Convenience store retailers are poised for foodservice growth in 2025. Whether through elevating menus, enhancing items already available or providing additional avenues for customer ordering, foodservice is a priority for c-stores now and in the future.
“Food needs to be a destination driver, not an afterthought,” said Dave Grimes, VP of foodservice for Martin and Bayley Inc., which operates 130 Huck’s c-stores in Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee and Missouri.
The Staples
There are a few select items that customers can reasonably expect to find when they peruse a c-store menu: chicken, pizza, sandwiches and something on the roller grill.
Different chains work within these segments in various ways, and plenty have expanded beyond these c-store staples, but the fact remains that these foods have stood the test of time.
Chicken and turkey servings numbered 218 million at c-stores from November 2023 to November 2024, according to Circana. Pizza saw 184 million servings at c-stores for the same period, and sandwiches boasted 768 million servings, a number that includes roller grill fare hot dogs and corn dogs.
At Dandy Mini Marts, which operates 63 stores in Pennsylvania and New York, pizza is the No. 1 top seller.
“We started out with the pizza,” noted James Fry, food service director at Dandy. Made with fresh dough, pizza “was our tried and true,” and the chain hasn’t changed much with the offering since its inception, a choice that has worked well for Dandy.
After Dandy forged its path with pizza, it expanded into subs and breakfast sandwiches before following that with fried foods.
Dandy’s menu includes many chicken options, and the retailer is trying to expand the segment through flavors, sauces and seasonings. Barbecue, for instance, works well with chicken, and it has been used for pizza, too.
“We’ve been doing brisket for the last couple years now. We bring it back every summer, and it seems to be growing every time we bring it back. We do a sandwich, we do a pizza with it, and it goes over real well for us,” said Fry.
Dandy’s diverse and made-to-order menu offerings also appeal to customers looking to customize their order.
While Dandy has a proprietary foodservice program, other chains, such as Huck’s, run a combination of programs. For instance, Huck’s is a franchisee with Omaha, Neb.-based Godfather’s Pizza at 100 stores, but it has proprietary chicken, bakery, breakfast and other prepared food programs.
“We have our own proprietary traditional and spicy blends for breading our products. We offer bone-in chicken, tenders, livers, gizzards, potato wedges, honey-battered wings, rotisserie-style whole birds (at select locations), leg quarters and eight-piece (meals),”
explained Grimes.
In addition, customers can order sides including biscuits, mac and cheese, and potatoes with traditional brown or country-style gravy.
Most of Huck’s food is made in the store, with employees proofing dough for the pizza and hand-breading the chicken.
Currently, Huck’s is focused on large pizza sales, but it also offers pizza catering. For its chicken offering, in addition to its spicy breading, it progressed into sauced wings. With walkaround coolers placed on many of Huck’s sales floors, it has been able to grow its sub, wrap and salad programs.
Huck’s more popular items include mini pizzas, chicken tenders and the sauced wings, as well as traditional and spicy chicken sandwiches on Brioche buns.
“Chicken, pizza and burgers have been industry staples for a long time and are a big part of foodservice sales,” Grimes said. The chain is taking these segments and more and creating items unique to Huck’s Kitchen, which it will prioritize. “This gives us a sustainable competitive advantage.”
Nouria, with 170 stores in the Northeast, 61 car washes and a wholesale distribution fueling network, operates its proprietary Nouria’s Kitchen program.
“We have three major concepts that we run today, and we go to market a little differently than most c-store companies, where we treat our Nouria’s Kitchen as the feature for every store,” said Stephen Skidds, Nouria’s director of fresh foods/culinary. “Ultimately, we say Nouria’s Kitchen featuring whatever our third-party brand is or components of our brand that we want to call out for a third party.”
Krispy Krunchy Chicken and Amato’s are two third-party brands with whom Nouria partners.
One of the most popular items for Amato’s is its pazzo bread, dough with cheese on it that can be made into a nine-inch personal pizza or a 16-inch large pizza. “They’ve done very well with that,” Skidds said.
Nouria’s Kitchen implemented an Italian segment with hand-tossed pizza, a program that offers a whole pie and slices, and a personal nine-inch pizza was being tested at press time and offered in a recently opened truck stop location.
Of course, as c-stores enter and excel in the foodservice market, they must decide how to compete and elevate their offering, particularly with these staple items that many restaurants offer.
Recently, Nouria agreed to acquire Southeast c-store chain Enmarket.
“When you go down south, (attributes and flavor profile focuses) change dramatically, even to the point of fried chicken programs. Every competitor we have from every streetside has a chicken program. And how do you compete with consistent menu setups by store for c-stores?” Skidds asked.
The plan for Enmarket, he noted, is to be nimble and forward thinking regarding what Nouria can do in that market based on Enmarket’s current operations, and the company already has a few plans for regional foodservice concepts in mind.
Ultimately, Nouria focuses on three major areas to differentiate its foodservice operations: freshness, customer experience and team member buy-in.
Beyond the Basics
C-stores have expanded well beyond chicken and pizza in many markets. The breakfast daypart, for example, has become one of the most important mealtimes for c-stores, and breakfast items can be big drivers as a result.
Nouria’s Kitchen offers a breakfast sandwich that started as a limited-time offer (LTO) and is now an everyday item. Known as the Triple Play, the sandwich has three meats — ham, sausage and bacon — with egg and cheese on a carrier, which can be a biscuit, bagel, croissant or English muffin. This has become a top seller for the brand.
Huck’s decided to expand its breakfast program, as well. Several items are now on the menu that weren’t a few years ago, such as Monster Biscuits (double the bacon, sausage and egg) and a waffle carrier for sausage, egg and cheese sandwiches and bacon, egg and cheese sandwiches.
“We believe there is still an opportunity for growth in the breakfast category, including sweet and savory options. We are experimenting with additional carriers for our breakfast offers and exploring bulk bakery opportunities,” said Grimes.
Some of Huck’s bakery options include cake balls and puddings.
Dandy, too, plans to incorporate more sweet items into its menu going forward. Nouria, in the same truck stop location its testing its personal pizza, is also testing fresh doughnuts made on-site daily with raw ingredients.
Louisiana-based Shop Rite/Tobacco Plus, operating 62 total stores in the state, is constantly trying to grab the breakfast customer in some locations, said Angelle Cloud, registered and licensed dietitian nutritionist and foodservice compliance director and dietitian for the company, which has a few breakfast expansions coming soon.
“It’s an area that we can grow in, and it’s sort of perplexing because our offerings are great right now, but there has to be something that we can do to gain the edge,” she continued. “I want to get creative with some ingredients and make some less common matchups to see where that takes us.”
The chain’s proprietary foodservice concept, Bourbon Street Deli, primarily offers non-typical convenience store fare. Its focus is in fresh, custom-made food and variety.
Although the retailer sells plenty of its hot-box, grab-and-go chicken sandwiches, as well as fried or grilled chicken breasts and tenders and panini sandwiches, Cloud noted the chicken, while hard to beat, isn’t the main driver for customers. Instead, top sellers include shrimp po’boys, loaded French fries, burgers and boudin products.
“Our po’boys speak for themselves; the bread is authentic from New Orleans, our shrimp are from the Gulf, our batter is seasoned and the value for our customer is through the roof,” said Cloud.
Bourbon Street Deli has a selection of specialty burgers topped with items such as onion rings, fried jalapeños or a boudin ball. Here, customers can take advantage of the chain’s many sauce and vegetable toppings.
Another local favorite, boudin, is offered through the chain’s boudin balls, egg rolls, links, burgers, fries, omelets and biscuits. Recently, boudin smoked was added to the menu, along with seafood varieties.
“We offer a high-quality boudin, without the fillers that can sometimes be found as ingredients … and this makes me confident that our product is top notch,” said Cloud.
Newer to Shop Rite/Tobacco Plus, the loaded fries are made by taking favorite flavors and dishes and pouring them over a large portion of fries. Different variations include Au Jus gravy, Crawfish Etouffee, boudin and more paired with flavors such as queso, jalapeño ranch and sriracha mayo.
Cloud noted that locally, Louisiana-sourced seafood has gained traction in the foodservice space. And consistent with national trends, customers are caring more about ingredient origins.
Top Trends
As c-stores work to perfect their menus, they’re paying attention to the foodservice trends shaping their industry.
Bold innovation, driven by a desire to generate excitement and increase sales, and doing more with less are two trends Grimes is seeing. To help manage waste and use fewer SKUs for more offers, c-stores can tweak products to create LTOs, “such as drizzling a specialty sauce on a sandwich to create a ‘new’ offer, adding a different type of cheese to a current offer, changing carriers with current proteins, etc.”
Fry noted different flavor profiles are trending, due in part to Gen Z and a post-COVID desire to see new flavors.
“I feel like the Food Network and all those food shows really hit home to a lot of these people where they’re seeing all these different foods and different flavors and different combinations, and they were trying them at home,” he said. “And we feel that once the lockdowns were over, they were coming out to the different food venues and expecting these kinds of flavors at c-stores, restaurants and (elsewhere).”
As Dandy looks to 2025, Fry noted the chain isn’t planning to add many new items, but instead use existing ingredients and experiment with sauces, seasoning and different flavor combinations.
Spicier ingredients, such as sriracha mayo, are gaining in popularity, and Dandy is also pursuing more barbecue.
Aside from innovation, topics including inflation, meal deals and value are trending for c-store foodservice.
Nouria’s Skidds noted that most of the foodservice market is challenged with inflation and the value of their offers. With convenience stores now able to replicate many food offerings — “in some levels, at a better approach, on a fresh scale” — and stay on par with quick-service restaurants (QSRs), even beating QSRs in terms of revenue on a weekly and monthly basis in some areas, he believes brand partnerships are increasingly concerning for competitors.
“Consumer price sensitivity continues to increase. Looking back three or four years ago, consumer price sensitivity was much less of a factor in the decision-making process,” Grimes added.
Huck’s is exploring meal deal potential, but it’s concerned about the possible margin erosion this creates.
“In the past, we have found that the increase in sales did not necessarily offset the margin loss created by discounting. This topic is on many discussion boards. I believe that this is because many of us view the QSRs as primary competition right now, and many are heavily involved in the meal deal business.”
Shop Rite/Tobacco Plus offers meal deals to present favorable pricing on items and gain loyal customers.
In October and November 2024, the chain had three LTO deals: burger, fries and drink for $6.99; buffalo chicken sandwich, onion rings and drink for $7.99; and barbecue rib sandwich, fries and drink for $6.99.
“That’s three meal deals, all under $10. Can’t beat that with a stick,” Cloud said.
Integrating Technology
Nowadays, most restaurants offer online ordering, and c-stores are doing the same, creating mobile apps and updating websites.
Dandy began offering online ordering in 10 of its stores about eight months ago. It’s seeing a lot of use during the dinner daypart, and Fry believes customers enjoy the speed of the function.
“Instead of coming in and doing a made-to-order sandwich that might take five or six minutes, let’s say a chicken sandwich (because you have to cook the chicken) … they can order that online and have it ready by the time they get here,” he said.
Shop Rite/Tobacco Plus is currently developing online ordering across its app. At press time, it was offered at a test site, with plans for further expansion. The chain also partnered with DoorDash for delivery. For its new builds and remodels, it’s been moving toward drive-throughs.
At Huck’s, customers can order through Vroom with a delivery option through DoorDash and Uber Eats where applicable. The Vroom platform aggregates orders that arrive through Uber Eats, DoorDash and Grubhub.
At press time, Godfather’s was a standalone platform, and Huck’s was integrating this with Vroom so every order comes through a single tablet.
“Online ordering continues to grow rapidly. We expect continued strong growth, so we are working to provide the best experience possible for the customer,” said Grimes. “The easier we make the process of getting great food to the customer, the more we will endear them to us. We are very focused on order errors and ensuring availability during the expected hours of operation.”
Nouria, too, offers online ordering and third-party delivery, as well as kiosk systems. In 2025, the chain’s approach to drive-throughs will be a key area for the company. Now, Nouria has six locations with drive-through, equipped with a smaller menu to help control the flow and speed of the transactions. Its future-based focus is on how to entice customers to the drive-through when they are in a rush or have children in the car.
The goal is for customers at the pump to scan a QR code linked to that specific store for online ordering. They will receive a number and pull up to the drive-through after fueling up, and the order will be ready for them.
Nouria plans to install similar technology with the electric vehicle chargers it’s adding. Customers can choose to walk inside to receive their order or have it delivered to them at their station.
“We’re trying to utilize (drive-throughs) in a different way than most of our competitors, whether they’re QSRs or not. That’s the best part about Nouria: we don’t stop at ‘That’s what everybody does.’ We stop at ‘What can we do next to make it elevate even more?’” explained Skidds.
Taking Action
Operating a successful food program involves more than tasty food.
First, convenience store retailers must define their value proposition, Grimes noted. “Do you want to compete on quality, price or variety?”
Foodservice must also be a large part of a retailer’s loyalty program, with vendor partners looking to grow in the c-store industry.
To grow, consistency, availability and dependability are crucial. “You must be committed to this to ensure your continued success,” said Grimes.
Understanding the target customer base will also help in developing a strong foodservice concept, Skidds added.
Fry and Cloud agreed, with Fry noting that a chain’s foodservice head must have a pulse on the industry and what’s needed. Cloud added retailers must listen to their customers and then ask themselves what they can comfortably accomplish with what they have. Most importantly, retailers must be open to change.
“Failure comes when you refuse to identify and do something about a situation; change is almost always the answer,” Cloud continued.
