YORK, Pa. — There’s a reason Rutter’s calls its store employees superheroes.
As the winner of the 2022 CSP Intouch Insight Mystery Shop, the chain attributes its third win in five years to those heroes, as well as its receptiveness to change, well-kept restrooms and a variety in coffee offerings.
The winner is calculated by two studies conducted by Intouch Insight: an anonymous mystery-shop evaluation and a formal audit, which the convenience stores knew was coming but didn’t know when. The mystery shop score accounts for 40% of the overall score, while the audit is 60%.
Rutter’s third time on top comes during a year when top scores were separated by less than one percentage point: “Close is an understatement,” says Cameron Watt, president and CEO of Intouch Insight, Ottawa, Ontario. In the results, Nos. 2 through 4 were separated by a mere 0.36 of a percentage.
“[Rutter’s] came second last year, and I guess that didn’t sit well with them,” Watt says.
Rutter’s attention to its employees—who are known internally as superheroes—is a quality that the perfect scores in each of the audit’s employee-related assessments confirm is working.
“Employees are always a focus for us. They’re our superheroes out there in the field and in the stores.”
When hiring quality employees, what it comes down to is searching for candidates that have a natural social presence, according to Rutter’s.
“We can teach anybody how to ring a register, how to empty a garbage can, how to stock a cooler, but you can't teach everyone how to be nice if it’s not in their nature,” says Matthews. “So obviously we’re looking for people who are friendly and outgoing.”
Hiring quality employees often leads to promotions from within at Rutter’s, which is an attractive incentive for candidates. And Matthews himself is an example of that.
“Jere Matthews started as a part-time team member for us, and now he’s our vice president of operations,” says Chris Hartman, senior director of fuels, forecourt, advertising and construction at Rutter’s. “If that tells you anything, [it’s] that we have really good people. We keep them here, and they train the people that we bring in and help identify really good people that want to reflect the values that we believe in, which is hard work, great customer service, cleanliness and doing all that with a smile on your face.”
It was also an important year for employees to be acknowledged.
“We’ve done a lot of pay raises to recognize our frontline people,” says Scott Hartman, president and CEO of Rutter’s and Chris’ father. “I think we've done six pay raises since [the pandemic] started."
The top-scoring category for nine out of 10 c-stores in the revealed audit was employees.
“There’s a well-publicized labor shortage,” Watt says. “And yet, there were very, very good scores against employees and how they look and how they’re presented.”
Click here to review the complete Mystery Shop report.
Positive customer experience also comes down to store design and listening to criticism.
Rutter’s stores offer multiple entrances, natural light, uncrowded navigation, many coolers and bright colors, Scott Hartman says.
However, these avenues toward successful customer experiences are in constant construction, and the road to improvement involves listening to both customers and team members.
“We’re in a constant cycle of trying to get customer feedback and changing our business,” says Scott Hartman. “My team all knows when I ask the question, ‘Why are we doing it this way?’ The absolute worst answer they can always give me is, ‘Because that’s the way we always did it.’”
Rutter’s is no stranger to audits, which is another way it consistently improves its stores.
“They measure all the time. This is not just an annual event to see how they’re doing; this is something that’s part of their culture in terms of maintaining these operational standards,” Watt says.
Another tool Rutter’s uses to gauge customer needs is its loyalty program, Scott Hartman says. To that end, Rutter’s has come a long way from the horse-drawn carriage milk-delivery business it started 1921. After evolving into a c-store business, it was the second company in the industry to launch a website and the first to develop a mobile app.
“We continue to innovate in the technology area and are going to keep turning out new things here in the near future to stay ahead in the technology game,” says Chris Hartman.
Technology doesn’t end with the chain’s app. Restrooms in Rutter’s stores included touch-free fixtures well before COVID, says Matthews. Rutter’s also incorporates a call button in a restroom that customers can use to notify employees if it’s not clean.
“The cleanliness of a restroom is a reflection to customers on the cleanliness of your kitchen and the cleanliness of your staff,” says Chris Hartman. “If a customer comes in and sees a dirty restroom, they’re likely to think, ‘[If] they’re not willing to take care of this restroom, what are they doing where we can’t see what’s going on?’”
Rutter’s keeps its restrooms tidy with a schedule of checks throughout the day, and the team uses power tools to clean.
“We even would kid around—our logo is ‘Rutter’s, Why Go Anywhere Else?’ We would put that in the restrooms, as well,” says Scott Hartman.
Rutter’s also uses scheduled checks for its coffee station.
“We have employees on each shift that are designated as a coffee P.I.C. (person in charge), and they’re responsible for checking the coffee and the fountain area regularly to make sure that it is clean and stocked,” says Matthews.
At Rutters' larger stores, there are hostesses, whose sole responsibility is to take care of the coffee area, Chris Hartman says.
The c-store’s coffee selection also helped the chain achieve a perfect score in the coffee category.
“We offer a wide variety of options to customers, including different creamers, different types of coffee, different types of sugar or sweeteners, and we also offer options for them to order it on our kiosk,” says Chris Hartman. “Then they can go and add things at our coffee bars.”
Rutter’s success all goes back to those superheroes, says Chris Hartman.
“Winning this [mystery shop] means a lot to us because it’s a reflection of our great employees and the effort that they put in, and it’s a reflection of how they are perceived by our customers,” he says. “It just reinforces what we do and why we do it.”
The company’s goal is to walk away from any mystery-shop evaluation with perfect scores in every category, according to Matthews and the Hartman family.
“We take it very seriously each year, and that’s why we love to compete in it, because it gives us that competitive edge to keep striving to be better,” says Chris Hartman. “That’s what we’re always going to keep doing, striving to be better.”