In April, Kum & Go rolled out full-service fueling and curbside pickup, with full-scale rollout in just two weeks. Digital adoption was trending long before the pandemic, “but we have seen five years of user growth in 2020,” Krause says. “We are more agile today. Some transactions will revert to the traditional method, but there’s absolutely a stickiness to these new users that will make the digital customer experience more important, sooner than expected.

“We continuously strategize ways to make our business more convenient,” he says. “We were methodical, until this pandemic pushed us to act differently. The pandemic kicked us into gear to put something into the market. We’ve been able to learn about customer preferences in real time, informing the more permanent ‘last-mile’ options coming in 2021.”

But physical stores have become more important than ever, he says, citing Amazon buying Whole Foods, GoPuff acquiring the BevMo chain and DoorDash embracing dark stores. “To win in retail, you can’t pick a side between physical and digital, you need to integrate the two.”