ROSEMONT, Ill. -- Convenience stores sell a lot of beverages. The category is often considered the biggest draw of customers into the stores. And yet, a major portion of the population will not or does not consider c-stores a primary option when making a beverage purchase.
Convenience stores rank third among women as a place to purchase a packaged beverage, according to research from Technomic Inc. And women are likely to buy an alcoholic beverage from a liquor store, warehouse store, specialty food store, traditional supermarket or mass merchandiser before considering making the purchase in a c-store.
“Part of that is because women are often in those stores already to do their grocery shopping,” said Donna Hood Crecca, senior director, Adult Beverage Resource Group at Technomic. “But women also have a lot of concerns about shopping in convenience stores. They’re concerned about safety, cleanliness [and] the health attributes of some of the products we sell.”
The issues are similar to those retailers face when selling foodservice. But the beverage category has one major advantage, according to Crecca.
“The c-store industry has the expertise to sell packaged beverages,” she said. “It has permission to present these items to the consumer.”
In other words, beverages—unlike foodservice, in many cases—are an accepted part of the c-store offer. “[Retailers] need to leverage that to bring more women into their convenience stores.”
Crecca, joined by Adrienne Nadeau, Technomic’s senior research analyst, during a presentation titled “Wooing Women” at CSP’s Cold Vault Summit in Rosemont, Ill., outlined several areas of beverage sales that retailers could focus on to improve sales with women.
- Millennial women—ages 18-34—are willing to spend more for a beverage if it meets their preference for healthy and functional ingredients.
- Baby-boomer women are more likely to buy on impulse, but are more price-conscious.
- Yes, women overindex for buying white wine, but women also drink beer. They prefer domestic light and regular beers, but show a growing interest in imports and craft beers.
- Only one in 10 women purchase wine or spirits in c-stores. One way to improve that is to provide a wide selection, which tells the shopper that the retailer takes the category seriously.
- A wide variety of alcoholic beverages is particularly appealing to millennial women because this generation has cultivated an interest in wine and spirits at a much younger age than previous generations of consumers.
- As an added bonus—and back to that struggle with foodservice—a wide variety of adult beverages will improve foodservice sales among female customers, according to Technomic’s data.
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