On Jan. 4, 2022, the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) published a study compiled by the American Cancer Society (ACS) which claims to analyze the impact of a Massachusetts law banning the sale of menthol cigarettes and other flavored tobacco products. The study focused on comparing cigarette sales in Massachusetts from January 2017…

The Black Lives Matter movement has brought a heightened awareness to systemic and institutional racism, and to the implicit personal biases that impact the workplace in far-reaching ways. By now, it has become clear that active anti-racism measures are critical to bring about much-needed change in the corporate world. To infuse diversity, equity and inclusion…

If I asked your employees, “What’s it like to work at your company?” their answers would largely describe your company culture. How would your employees answer? Would you like what you heard? If not, a leader’s responsibility is to change that. This will be a key topic of discussion at the 2022 National Advisory Group…

America has been a car culture since long before the pandemic, but the past two years have cemented that status.  At a time when many consumers couldn’t go into stores and restaurants, they relied on their cars to pick up meals and groceries at unprecedented rates — or used third-party delivery drivers to do it…

In 1954, American psychologist James Olds and Canadian neuroscientist Peter Milner conducted an experiment to explore the psychological basis of rewards. They found that it’s not actually the rewards that motivate action, but rather it’s the anticipation of a reward, or the stress of desire that catalyzes action. Since then, as a result of predictability…

Should your convenience store embrace third-party, aggregated delivery services? As the pandemic stretches on, it’s time to re-examine the pros, cons, risks and costs. Could the pros of paying others for delivery services, ostensibly justified in net-new incremental sales, be far outweighed by the cons of unknowingly donating your SKU-level sales data to third-party intermediaries…

The snacking consumer returned to c-stores in 2021, driving double-digit sales increases for both salty and meat snacks. Hot and spicy flavor profiles are on fire in the category as supply chain disruption and an inflationary economy failed to douse flavor innovation and optimism for the coming year. “2021 has seen huge growth in center…

Although 2021 may not have felt “normal” as COVID-19 continued to wreak havoc, key market indicators suggest the tobacco category settled back into more predictive patterns for convenience stores. C-store retailers are looking to tobacco’s Q4 performance and the regulatory landscape for clues on what to expect for tobacco in 2022.  Cigarettes Whereas 2020 cigarette…

Street Corner may not be the new kid on the block — it first entered the market in the mid-1980s — but the chain’s reinvention post-pandemic positions it as a cutting-edge, modern c-store business. With a new CEO at the wheel, Street Corner recently debuted a revamped foodservice menu and is aggressively rolling out three…

On Dec. 2, 2021, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Tobacco Products Director Mitch Zeller presented a live webinar on FDA tobacco regulations. The presentation focused on premarket tobacco applications (PMTA), the new graphic cigarette health warnings and synthetic nicotine products, and gave insights into what might await the category in the new…