Know your audience when trying to recruit and retain convenience-store employees.
That’s the advice from retailers and human-capital experts coping with hiring and retention in the c-store business.
The target audience is primarily young people, who use smartphones to search for jobs and scan QR codes to apply—and often click on multiple applications on job boards. To pursue them, c-store hiring managers should contact them quickly for an interview or risk losing them.
To land and keep them, it’s critical to make candidates and employees feel they’re applying to something with a bigger purpose, to provide solid training and to make the job enjoyable to the point it gives off a second-family vibe. But, perhaps most important, the more than a dozen experts interviewed for this story suggest, is giving frequent reviews and feedback to improve retention rates.
“There’s a rule in this business,” says Fady Bazzi, operations manager and co-owner of retailer Chillbox, owned by New Haven, Michigan-based Bazco Oil. “It’s a saying that employees don’t leave jobs, they leave managers.”
Dave Warren agrees: “Candidates might be attracted to your operation if you offer a higher starting wage, but they’ll only stay if they respect their manager.” Warren is a human resources manager for San Ramon, California-based Chevron Stations Inc., which has 300 company-operated locations in California, Oregon and Washington. “We spend a lot of time training our managers how to be fair and honest with employees, and we hold managers accountable if they aren’t. By improving the quality of our managers, we’ve enjoyed lower turnover and been able to spend less time hiring.”
At Chillbox, which has 232 c-store-level employees, “Hiring is getting better,” Bazzi says, adding the chain has been at full staff for several months, finally recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic’s downturn.
Data collected in CSP’s 2023 State of C-Store Foodservice survey, polling retailers earlier this year, drives home the industry’s struggles:
- 97% expect labor costs and the labor pool to be somewhat or extremely challenging business factors in the next year.
- 75% expect employee training to be a somewhat or extremely challenging business factor in the next year.
- 25% are investing in automated equipment that reduces the need for skilled labor.
- 69% said minimum wage is the second most concerning legislative/regulatory issue facing the industry. Only credit card swipe fees, at 78%, ranked higher.
Ongoing Efforts
To win this battle, retailers must first and foremost keep their employees rewarded and happy. Through the pandemic, leadership at the 33-store Chillbox chain enacted more frequent employee reviews, tying pay raises to them.
“Every three months we’ll do a formal interview,” Bazzi says. “We were very aggressive with our reviews and our raises. So, in one year you could get a $2 raise.”
Ongoing training is also tied to the reviews. That’s important, Bazzi says, to boost the odds of getting quality talent to stay in the job for longer. Chillbox strives to let its employees know they can improve and work in other areas of the company. “We make it accessible for them to train to be an assistant manager or manager,” he says.
Like Chillbox, Chevron is back to pre-pandemic staffing levels after losing almost 20% of its workforce during the pandemic, Warren says. Last year, Chevron reviewed its hiring processes and made some “aggressive” changes, Warren says. “We eliminated many bottlenecks and added resources to help improve candidate flow and reduce time to hire."
Employment Branding
However, with the rise of the gig economy, more remote work and tough competition for talent from companies such as Amazon, “c-stores have struggled to attract and retain employees,” Warren says. “People who aren’t motivated by the career development opportunities offered by c-store chains are easily lured by the convenience of driving for a ride-share company or the large signing bonus offered to move boxes.”
However, he adds, examples are plentiful of those who resigned then later returned. “Once people can get past any concerns they might have about working for a gas station c-store, they realize the skills they’re building here can take them places those other jobs can’t, from customer service and sales to merchandising, supply chain and management.”
Other c-store chains also are working on long-term retention. Hiring for supervisor or assistant manager roles is a challenge for Sheetz and its peers, says James Colino, director of talent acquisition for the Altoona, Pennsylvania-based c-store chain with 670 locations. Complicating retention is that c-stores are “all growing right now it seems,” he says. Moving into a new area means figuring out the labor market and “communicating our brand in enough time to recruit from the market so we can grow.”
Communicating one’s brand is especially difficult for c-stores, says Jeff Lenard, vice president of strategic industry initiatives for the National Association of Convenience Stores in Alexandria, Virginia. C-stores face the challenge of crafting a one-size-fits-all recruiting message despite differences from store to store.
“While jobs in the industry are very similar, they’re also very different,” Lenard says. “It’s not like McDonald’s where there are 13,000 or so stores and they own that relationship and are responsible for overseeing all employees.”
With about 90,000 different companies, the c-store industry is fragmented, making it difficult to “tell the big-picture story,” he says.
At Sheetz, supervisor is an entry-level leadership role that’s particularly tough to fill because it can be hard to identify from candidates’ resumes what their career path should be, Colino says.
“It’s also difficult if they have already managed people because for us, a supervisor, which is an entry-level leadership role below manager, doesn’t manage people. So, to anyone who is already a manager of people, it’s viewed as a step backward,” he says.
In the interview process, Sheetz looks at candidates “not necessarily for what they applied to but for what they could become,” Colino says.
Sheetz is in better shape staff wise than it has been in a long time, he says. “We have fewer ‘critical stores’ at this point,” Colino says, a designation calculated using an algorithm that considers overtime hours, job openings at each store and applicant flow.
Sheetz took steps to clarify its employment brand about two years ago.
“Anytime you have a difficult labor market and a lot of competition, it’s really important for a company to differentiate themselves as an employer,” Colino says. Sheetz reviewed the entire package offered to a candidate, examined gaps in pay, benefits and vacation, and adjusted its offerings to be more competitive.
Lenard says the way to best sell c-stores to candidates is as an ideal first job and one with flexibility.
“The most positive messages relate to first job,” he says. “McDonald’s has used this approach effectively, telling applicants they’ll learn more in six months of working than they will in a semester of school.”
C-stores need to improve on how they tell the story of what they do, Lenard says. If one person works at Starbucks and the other at a c-store, they both make and sell coffee, but the former job is viewed as being significantly better, he says: “ ‘I’m a barista at a coffee company’ vs. ‘I sell coffee at a gas station.’ ”
To elevate the c-store story in messaging, retailers can focus on tasks like making food as opposed to ringing up orders, Lenard says.
“That can be a differentiator in a potential employee’s mind,” he says.
Regarding flexibility, 93% of the U.S. population is within 10 minutes of a c-store, so it’s an easy, attractive commute for employees, Lenard says.
In the past few years, however, candidate focus has turned strongly to wages and benefits and away from purpose, creating high turnover as people leave jobs for 10 cents or 25 cents more an hour, he says.
Combating the Pay-First Mindset
C-stores aren’t just competing against other c-stores for employees, they’re also battling quick-service restaurants, Target, Walmart, Amazon and supermarkets, says Hussein Yatim, vice president of the 17-store Yatco c-store chain, Marlborough, Massachusetts. “Even though we’re not the size of a Walmart, we have to be competitive with our pay and benefits to attract those people,” he says.
To combat the pay-first mindset, retailers can boost their store’s allure, and reference a higher calling, by spending as much time with employees as possible to create connections and “tell the story of why your store and company matters,” Lenard says.
Before the pandemic, NACS tested 25 messages about the industry, and one that tested best concerned how the industry helps fight human trafficking, Lenard says. The message explained how c-store employees are the eyes and ears against this crime, keeping a lookout for red flags as customers come and go.
“This message can be a powerful differentiator when the competition doesn’t have that,” he says.
Jennifer Elliott, director of talent acquisition at the 641-location Pilot Co., says to instill that sense of purpose, the Knoxville, Tennessee-based c-store chain uses a new onboarding program called First Five to improve the experience for new team members, drive retention and build change in behaviors that help business. This program is coupled with Fueling Recognition, a program that awards points for stellar work and milestones, with in-app points redeemable for thousands of items, including restaurant gift cards, electronics, company merchandise and concert tickets, or on Amazon. “That helps to connect team members with what they’re doing and how we can make that connection to purpose,” she says.
These methods of attracting the best talent possible pay off down the road in those employees having positive relationships with customers, who are then more likely to develop a kinship with the store, Lenard says. In fact, a NACS consumer survey from earlier this year rated “friendly employees” fifth in most important reasons when choosing a c-store to shop. “It’s way up there,” he says.
With all the economic worries nowadays, people are increasingly considering the value of their money and if they feel good about where they spend it, Lenard says. “The answer can be ‘yes’ by having great people.”
A stellar staff requires a combination of casting the widest net and retaining existing employees, Lenard says. “Increasingly, employees want to know you care about them, have their back, are looking through all the scenarios they deal with.”
He also acknowledges the current level of economic and political turmoil across the country. “It’s important that your front-line workers know they have support because not everybody comes in in a good mood,” Lenard says.
Attracting Applicants With Benefits
Another key role in luring applicants, and retaining them, is through quality benefits and perks.
Pilot’s employee benefits include a 15- cent per gallon fuel discount, low-cost healthcare plans, a $10 meal credit each shift, paid parental leave, tuition assistance, paid time off—and an onboarding program that “really helps make sure we set that new hire up for success day one,” Elliott says.
Pilot promotes its benefits on social media and early in the hiring process to candidates. It also talks career opportunities and publicizes success stories on social media.
For example, with Savannah Johnson, a category manager, Pilot wrote: “Savannah Johnson joined Pilot Company more than 7 years ago as an intern during college, rotating through each department at its Knoxville headquarters. For the next year and a half, she worked as a general manager designate for one of Knoxville’s stores, eventually being promoted to travel center general manager in Virginia. She later transitioned to the food and beverage innovation team and has served as the food category manager for the past two years.”
“We’re getting out the word so people can see that there are those career paths,” Elliott says.
This onboarding, designed to help a new employee develop a deeper relationship with the company, involves extensive engagement from the start rather being “thrown into the deep end after a few hours of training,” as was done in years past, Elliott says.
Pilot’s structured process includes viewing training modules along with hands-on training and engagement with the store leader, she said. This includes having a coffee with the new hire to build a relationship from the first days of employment.
Chillbox, meanwhile, has created monthly secret-shopper competitions in each store that include rewards for a cashier who scores perfectly. “We would hand them an instant $50 gas card so they can understand how important it is for us to succeed in our secret-shopper program,” Bazzi says.
Chillbox every few months rotates secret shopper, sales and loyalty-registration competitions, with stores recruiting the most loyalty members winning a pizza party. In supplier partners, Chillbox has, for example, worked with PepsiCo to award the store that upsells the most Gatorade in a year with a party.
“They will shower that store with prizes, like coolers and swag and gear,” Bazzi says. “Our goal is to make it fun.”
Chillbox also has “aggressive pay rates,” Bazzi says, surveying the local c-store market and offering an average of $1 above the starting wage.
At Sheetz, the c-store chain shows it cares by recognizing employees for their daily work, Colino says. Incentives could be a cash bonus, a coupon or even a pat on the back. Sheetz holds competitions throughout its districts and regions, examining store metrics such as friendliness and culture.
In-person events, such as the annual Sheetz Fest, honor employees who’ve hit milestones and received high praise. “We bring together anyone who has reached a milestone of five, 10, 15 or 20 years and celebrate them for two days,” he says. “We provide a bunch of activities—a comedian, a hypnotist, dancing, zip lining and an after-party, for example—where they get to interact with senior leadership. It’s a very well-organized event really centered around the employee and recognition and has a family vibe.”
This recognition and the related incentives are part of why Sheetz is regularly named to Fortune magazine’s Best Companies to Work For list, including in 2023. “Potential candidates see that,” Colino says.
“We don’t get to handpick which of our employees answer those [Fortune] survey questions,” he says. “We’ve really done a great job over the years maintaining and building a great culture, and it’s really helped us from a recruiting perspective.”
Getting on best lists—Forbes is another, Colino says—is enabled by the c-store chain’s leadership.
“We create a family-oriented environment,” he says. “We call it our work family. And people just feel included. They feel like they have a voice, and they feel like the leadership really cares about them.”
Diversifying Recruitment
Of course, in 2023, recruiting for your “family” may require more than putting a help-wanted sign in the window. Instead, retailers should tap into multiple strategies to recruiting, from asking strong employees for recommendations to investing in technology.
At Chillbox, the top source of applications, primarily from teenagers, comes via referrals, Bazzi says.
To attract those teens, Bazzi meets them on their terms. Gone are the days of paper applications, he says. “They’re very introverted, and most of them are not willing to say, ‘Can I speak to a manager to see if you’re hiring?’ ”
Because teens are living in a digital world, all Chillbox applications are digital. Besides encouraging referrals, Chillbox recruits and advertises openings on social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram and TikTok.
Referrals also are spurred by the Nifty Fifty program, where employees get $50 for every referral hired. “We have employees who are really aggressive trying to recruit because it’s easy for them to recruit because they like their jobs,” he says. Chillbox is averaging about 50% to 60% more applications than before the pandemic, he says. He attributes the increase, in part, to government pandemic-related money drying up.
Applications have accelerated in the past few months—about 12 to 15 daily chainwide, Bazzi says. “We made it really easy to apply,” he says.
An introductory application asks for just a name, phone number and address so Chillbox can determine which store would be the best geographic fit.
The application then gets routed to the appropriate territory manager, who reaches out, screens the applicant and schedules a manager interview. It might be via Zoom, telephone or in person. If the initial interview goes well, a manager gives the candidate a formal, full application.
Besides referral bonuses, Lenard recommends c-stores consider people in the community outside traditional channels. For example, consider more part-time workers who can’t work an eight-hour shift, he says, “but they’d be awesome in a four-hour shift, such as a bus driver with time between the start and end of the day, or others who could support you over that very busy noon lunch rush.”
A bigger-investment proposal is setting up a college fund for employees’ children to illustrate how much the employer cares. It shows, “We’re also helping you plan your life,” Lenard says.
To retain existing employees, many c-stores are automating unenjoyable tasks, Lenard says.
When asked why their c-store is better than others, retailers invariably say, “It’s our people,” Lenard says. “The ones who are really having success in choppy times are those where the customers are saying it, not just the owner.”
One sign of happy employees is when they don’t remove their uniform upon finishing their shift. “You want that environment where if they’re going straight to a backyard barbecue, they still got their work T-shirt on, and they’re proud of it,” he says.
A few years ago, Lenard says, when Rutter’s was honored as the best c-store of the year, the chain gave employees a T-shirt proclaiming the honor. “That’s a great T-shirt to wear,” he says. “It tells the story about why we’re superior.”
Ultimately, employers need to invest in their people and show them they care. Ask how their day is doing, Lenard says, and ask about their family. “And mean it,” he says. “You’re not going to leave a job for 5 cents an hour or even 25 cents an hour if they care about you more than the competition.”
Tech Tools Relieve the Pressure
With HR budgets under pressure, retaining employees starts with hiring well.
Online job boards have made it easier for applicants to apply for many positions with a tap on a phone or a click of a mouse, but wading through applications can be onerous for convenience retailers.
Speed in hiring is crucial, says Jennifer Elliott, director of talent acquisition for Knoxville, Tennessee-based Pilot Co., which sends text messages to candidates to schedule interviews.
In human resources, technology is coming on strong. New software tools—often in the form of smartphone apps—aim to make it easier to screen, hire, onboard, train and retain workers. Tech companies also are leaning in with advice for c-store managers to hire gig workers for less-desirable tasks.
“You’ve got to find labor, and you’ve got to train that labor. And you’ve got to find ways to retain that labor,” says Drew Mize, executive vice president for PDI Technologies, Alpharetta, Georgia. By automating invoice-processing and other tedious, routine tasks at c-stores, PDI aims to help retailers boost retention.
To speed the applicant-screening process, Sprockets, Charleston, South Carolina uses artifcial intelligence, data analytics and a series of four simple questions for applicants to respond to. It grades them on a scale of 1 to 10 based on responses. Whether automated systems will be effective in achieving diversity for employers is a concern New York lawmakers addressed with legislation effective July 1 requiring employers to audit chatbots and other AI screening tools annually for race and gender bias and disclose the results.
To help c-store operators manage their labor needs, PDI has partnered with New York-based Shiftsmart, a platform for hiring contractors for shift work. It aims to reduce expenses by eliminating benefits, PDI says. But it boosts the importance of automating the onboarding and training process.
Full-time employees are more likely to stay with a company if they have more say in their schedules, says Andy Nicholas, vice president of the Americas for Montreal-based WorkJam, a provider of integrated tech solutions for scheduling, task management, learning and communications. With WorkJam’s scheduling app, managers can assign a full-time employee 26 hours and let them pick when to work the remaining 14 hours—or other hours at different sites selected through an open marketplace.
WorkJam counts about 1 million employee users in the c-store space, including Circle K and Shell. Its software-as-a-service model calculates the retailers’ fee based on locations or employees.
As incentives for completing trainings, Shell employees receive loyalty points through Shell’s Rewards program, Nicholas says. The applications’ multilingual communications component provides in-line translations to allow team members to communicate in their native languages. If a manager isn’t available during a night shift, the app connects employees to workers in other locations.
At San Ramon, California-based Chevron Stations Inc., Human Resources Manager Dave Warren says the company encourages managers to avoid operating with too few workers in the store. It uses technology to determine the optimal number of labor hours based on store size and transaction counts.
Training Tech
To ensure employees are hitting the mark on the job, Ready Training Online (RTO), Elizabethtown, Pennsylvania, provides training on customer service and many other skills, such as compliance with tobacco and alcohol regulations, credit-card security, foodservice safety issues, stocking shelves and cleaning protocols, says Jeff Kahler, president and CEO. C-store chain Refuel relies on RTO to onboard and train employees. “We’re 100% involved in the core content,” says William Gully III, vice president at the Charleston, South Carolina-based c-store chain, which has 207 stores.
At High’s, managers still use in-person instruction, but they’ve found for some employees, RTO’s videos are more effective than paper materials or a single demonstration. “Managers can assign modules again and again, far after the paper materials are gone, and it’s paperless,” says Dallas Wells, vice president of food services and training for Carroll Fuels’ High’s chain in Baltimore.
RTO strives to produce training videos under seven minutes. “Modular or micro-learning is where it’s at,” Kahler says.
While in the past c-stores were reluctant to allow employees to bring cellphones to work, that’s changed, Kahler says. When employees need training, such as on a new re-safety system, they can access it instantly from a phone app.
C-stores can resolve a labor shortage by rethinking how a full-time position can be divided into smaller tasks posted on apps such as Shiftsmart or Hyer, which feature opportunities for gig workers. For food production and other tasks core to the brand experience, full-time employees are key, says Justin Baxley, vice president of PDI Technologies. But for hiring extra hands to manage a heavy lottery-ticket sales period, for example. or to restock the cooler after a busy weekend, hiring a shift worker can be a cost-effective answer, says David Dempsey, CEO of Grosse Pointe, Michigan-based Frictionless Enterprises, which owns Hyer.
Make Recognition Regular
Employees are recognized sooner and more often today than when employee engagement and retention company Royal Recognition, Muskego, Wisconsin, began 40 years ago.
“It’s changed dramatically since I started,” says Dan Cull, national accounts manager, son of the founders and a full-time employee for 15 years.
In 2008, when Cull joined the company, he recalls, many companies’ recognition programs started with an employee’s five-year anniversary. Today, employee recognition begins with onboarding at companies where employers understand recognition boosts retention and saves money in lower recruiting, onboarding and training costs.
Many c-stores today recognize employees at 30 days, 60 days, 90 days and one-year increments, Cull says. “A happy workforce is a productive workforce,” he says.
La Crosse, Wisconsin-based Kwik Trip Inc., a Top Workplaces USA company for the third year in a row this year, recognizes its co-workers in company newsletters when a customer calls with a compliment or thank you, and for acts of kindness, says Kwik Trip spokesperson David Niemi.
“If somebody runs out of gas, a co-worker might say, ‘Hey, let me give you a lift. You don’t have to walk all the way back,’ ” Niemi says.
Recognition can also include celebrating employee milestones other than tenure, such as weddings and the birth of children, Cull says.
Mount Pleasant, South Carolina-based Refuel Operating Co., which has acquired about 15 c-store chains since it began a partnership with private-equity firm First Reserve in May 2019, smooths the transition for employees of acquired companies by giving them Refuel c-store swag, Cull says.
When new employees start, they receive a welcome letter from a company executive and information on how to log on to the employee-recognition platform, he says.