SHERMAN, Texas — Not every Lone Star Food Store has automatic toilet seat covers or no-touch hand dryers in the sink.
As a diversified business with nearly 200 dealer accounts, a trucking company, propane company and 23 owned and operated convenience stores, Douglass Distributing Retail Co., dba Lone Star Food Stores, can’t pour all its investments into retail.
Divisions are all competing for a set number of dollars, Lone Star Food Store’s CEO Diane McCarty says.
But whether it’s a new build, or an acquired dealer site, there’s one aspect of the Sherman, Texas-based c-store chain’s stores that customers can count on: It’s going to be clean.
“We’re a bunch of clean freaks, and we’re happy to be labeled that,” McCarty tells CSP.
It’s this attitude that helped Lone Star Food Stores beat out national and regional competitors in this year’s Mystery Shop analysis, conducted by CSP and Intouch Insights.
For McCarty’s father, Douglass Distributing Retail Co. Founder Bill Douglass, it never occurred to him that a relatively small retailer like Lone Star would be selected for any major store-to-store comparison, much less a national evaluation.
“Everyone is capable of building beautiful facilities on key real estate. The trick is to operate them at a level that will differentiate yours in a positive way to the public,” Douglass says. “We are focused on achieving excellence, so each facility is valued in its locality as being a community asset. Cleanliness is not a static objective, so constant teamwork is required to maintain consistently attractive and sanitary stores.”
“We’re a bunch of clean freaks, and we’re happy to be labeled that.”
Douglass started the business in 1981 when Humble Oil, which would become part of Exxon Corp., established a railroad bulk plant in Sherman and Gainesville, Texas, and later sold this Exxon consignee to him.
McCarty’s c-store experience started when she was in high school—but her first stint didn’t last long.
She asked her father to work in a store one summer. As she went into work on her first day, she asked her trainer when her lunch hour was. To McCarty’s “shock and horror,” the trainer told her that there wasn’t a lunch hour, rather, she usually just grabbed a hot dog between customers.
“I just remember thinking, ‘Well, this is not the life for me.’ ” McCarty says.
She quit. But 30-plus years later, McCarty finds herself leading the retail end of the business.
“I’ve learned a few things since then,” she says.
Clean stores have always been one of Lone Star’s strongpoints, even before the COVID-19 pandemic, McCarty says. While customers would often comment on the cleanliness, she says, it was fun to have it confirmed by outsiders in the mystery shop evaluation and audit.
This year’s competition was tight, says Cameron Watt, president and CEO of customer experience management company Intouch Insights, Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. There was less than 1 percentage point separating the top three brands.
“You can’t really fail anywhere,” Watt says of what it takes to be a winner of the mystery shop, now in its 16th year.
Close behind Lone Star are Rutter’s, York, Pa., and Kum & Go, Des Moines, Iowa, taking second and third places, respectively.
The winner is calculated by evaluating two studies: an anonymous Mystery Shop evaluation and an audit, which the c-stores knew was coming but didn’t know when, Watt says. The Mystery Shop score accounts for 40% of the overall score while the audit is 60%.
Lone Star’s total score was 95.4, followed closely but Rutter’s at 95.2 and Kum & Go at 95.1. The average score among the 11 brands that participated was 90 for the Mystery Shop section and 92.8 for the audit.
When it came to the overall appearance and cleanliness of a store, Lone Star was consistently rated highly. It scored 95% in the Mystery Shop portion of the survey for questions revolving around the exterior of the store, store ambiance and interior upkeep.
McCarty says that’s partially due to Lone Star’s commitment to maintaining everything in a store, reinvesting in and reinventing older facilities. Lone Star recently revived a new-build strategy following an almost 20-year hiatus, during which time most growth came through acquisition of dealer sites. Regardless, McCarty says most customers would likely be surprised to learn some of the sites are 25 years old or more.
“Clean is in our culture. So even if it’s old, it can still be clean, and it can still be presentable,” she says.
For any other c-store looking to get on Lone Star’s “clean freak” level, McCarty recommends thinking like the customer; look at a store from their perspective. Are the mats at the front door clean? Will a customer’s hand get dirty pumping gas? First impressions matter, she says.
Restrooms also matter.
Lone Star spent more than $1 million over the past five years upgrading store facilities to provide a clean and touch-free experience. The company installed automatically changing seat covers on toilets, touch-free soap dispensers and hand dryers, and tissues placed for opening doors in some stores. By the time COVID-19 came around, the stores were prepared, McCarty says.
Of course, not every store will provide the return on investment to warrant installing a $5,000 touch-free soap dispenser and hand dryer. Still, the company makes the effort to ensure every bathroom is clean, McCarty says.
“Make people go, ‘Okay, well, it may not be the fanciest, but by God, I can count on it to be clean,’” McCarty says.
If people can count on the things that really matter—like a clean restroom, not getting dirty at the pump and fresh products—then a company might be able to get away with having a somewhat outdated facility, she says.
Before the pandemic, Watt of Intouch Insights says, if someone asked him what consumers cared about, the answer would have been if they feel valued. There’s been a shift since COVID-19 struck, however. Customers started focusing more on their safety and physiological needs, like having water, food and toilet paper.
“Cleanliness has come out as a real focus for consumers because cleanliness is attached to safety. It’s a perceived issue from a safety standpoint,” Watt says.
The need for cleanliness won’t go away anytime soon, he says. But people may start placing more importance on if they feel valued again, along with cleanliness.
“Clean is in our culture. So even if it’s old, it can still be clean, and it can still be presentable.”
Much of that feeling of value comes through good customer service. Mystery Shop winners must excel in customer service, as well as cleanliness.
Lone Star scored 100% for several customer service-related questions in this portion of the Mystery Shop, including attributes such as the wait time being acceptable, the cashier being courteous and employees giving customers a pleasant parting remark when leaving the store.
These little things start to mean more and more as the country comes out of the pandemic, Watt says. The pandemic itself, however, may be responsible for one of the lowest overall scores to come out of this year’s Mystery Shop: customers being greeted as they enter a store.
Some of this may be a holdover from how people behaved during the pandemic, being hidden behind masks, and some could just be attributed to “operational hectic-ness,” Watt says, as c-store employees have had their hands full during a trying year.
“As people start to care about feeling valued again, we’re going to have to pick some of those habits back up,” such as smiling at customers and acknowledging them as they walk in, Watt says.
Lone Star scored well for greeting or acknowledging in a courteous manner customer as they entered the store. The chain received a score of 90% compared to the average 68.6%. The other overall frontrunners, Rutter’s and Kum & Go, scored 75.5% and 82.5%, respectively.
There are many places that sell soda and cigarettes, but what will often make the difference for customers is the people, McCarty says.
The reality of being a smaller family business likely helps, as well, she says. McCarty knows all of Lone Star’s store managers and that there is a family feeling among the 200-plus team members.
“Our mission statement is making ordinary trips extraordinary experiences,” McCarty says. “And what we obviously mean
by that is going to fill up with gas or stop in and get a quick bite at a Subway and picking up a candy bar at the same time, they’re just pretty ordinary experiences. They’re mundane. And so we talk about: How can you make that an extraordinary experience for someone?”
And it’s not easy, particularly during the COVID-19 pandemic, which has taken a hit on labor. Lone Star’s employee turnover is almost double what it was two years ago, McCarty says.
“It’s just a different environment for potential employees, and the world has changed,” she says. “It’s made it really tough to appeal to and retain people in our industry. And probably most retail industry.”
McCarty says the chain has done just about everything—from in-depth wage comparisons to more social media advertising and boosting employee referral bonuses—to try to get and retain more employees.
It’s seen some success from targeting people walking in. Surprisingly, she says, the company has had some success with customers tearing website addresses from hiring posters posted in the bathrooms and then going to the website to apply.
Another benefit of those clean restrooms?
Click here for more from the 2021 CSP Intouch Insights Mystery Shop.