Dakota. In nine stores that are located in market areas where Godfather’s is already established, Cubby’s offers its own brand of fresh-made pizza.
“Our first choice is Godfathers; our store brand is our back-up,” said De Lone Wilson, Cubby’s Convenience Stores president. “Godfather’s started and is based in Nebraska, so it has very high consumer recognition and a loyal following. The company also provides a solid program to follow and a lot of support.”
In most of the stores, customers also have the choice of bone-in pieces or tenders from the Chester’s Fried Chicken program.
“Chester’s also has great brand recognition, especially on highways that see a lot of truck traffic,” said Wilson. “More important, it’s a good product—I’d stack it up against anybody’s.”
Many of the stores offer hamburgers, cheeseburgers and a popular signature Junction Burger, which, instead of being served on a bun, is wrapped in a mini pizza crust and baked.
The specialty burger also features such offerings as bacon, Swiss and mushrooms and “angry” with jalapeños, 1,000 Island Dressing and chili cheese.
Last October, in all of the locations that serve food, Cubby’s introduced a daily lunch special featuring a rotating roster of store-made items. On Mondays, for example, the special is tacos served with either Mexican rice or seasoned tater tots, while on Tuesdays it is a pork tenderloin sandwich with mashed potatoes and green beans. The price is $7.99 and includes a 32-ounce fountain drink or bottle of water.
“As much as people love their pizza, chicken and burgers, they also want more variety,” Wilson said.
Wilson explained that the convenience stores were offering lunch specials everyday anyway with the foodservice managers choosing the items on the specials menu.
“We just made it more consistent for them by featuring the same items on the same days every week,” he said. “This way the managers know in advance what they have to order and customers get used to coming in for their favorites on specific days.”
Cubby’s also does barbecue, with two pit masters that bring smokers to stores in Nebraska and Iowa once or twice a week to prepare pork, brisket and smoked mac and cheese. The program, which was first introduced about two years ago, is “very popular” and is constantly attracting new fans, he said.
So far, the daily special program is doing “pretty well,” according to Wilson, who expects that sales will pick up even more in the warmer months when more people are out and about. The stores promote the foodservice program on digital menu boards and on Facebook.
As for the dinner daypart in general Wilson feels that “our biggest challenge is ourselves.”
“Retailers are so scared of waste, but you can’t say you offer chicken, be out of it when the customer comes to in to get it and expect that customer to come back again,” he said. “A certain amount of waste is healthy. It’s a sign that you’re not missing sales.”