Retailers Increasingly Relying on In-Store Sales

SAN FRANCISCO — The coronavirus is forcing the convenience-store industry to rely on in-store sales as fuel revenue continues to slide on a precipitous decline in miles driven across the United States, according to the latest data from analytics firm Skupos.

Although recent months have been filled with uncertainty, opportunities for growth in the post-COVID market still exist. “Over the past six weeks, we’ve seen revenue shift from being driven by fuel to being driven by in-store purchases,” the company said in its latest blog post.

This reaction is an acceleration of a longer-term trend seen in a profit shift over the past several years. NACS State of the Industry data released in April shows fuel generating 40% of gross profit in 2014, compared to only 36% in 2019. “Stores can look to use current momentum to sustain higher levels of in-store profitability by continuing to refine their in-store product mix,” Skupos said.

With COVID-19’s drastic effect on the market, Skupos continues to monitor data trends in the c-store industry. Here are a few insights through mid-April ...

With the price of crude oil dropping to a 20-year low this past month, fuel revenue continued to decrease through April, with a week-over-week change of -6%. “We also saw in-store revenue take a slight hit this week, although it remained relatively stable over the past four weeks,” Skupos said.

Since March 1, following similar trends, AB InBev and Molson Coors have both seen revenue per store increase. “While in some instances revenue has decreased week over week, when compared to the week of March 1, both brands still maintain higher revenue levels than before the pandemic,” Skupos said.

In a state-by-state breakdown of beer sales, Minnesota, Indiana and Pennsylvania saw the highest changes in revenue from beer sales, while Wyoming and Connecticut had the greatest decline.

According to Skupos, A-B sales revenue increased 60% in Minnesota, and Connecticut saw A-B revenue drop 30%.

As consumers continue to follow stay-at-home orders, they are increasingly buying larger package sizes of beer vs. immediate-consumption packaging, Skupos reported. “We’ve seen key consumer behaviors shift,” Skupos said. “Since the U.S. national health emergency announcement, future consumption (measured by sales of multipacks, etc.) jumped from 6% of sales to 8% of sales.”

In an exclusive partnership with Skupos, CSP Daily News is reporting the data firm's pandemic-related insights on a weekly basis. Click here to review all the insights.

San Francisco-based Skupos drives revenue growth and operational efficiency across all segments of the retail industry through the collection of billions of transactions every year. More than 13,000 customers across the United States rely on Skupos’ platform to provide actionable insights that enable brands, distributors and retailers to increase sales volume and employee productivity.