2 Emerging Convenience-Grocery Hybrids
By Greg Lindenberg on Apr. 28, 2017LAS VEGAS and WEST DES MOINES, Iowa -- Two retailers of convenience stores and grocery stores have rolled out stores with formats that meld elements from both channels.
Convenience retailer Terrible Herbst Oil Co. (No. 57 on CSP’s Top 202 ranking of c-stores for 2017) has opened Herbst Market, and grocer Hy-Vee (No. 49 on CSP’s Top 202) has unveiled plans for Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh.
Click through to see what they are doing in the small-format arena. …
1. Herbst Market
Convenience-store and fuel retailer Terrible Herbst Oil Co. has opened Herbst Market, a 15,000-square-foot grocery store. The “neighborhood market concept store” in Las Vegas is open 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
The company also called the new store a “contemporary twist on convenience.”
Las Vegas-based Terrible Herbst operates convenience stores, car washes and oil change facilities in Arizona, California and Nevada.
Herbst Market is a c-store and grocery “hybrid space” that offers a broad assortment of merchandise including fresh produce, meats, frozen foods, doughnuts, breads and groceries. The store also sells health and beauty aids, pet products and cleaning products.
It also offers Boar’s Head premium deli meats and cheeses, as well as prepared meal options.
Herbst Market also offers Chevron-branded fuel, Western Union services and an ATM.
And like many Herbst c-stores, the new location has a gaming lounge with 15 machines.
2. Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh
Meanwhile, Hy-Vee Inc. is planning to build small market and gas station in West Des Moines, Iowa, that could also feature a quick-serve restaurant and a drive-up lane for customers ordering groceries online, according to a report by The Des Moines Register.
The concept, tentatively called Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh, will be located in Richard Hurd’s The Parkways project, a 65-acre retail and office development.
“It’s still fairly preliminary and many details are still being decided, including the name of ‘Fast & Fresh’,” Hy-Vee spokesperson Tara Deering-Hansen told CSP Daily News.
Drawings of the project on Hurd Real Estate’s website show a small Hy-Vee store with a drive-thru coffee shop on one end and a pickup lane for online grocery orders on the other. Hurd said the project may also include a convenience store, grocery market, quick-serve restaurant and fueling stations.
The store will be between 12,000 and 16,000 square feet, Deering-Hansen told the newspaper.
Hy-Vee expects store construction to begin this summer or fall, she said.
West Des Moines, Iowa-based Hy-Vee, one of the largest privately owned supermarket chains in the United States, also operates 141 Hy-Vee Gas convenience stores with fuel in the parking lots of its grocery stores.
The Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh concept resembles the new Wal-Mart Pickup With Fuel concept that the retail giant opened in Huntsville, Ala., and Thornton, Colo., in April 2016 and December 2016, respectively.
The 4,000-square-foot locations are convenience stores, gas stations and pickup sites for online grocery orders.