I attended my first National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) Show in Las Vegas last week.
As I walked around the tradeshow floor, I was struck by how comfortable I felt. As someone new to the convenience-store industry, I realized the c-store channel is more than a cornerstone of a community—it’s an extension of family.
Attending NACS truly reinforced these feelings I’ve had about convenience stores since my early childhood. I grew up in a very small town in the Midwest. The c-store is where we got our slice of pizza with friends and the truckstop near the interstate is where my dad willingly dragged us to for his favorite slice of fruit pie.
The NACS Show is filled with an industry of people who don’t complain but instead create.
Through the education sessions, I learned that the c-store channel can’t always know what’s around the corner but that they can always find a path forward.
Before I joined CSP, I was working in the grocery space, where it was drilled into us that grocery stores operate on thin margins, which they do. But convenience stores are even more intense as one person reminded me at the NACS Show that every item on a c-store shelf must help pay for the rent.
While walking the show floor, I talked with many who have been in the industry for years about how they have navigated regulation in the tobacco category, workforce challenges or new trends such as the explosion of foodservice. It’s an industry that is the tip of the spear.
One thing I didn’t hear on the NACS Show floor was complaint. Those in the convenience-store industry are a happy group of people. They are family, and if you gathered them all around a Thanksgiving table, no one would grumble because so and so is seated as well. Everyone gets along.
Speaking of family, while talking with industry insiders at the NACS Show, I met people who connected with me on a personal level. One person heralded from my dad’s village in Greece and another person grew up steps from my current home in the Chicago area.
Walt Disney was right. It is a small world.
Speaking of Disney, the NACS Show included a general session from Doug Lipp of Disney University.
In his session, Lipp relayed how the founder of Disney was often seen picking up trash at the theme park, proving no task is above a CEO.
Lipp challenged the audience members filled with convenience-store operators and managers to think about what their actions are saying. “You can capture minds with training, but you only capture hearts with your behavior,” he said.
Thank you, NACS Show, for taking 420,000 square feet of space and turning it into “a small world after all.”
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