Do your customers, particularly your female customers, feel safe in your convenience store?
“When a woman walks into a convenience store, the very first impression tells her if this is a place where she can feel safe and comfortable—or one she’ll avoid in the future. Safety isn’t just about security cameras; it’s built into the design, lighting and overall environment,” Kathy Williams, senior category leader at Minuteman Food Mart, Elizabethtown, North Carolina, owned by Campbell Oil Co., told CSP.
These factors are important, Williams said, “and to me as a woman, I’m not shopping at stores that don’t feel safe. To be honest, we should be setting up our stores for success to capture not only the woman but the family as a customer.” She said if a retailer captures the family, they capture most of the buying power.
“And not only that, women are the perfect advocates to market your brand because they are all over social media and they’re at the soccer games and the ballgames,” said Williams, a CSP 2025 Category Manager of the Year winner for center store, small chain. “So that has always been my goal since I ever started merchandising, was to make it feel safe inside the store for the family and for the female.”
- Campbell Oil Co./Minuteman Food Mart is No. 117 on CSP’s 2025 Top 202 ranking of U.S. convenience-store chains by store count.
Williams said the restroom should not be near an exit for two reasons. First, because someone could pull a customer out of the store and, secondly, because someone could sneak in through a back exit door and into the restroom.
“Human trafficking is very, very prominent right now,” Williams said. “From a safety standpoint, I’m not going to go to a restroom that's near an exit for that same reason, because you have people that are parking near those exits.”
Shelves
Shelf height also is a factor retailers should be aware of for safety purposes.
Shelves should never be higher than 54 inches, giving every customer a clear line of sight across the store, Williams said.
“This openness eliminates blind spots and creates a feeling of visibility and control,” she said. “I’m putting a store together right now. You should be able to look over every gondola, every rack. There should not be anything that’s high so that you can see everybody that’s in the store at the same time. It actually deters from not only theft, but also robberies and safety. I mean, you’re not hidden. The store is wide open, which makes it feel a lot better.”
Williams said a store with 72-inch-high gondolas is 20 inches above her height.
“I can’t see over it. I don’t know what’s going on,” she said. “I don’t even shop in those stores because women normally never even shopped in a convenience store to begin with, they always shopped in grocery stores because of the safety issues.”
Lighting
Lighting can make an impact, too.
“Make it lit up outside like it’s a stadium so they feel safe from the pump all the way to the door, and not only that, when they get into the store as well,” Williams said.
Make sure people aren’t loitering outside because, “We’re not going to go into the store," she said. "We’re not even going to pull up in the parking lot for safety reasons.”
Cleanliness
Cleanliness is another factor, and one that Williams calls a “form of respect.”
“A spotless interior and exterior show that the company cares about its guests’ well-being, not just their wallets,” Williams said. “The product mix also matters: families, and especially women, want more than quick snacks and sodas.”
Fresh food, healthier options and everyday essentials signal that a store understands customers' needs, she said.
“Where convenience is going now, we’re trying to make it a one-stop shop, and we want it to be food focused, we want it to be like a cafe kind of atmosphere inside where people are coming in, and they’re staying, and they’re eating and plugging in their laptop. We have to make sure that our surroundings are safe. So we have to make sure that our atmosphere is catering to that,” she said.
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