ExtraMile, Nouria and Rutter’s are CSP and Intouch Insight's 2025 Mystery Shop finalists, each bringing home an overall score higher than 96%. The winner and runners-up will be revealed at CSP’s Outlook Leadership Conference in August.
Nouria, 2024’s winner, a 319-store chain in its fourth year in the Mystery Shop, is based in Worcester, Massachusetts. ExtraMile, Pleasanton, California, has 1,123 stores and finished first in 2004 and second in 2018. York, Pennsylvania-based Rutter’s, which has 88 stores, last won in 2023. (Watch for more coverage of the annual Mystery Shop in the September issue of CSP magazine.)
“Our annual Mystery Shop has grown in ways unimaginable when we first launched it in 2004,” said Mitch Morrison, vice president of retailer relations and event content director at Informa Connect, CSP's parent company. Morrison is also founder of the Mystery Shop. “For the first time ever, all 10 chains topped scores of 93%. These companies represent the best of the best and are spectacularly committed to excellence. And for what I believe is a first, all three finalists are past winners. Pretty amazing.”
- ExtraMile is No. 8, Nouria is No. 29 and Rutter’s is No. 79 on CSP’s 2025 Top 202 U.S. c-store chains by store count.
How Are Winners Determined?
The Mystery Shop award is given to the best performing chain after months of revealed audits (60% of the overall score), where employees know the store is being evaluated, and mystery shop assessments (40% of the overall score), where shoppers evaluate the store covertly. The annual study is completed by Intouch Insight, Ottawa, Ontario, a customer experience solutions and mystery shopping company that specializes in helping multi-location brands achieve operational excellence, in partnership with CSP.
Cameron Watt, president and CEO of Intouch Insight, said, “In this year’s Mystery Shop and audit program, the top-scoring brands were the ones that prioritized spotless interiors and well-maintained exteriors. That matters because customers connect a clean environment with care, safety and food quality. In fact, in a recent consumer survey, we found that 70% of shoppers said store cleanliness influences whether they believe the food is fresh. For operators competing in foodservice, that perception is critical to winning repeat visits.”
2025 Results
A total of 1,000 audits were conducted between April 30 and June 2.
The audit form comprised 34 questions within 10 sections: coffee, dairy cooler, employees, exterior, fountain drinks, interior, loyalty program, pump island, restrooms and sandwich cooler.
On average, in the revealed audit, the category that participating chains performed best in was employees. The second highest-scoring category was a tie between coffee and exterior. Next was interior.
Looking closer at the finalists, other stand-out categories for ExtraMile, Nouria and Rutter’s in the revealed audit were fountain drinks and exterior.
Mystery Shop shoppers found that ExtraMile had the cleanest restrooms (100%), Nouria the best properly stocked restrooms (100%) and Rutter’s was top in “Would you recommend this store to others” (94.8%).
Click here to read about last year’s results.
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