SAN ANTONIO -- Thirsty book-club members and bikini-clad beer girls mix company at a handful of unconventional convenience stores in San Antonio. Three Beer 'N ALL drive-thru c-stores skirting the city blend the speed and convenience of a 7-Eleven with the variety of an on-premise bar and the provocative allure of restaurant chain Hooters.
If you look at the Hooters concept, they went from one to almost 500 stores with [less than gourmet] food, because they're selling things people want and need, Steve Bergenholtz, president of Beer 'N ALL, [image-nocss] Plano, Texas, told CSP Daily News. We're convenience stores with a capital C.
The Beer 'N ALL concept is simple: Customers drive theirs car through the building and get immediate service from attractive young women dressed in less-than-conservative clothing. The store has limited inventory of approximately 300 SKUs, including convenience-store staples such as beer, wine, packaged beverages, cigarettes, snacks and candy. More than 50 different frozen margaritas are the stores' signature items.
We'll serve 350 to 550 margaritas per day, said Bergenholtz, a veteran of the video-game-development business before launching Beer 'N ALL. We opened up our third store last month, and on the first day it was profitable after all our expenses. People just flock to it. There are lines seven days a week lined up to get food, snacks, cigarettes. And it's not just guys. The third store is in an affluent area, and almost 40% of our customers are females.
Most of the ladies who shop here are [doing so]out of sheer convenience, Bergenholtz continued. They will buy more margaritas than the guys. We have female members of a book club that come in every Monday morning, and they'll buy five or more 32-oz. margaritas at a time.
Continued demands on consumers' time, along with the thirst for entertainment, is driving the birth and growth of unconventional c-store models such as Beer 'N ALL. In North Carolina's Outer Banks, for example, a small chain of Brew Thru drive-thru c-stores has developed an overwhelming following. While Beer 'N ALL has made a name for itself with margaritas and a unique atmosphere, Brew Thru has excelled by making itself a destination for beer-thirsty and souvenir-hungry travelers.
Last year, we sold 98,000 t-shirts, Philip Foreman, president of Brew Thru Inc., Wanchese, N.C., told CSP Daily News. The margin on beer isn't quite as good as it used to be. I'm getting 300% margin on a t-shirt as opposed to 15% on beer. But I'm buying 90,000 t-shirts, so I'm getting them much cheaper than someone who buys just a few hundred.
Brew Thru, which has five corporate stores and high franchising hopes, expects to grow far from its North Carolina haunts. Foreman is currently offering franchises in Florida, Georgia, Maryland, Pennsylvania and West Virginia, as well as in Brew Thru's home state. He has fielded hundreds and hundreds of calls from potential franchisees in the most random places you or I have ever heard of, he said.
Beer 'N ALL's Bergenholtz, meanwhile, has three locations in the San Antonio market, with others planned for Dallas, Houston and other locations along the Gulf Coast. The stores open at 10 a.m. and close as late as 1 p.m. An admitted opportunist by training, Bergenholtz has made available territory-licensing rights for Florida and other states; he made it clear that he's open to discussions regarding joint ventures with other retail partners.
Even though Bergenholtz has not spent a single penny on advertising and promotion, growth looks promising. He said he'd be comfortable with 20 or more of his own stores in the next two years. To complement that count, he's also begun developing a chain of similarly themed car washes converted from old warehouses.
We're not doing anything we shouldn't be doing, he said. In fact, customers have been congratulating us, calling and e-mailing. People can't believe we're doing this, and they say that in a good way.
He has run into a few situations, however, where cities have seen him coming and enacted moratoriums on drive-thrus or made it difficult for him to obtain a liquor license. But he remains undeterred. He continues to get requests to open more Beer 'N ALL stores throughout the United States, as well as in other countriesspecifically Canada, Venezuela and China.
We see this as the way to go, he said. We're starting to build larger facilities, and we're hoping to go with a kitchen as well, making everything from hot dogs, hamburgers and pizza to go. We think food sales will take us upward of $1.6 million to $1.8 million [in sales] per year.
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