A whopping 98% of retailers say they have completely or somewhat recovered from a sales or traffic low point during the pandemic, 74% say they require employees to wear masks in their stores, and 78% are requiring employees get vaccinated, CSP’s survey reveals.
Despite these numbers that would seem to point c-stores in the right direction, 45% think COVID will negatively impact both sales and traffic next year, up from 32% in last year’s survey. Meanwhile, only 13% think both sales and traffic will be positively affected, down from 21% last year.
For retailer Chad Ellis, a retail division manager at Horizon Resources Co-Op in Williston, N.D., the areas that have changed permanently are store cleaning and the individual packaging of foodservice items. Roller grills and foodservice self-serve have been put away for good, he says, with everything individually wrapped. Meanwhile, Plexiglas shields have come down, and dispensed beverages stand as the lone self-serve area.
Other than that, he says, “everything’s back to normal here. I rarely see anybody with a mask. We still have hand sanitizer, which we didn’t really have before. People will use it. Otherwise, you almost wouldn’t even tell or know that there’s a pandemic going on.” Blackie Wills, president and COO of La Plata, Md.-based The Wills Group, has moved on to figuring out how to repurpose space once committed to self-serve foodservice.
“Do we offer more center-store merchandising?” he asks. “Are there new programs we can develop for that? Do we do more take-home grocery items? Clearly, it’s not going to come back until probably significantly beyond the pandemic. And so that’s forcing us to change.”
Looking ahead to 2022, Ellis says the only way he could anticipate the pandemic affecting sales would be if the supply chain falters more than it already has. “But it seems like things are on the up and up. Hopefully, that maintains,” he says. And consumers have become more flexible, he adds; if a specific product isn’t available, they opt for an alternative.
Still, uncertainty about how COVID will progress remains the top challenge, he says. “The key question I think on everybody’s mind is what happens when we get into flu season? Is it going to get worse, or does it get better?” he asks. “I think we’re pretty optimistic and hopeful we don’t see cases rise that could potentially result in another shutdown.”
Finding labor remains a crucial issue, as well, Wills says. “And probably as long as there’s COVID, there’s going to be those labor challenges with a lot of employees nervous about the workplace and potential exposure.”
Wills also says on-demand fulfillment services such as curbside pickup are here to stay.
“How we deliver products to customers is going to continue to evolve,” he says. “And it’s just kind of a new normal as a result of the pandemic.”
Another aspect of c-stores that might change for the long term are dayparts, says Roy Strasburger, president and CEO of StrasGlobal. “I think that from a food program, we’re not going to see breakfast come back from where it was in 2019. … Commuting has changed a lot, and I’m not sure people are going to get back into that habit,” he says. “And even if they do go back to the office, it’s going to be two days a week.”
The opportunity, on the other hand, may be a shift to more afternoon traffic, Strasburger says, with customers coming out for a snack or lunch opportunity to get out of the house or office during the day.