Convenience store operators asking themselves whether a proprietary foodservice program is right for them are really asking another question: is trying to reinvent the wheel worth it? Oddly enough, in certain circumstances, it can be. With foodservice playing a more important role than ever before in the convenience store channel, originality and uniqueness may set…
How Can I Create a Loyalty Program?
Independent convenience store operators who aren’t yet taking full advantage of customer loyalty programs are missing multiple opportunities that could easily be theirs and provide long-lasting benefits. Loyalty programs — rewarding customers for their repeat business with exclusive benefits — enhance relationships between retailers and their shoppers and aid significantly in customer retention and building…
What’s the Difference Between Moist Snuff and Dry Snuff?
Convenience store personnel are generally pretty good at answering customers’ questions and speaking knowledgeably about the products they sell, but they have a harder time doing so when it comes to the varieties of smokeless tobacco — for example, the differences between moist and dry snuff — if they don’t understand how they work. Indeed,…
How to Improve the In-Store Experience
Convenience store operators wondering how to improve their in-store shopping experience need only do one simple thing: walk into a convenience store. Changing one’s perspective — experiencing shopping inside a c-store as a customer — can open even a veteran retailer’s eyes in ways that might surprise them. Rather than crafting an experience from a…
How Can I Boost Seasonal Candy Sales?
Boosting seasonal candy sales is not hard to do because customers are typically already looking out for the candy they need for a given holiday or season. Each season has its holidays, and hitching the candy category’s wagon to them makes sales increases all but assured. Each holiday — from observances like Halloween, Christmas and…
How to Boost Sweet Snack Sales
Boosting sweet snack sales in convenience stores shouldn’t be difficult for one very simple reason: customers are more than happy to help. Among consumers responding to a recent snacking survey by Food Insight, the information hub created and curated by nutrition and food safety experts at the International Food Information Council (IFIC), nearly four in…
Should I Have Vegan Options on My Menu?
Should convenience store operators feature vegan options on their menus? Well, that depends. It’s true that Americans increasingly love natural, healthy foods — and options. And many quick-service restaurants and other food establishments are responding to this trend by adding a plant-based or vegan option to menus. Approximately 5% of respondents identified themselves as vegans…
What’s the Difference Between Dip and Chew?
It is important for convenience store employees to know the difference between chewing tobacco and dip — even if a great many of their customers may not. Though they sound the same, chew and dip are different in some essential ways. Chewing tobacco is a variety of smokeless tobacco product made from cured and fermented…
Should I Start a Dispensed Tea Program?
Convenience operators wondering whether or not they should introduce a dispensed tea program at their stores need to know that there are solid reasons why the answer should almost certainly be yes. For convenience store retailers across the United States, dispensed teas, like dispensed waters, remain part of an overall trend favoring dispensed beverages in…
What are PHEVs?
Convenience store operators are called upon to continually increase their knowledge base to keep up with the ever-changing needs and demands of their customers. And one of the things they’ve recently been required to add to their fund of knowledge is the acronym PHEV — plug-in hybrid electric vehicles. A plug-in hybrid electric vehicle is…