Singles may account for the bulk of a convenience retailer’s packaged beverage sales, but multi-packs represent a home-run growth opportunity as “gateway items” to other impulse purchases. About three years ago, Diane Clark surveyed her market to see her conveniencestore rivals getting aggressive with multi-pack soft drinks: large warm displays,both inside and out. Her 27…

With gas prices reaching obscene levels, sales of premium cigarettes could suffer in the short term. The past 10 months have been a pretty wild ride for Julie Van Alyea.Van Alyea, retail merchandise manager for Redwood Oil Co. (Santa Rosa, CA),has noticed a significant change in her most important instore category: cigarettes.While she has heard…

’Old Salt’ remains the snack category’s strongest draw, but pre-priced items leave an unpleasant taste in the mouths of many retailers. One Arkansas-based merchant opted to take a leading manufacturer’s brands off its shelves over an inflexible pricing policy. No one is irreplaceable. That’s essentially the message Terry Taylorsent one of the packaged snack category’s…

America is a nation of dashboard diners. But Americans are taking a more sensible approach to eating on the go, realizing the need to balance convenience with healthy eating, according to On-The-Go Eating: Consumer Mindsets, Menu Trends and Product/Packaging Innovations, a new report from market researcher Packaged Facts. Key trends covered in the report include…

Indiana’s Circle A Food Stores jolts awake its packaged beverage sales with Water is vital to sustain any life, whether it be that of a human, ananimal or a beverage category. Despite a furious wave of new item introductionsin every beverage subcategory, consumers always seem to return to their colorless,odorless and tasteless master. “Our total…

Innovation in candy, gum and mints creates big opportunities and even bigger margins for space-challenged category managers. Consumers appear to be shying away from ‘intense’ or ‘extreme’ mints in favor of flavors. Convenience retailers should expect some volatility when it comes to famously unpredictable categories like tobacco and gasoline. But candy? Sweet, innocent candy? In…

Eric Dean remembers walking into a store as a child with a note from his mother saying, “Please sell my son a pack of Pall Malls for me.” Things have changed a lot since then. Retailers have become much more responsible, for instance, by taking greater precautions to ensure that tobacco products don’t fall into…

Petro Stopping Centers’ new prepaid card programs diversify the chain’s product mix. They also boost sales in the store, at the pump and in the dining room. The rapid transformation of the telecommunications superhighway hasn’t come without its share of potholes, detours and a few roadkill carcasses. Just five years ago, after all, longdistance cards…

New products, new segments and new approaches to merchandising help Alabama’s Shop-A-Snak boost sales and maximize variety in each area of the cooler. Shop-A-Snak Food Mart Inc. made the decision two years ago to wrap its arms firmly around the beer customer. The Birmingham, AL-based chain of 37 convenience stores expanded its mix by increasing…

Cigars and moist smokeless tobacco items bearing exotic aromas and tastes account for much of the non-cigarette tobacco category’s recent sales growth. ‘Who would have guessed that apple would be such a strong flavor?" asks Kent Raphael, vice president of merchandising for Village Pantry LLC (Indianapolis, IN). He’s not asking about a hot-selling juice drink…