A few years ago, Hal Brown was given quite the challenge: Create a convenience store within a 750-square-foot space that once housed a FedEx/Kinko’s at the University of Northern Colorado.
Since then, Brown, director of UNC Dining Services on the Greeley, Colo., campus, has gained a precious extra 500 square feet, and worked with architects, vendors and student groups to create the Munchy Mart brand.
When the campus university center was looking to make a few upgrades, dining services was trying to decide how to best serve customers’ needs, says Brown. One of those needs was for a c-store, which the campus didn’t have elsewhere. When the copy center moved out, Brown was asked what he thought about putting a c-store in the location, and his first concern was the size.
“We were able to negotiate some space behind that location that used to be storage area,” Brown says. “We got an extra 300 or 400 [square] feet to put in a walk-in cooler and a little bit of dry storage.”
Brown then brought in Bakergroup, a Grand Rapids, Mich.-based design consultancy, to give the space its retail atmosphere.
“I wanted it to be much more modern and an upbeat space,” he says. “If you feel good about the space, it’s my opinion that [customers will] buy more.”
A lot of the retail feel of the space is created by the lighting and bright colors. “I kept saying I wanted a fun and funky feel,” Brown says. “I think the green really highlights a lot of the fresh product that we have in the store. We wanted curves because the room itself was such a shoebox.”
The space was stuck with three columns, as well as a huge, perpendicular security gate that separates the university center (where the store is located) in half.
“One of the strategies that [Bakergroup] came up with was taking out the wall next to [the gate], and we put a gelato case there,” says Brown. “That way people could see into the store from the other side of the gate, and it also gave us a different type of concept where we could utilize a walk-up type of service.”
With retail, Brown says, you really want open spaces and natural light. This space had neither. In addition to using bright lighting to make the space look more open, the team turned two shelving gondolas sideways to save space. The department also carved out space for coolers for its self-branded grab-and-go items.
“As a narrower room without a lot of windows or space to work with, coming up with a great design that allows us to have a good customer flow in and out of the store was key,” Brown says. “But we still needed the ability to stock our shelves. We originally wanted three gondolas, but it was just too tight.”
One of Brown’s biggest takeaways is to always make sure floor plans translate accurately. His equipment vendor supplied cardboard cutouts of the gondolas for Brown to see what they’d look like in the space itself.
The exercise led him to eliminate an entire gondola so students didn’t have to “dirty dance” down the aisle, and shift the remaining stands on an angle for better visibility and space.
“When you see it on a schematic, everything looks like you have all this room,” he says. “But then as you start adding things in, all of a sudden two people can’t even walk down the aisle.”
Munchy Mart offers an impressive array of products for such a small square footage, including sweet and salty snacks, candy, packaged beverages, HBC and grocery goods.
Brown also had to create a foodservice offer that didn’t need a hood system, which wasn’t possible in the space. So he focused on grab and go and home meal replacements. Foodservice offerings include cinnamon rolls and other pastries, salads and produce cups, sandwiches, pepperoni rolls and Bearitos—breakfast burritos named after UNC’s mascot. Students can choose from grab-and-go hot and cold items, as well as meals and snacks that can be microwaved either in the store or in the food court down the hall.
Brown’s best sellers include the Bearitos, snacks such as Bagel Bites and Pizza Rolls, Chapstick, and f’real smoothies and milkshakes. He’s also surprised by how well milk, Krispy Kreme doughnuts, gum and any kind of gummy candy does in his store.
Brown differentiates his offer with a focus on retro candies such as Fruit Stripe gum, Sixlets and Pop Rocks, as well as the Kraut Burger—ground beef sautéed with cabbage and stuffed and baked in a large dinner roll for a portable meal.
When the weather is warm, students flock to the frozen novelties. After starting with a wide assortment of gelatos, Brown scaled back the number of flavors offered and filled in the space with ice cream sandwiches and other popular treats.
“The gelato sells well, but there are only a few flavors that the customers really want,” he says.
Out of a tall order and a shoebox with nothing but a copy-center legacy, Brown has built an environment brimming with personality. “It’s a really funky, neat little store,” Brown says, “and the students who work there love it.”
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