I’m sure everyone will join me in saying good riddance to 2021, and let’s hope 2022 brings good health, and personal and professional growth. As we move into a new year, we are working hard on the upcoming National Advisory Group (NAG) conference scheduled for March 27-30 in La Jolla, Calif.
Personally, I can’t wait to get back on the road and get out with the industry for nearly four days of networking, information-sharing, outstanding educational sessions and just catching up with friends whom I have missed these past two years.
NAG is an association driven by convenience store retailers for retailers. It is an organization committed to building profits and relationships for members, and the annual conference is the driving force behind our success. Convenience store retailers have leaned on NAG for more than 35 years to help them grow sales, cut costs and generate new ideas in the competitive convenience store market.
NAG has many core strengths, but most notably, it’s our ability to identify winning strategies that help convenience store retailers through our events, education and networking. The organization finds success in many ways; mainly, it’s through our ability to maintain excellent relationships with retailers and supplier partners across the convenience store and petroleum industry.
After more than three decades, the NAG mission remains the same: to help convenience store retailers interact with one another to discuss new concepts, share information and come away with innovative ideas to grow sales and profits. The foundation of NAG remains its innovative Information Exchanges, which allow retailers the opportunity to connect with other non-competing retailers in an intimate setting that is conducive to learning new ideas and fresh perspectives.
This year, to go along with the Information Exchanges, we have five educational sessions: Culture as a Competitive Advantage, Loading Up for Breakfast, Lessons for C-Stores From COVID-19, HR Staffing in a Labor Shortage, and How to Build Customer Loyalty Through Engagement.
Plus, this year’s conference will feature two exclusive research sessions and a breakout track for the Young Executives Organization (YEO). The research sessions are titled: Driving Targeted Business Outcomes and Expanding the Evening Daypart. These research projects are being conducted with NAG partners Stuzo and Hathway. The results of these projects — one will share business projections directly from convenience store retailers, and the other will communicate insights from convenience store customers — will be released for the first time to the industry only at the NAG Conference.
For YEO, Gray Taylor, executive director of Conexxus, will lead a session focused on understanding the rise of digital currencies. This is a timely conversation, as a new generation of convenience store customers is growing up unaccustomed to using cash.
YEO is a special group of next-generation industry leaders who are 40 years of age or younger. Members are entrepreneurs, leading top businesses and actively pursuing a higher level of professionalism in the convenience store and petroleum marketing industry. The industry’s young executives and leaders of tomorrow face unique challenges as they grow their businesses in the competitive convenience store market. YEO was formed specifically to addresses these challenges and identify solutions with others in their age group.
NAG and YEO present the ideal opportunities for retailers across the board to learn new ideas from the industry’s sharpest minds. This year’s conference features speakers from Wawa, Thorntons, Nouria Energy, Family Express, Robinson Oil, CEFCO, EG America, Alltown — and too many more to list. What makes our agenda special is that this entire lineup was put together by retailers for retailers.
With the help of our retailer board of directors and generous input from CStore Decisions readers, we feel we have assembled the perfect agenda to help you grow your business in 2022 and beyond.
Visit nagconvenience.com to view the agenda and speaker lineup and nagconvenience.com/join to join NAG as a member.