The 2025 NACS Show started Tuesday in Chicago. Convenience-store retailers, suppliers and other industry partners converged to talk about everything from safety training to negotiation tactics.
Here are highlights from the first day of education sessions.
Repeat and reinforce safety training
It’s very important to repeat and reinforce safety training for convenience-store employees because they will forget what they have learned, said Aaron Nelson, director of account management at Maple Valley, Washington-based CAF Outdoor Cleaning in a session on preventing accidents and keeping employees safe.
During training, “There’s things that will happen in your employee’s brain as they’re taking in a whole bunch of information that are basically mental errors,” Nelson said. “I see this over and over and over again. And when it comes to safety, one of those things is an erosion of situational awareness.”
If employees don’t use the training, they lose it, he said.
Nelson then referenced the “forgetting curve,” which is “when an employee is receiving a whole bunch of information all at once—think about onboarding time, those employees are learning everything, right, all in the same 40 or 80 hours.
“The forgetting curve posits this: Within one hour, they will forget 50% of everything they learned,” Nelson said. “Within a day, they’ll forget as much as 70%, and within a month, they could forget 90% of all that information that you worked so hard to deliver to them. So, you’ve got to repeat and reinforce the training that you are getting your teams if you want them to remember.”
Shepherding your workforce through big changes
Most of the people within your organization are “hardwired to resist the very change people want to introduce.”
So said David Schonthal, a clinical professor of strategy and director of Entrepreneurship Programs at Northwestern’s Kellogg School of Management, who discussed how to overcome resistance to new technologies like AI at the NACS Show Tuesday.
Schonthal and a colleague developed a methodology called “Friction Theory” that explains why it can be hard for people to accept innovations, and what to do about it.
“The essence of Friction Theory is not about how to come up with a better idea, not about how to come up with a better product or a better service or a better marketing strategy or a better sales pitch,” he said. “Rather, it’s about how we go about introducing those ideas to the world.”
Introducing change in small steps can be one of the keys to success, he said. It’s also helpful to communicate a clear roadmap of what’s to come.
“The more ambiguous a change is, the more we make people think,” Schonthal said. “And the more we make people think, the more friction they’ll experience and the less likely they’ll be to complete a task or procedure.”
The art of negotiating
All convenience retailers need to negotiate deals with their suppliers and outside partners. But internal alignment—or negotiating on the inside—should happen first.
It’s important for a team to know what the company is trying to do first, said Tiffany Fraley, CEO of Chicago-based c-store chain InConvenience Inc., which has 25 The Gas Spot and The Goods Spot stores.
“Are we trying to solve a problem? What are we trying to accomplish? And then the people who are actually going to be the ones doing the work, are they on board? Is it something we’re actually able to do?” she asked. “To get everyone’s buy-in is very important because otherwise, we’re just setting ourselves up to fail.”
Brian Ferguson, chief marketing officer at Westborough, Massachusetts-based EG America, said any deal he and his team negotiate with their vendors will essentially land in the cashier or store manager’s hands to execute on the frontline. The chain has more than 1,500 stores under brands like Cumberland Farms, Quik Stop, Sprint Food Stores and more.
“So as we’re looking at center store updates, tobacco/back bar updates, food updates—especially food—the operational component before you go into a negotiation is really critical,” he said. “And keep those internal partners really updated.”
Fragmentation in convenience
The convenience-store industry lags behind other retail sectors in digital and technological integration, which is limiting its growth, said Derek Gaskins, head of guest experience at Chicago-based bp.
Unlike industries dominated by giants like Amazon or Walmart, the c-store sector is highly fragmented, with over 95,000 independently owned stores in the U.S. This fragmentation makes it difficult to implement sophisticated digital tools like retail media networks or loyalty programs.
- bp is No. 5 on CSP’s 2025 Top 202 ranking of U.S. c-store chains by store count. EG America is No. 6 and RaceTrac is No. 17.
Gaskins emphasized that this lack of scale not only hinders innovation but also leaves retailers disconnected from their own customers, especially when partnering with third-party platforms like DoorDash or Uber Eats, which often control consumer data. Without access to this data, convenience stores struggle to personalize experiences or capitalize on e-commerce opportunities. In response, bp is investing in digital infrastructure and data ownership to create stronger customer journeys.
The solution lies in collective action across the industry to build scale and prepare for the future of retail, Gaskins said.
“We need to see where these trends are going,” he said, “and figure out a collective way to do it.”
Snack trends: Unique flavors and nodding to nostalgia
Flavor explosions that are unique and a nod to nostalgia are just a few of the trends in the world of snacks in convenience retail. That is according to Anna Kjerrumgaard, director of category management for center store at convenience-store and fuel retailer RaceTrac Inc.
When it comes to the latest snacking flavors, Kjerrumgaard said intense flavors that are hot and spicy are not going anywhere.
“This has been growing for years,” she said.
As for what flavors in 2025 have really stood out, Kjerrumgaard said unique flavors that include buffalo ranch and dill are top of the list.
Snacks that nod to nostalgia are what Generation Z are seeking, and that is why there are more retro campaigns from manufacturers, including Coca-Cola’s “Share a Coke” campaign that focus on this generation, she said.
“Gen Z is hungry for the 1990s when times seemed simpler from their perspective,” Kjerrumgaard said.
She reminded the audience that Gen Z is expected to lead global spending growth, adding $9 trillion by 2034.
“Gen Z will have the highest per capita spending power by 2030,” she said.
Kjerrumgaard also said snacks used to be regarded as fuel before lunch or dinner.
“Snacks used to bridge the gap between meals, as a treat, or a traditional side dish,” Kjerrumgaard said.
But that has all changed with snacks transforming into foods to meet more substantial needs, Kjerrumgaard said.
“Snacks are now being used as the meal,” she said.
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