At Tri Star Energy, which operates Twice Daily c-stores and White Bison Coffee shops, Dawn Boulanger, vice president of marketing, said the Nashville-based company of 194 stores uses a proprietary customer readiness survey that its managers go through daily.
Nouria Energy won the 2024 Mystery Shop, while Boise, Idaho-based Stinker Stores came in second and Tri Star Energy came in third.
“At the beginning of their shift, they walk the store, making sure everything’s ready from the guest experience…and also to make sure that our employees are set up for success,” Boulanger said.
Managers will examine the forecourt and look at equipment. “If you pull up to a site and don’t have a clean forecourt, it doesn’t speak well to what might be inside your store,” she said. “So, it’s important to make sure your pumps are clean, and that’s on our checklist.”
Every morning, they also make sure the sandwich cooler or deli case are fully stocked and that products are not expired. This process also includes checking the cooler’s temperature, she adds.
Tri-Star received 97.8% in the sandwich cooler revealed audit, the top score. The audit is conducted by CSP and data analytics firm Intouch Insight, Ottawa, Ontario.
Boulanger said Tri Star produces a lot of the products in its cases, which helps them better manage inventory levels and “to make sure that our products are rotated and fresh—because there's no third party to rely on.”
- Tri Star Energy/Twice Daily is No. 42 on CSP’s 2024 Top 202 ranking of U.S. c-store chains by store count.
When it comes to keeping up with food-safety standards like temperature monitoring and expiration dates, Tri Star has a robust system for its managers to communicate, Boulanger said.
“We have an in-house maintenance team. If we have issues with any of our equipment, they put in service channel checks and are able to get out there pretty quickly and service our equipment,” she said.
Employees Score High
Tri Star scored 99% in the “employees” category of the revealed audit, an area Boulanger said is a bit more challenging in terms of encouraging courteousness, grooming and related attributes.
“We do some of our own proprietary research and get a lot of great comments back from our guests about our customer service,” she said.
Boulanger said it’s “easier to hire somebody with a great personality and teach them how to do a skill than it is to try to teach somebody how to be nice and courteous.”
Tri Star has at various times provided uniforms and allowed employees to wear their own shirts but in the last year went back to providing shirts for employees. “It’s just easier to maintain and manage and to make sure people look crisp and fresh like they need to,” she said.
Tri Star finished in second place in fountain drinks, with its relentless stocking of cups and lids for its 40-plus dispensers and ensuring a multitude of flavors are running smoothly. It scored 99.7%.
Coffee Customization
In coffee, “People love to be able to come in and can craft their beverages the way they want,” Boulanger said, adding that Tri Star offers bean-to-cup machines and drip coffee—along with cold brew—and half and half and alternative dairy products like almond milk.
The chain finished in second place for coffee at 99.2% in the revealed audit.
A Well-Oiled Machine
Boulanger said Tri Star participated in Mystery Shop because as competition heats up in the market, “it’s always good to level-set and really understand where you sit in the mind of the consumer. We never participated before, and we just thought it would be a good opportunity to find out what you’re really good at and you hopefully find out that you excel at some things, but also what are your opportunities?”
Although Boulanger said she wasn’t surprised that Twice Daily stores scored well, “I will tell you I was pleasantly surprised to be one of the finalists. I didn't anticipate that, having never done it before. And so top three, that’s awesome, and that's a testament to our operators and our people that work in our stores.”
Inside the stores, where Tri Star finished third with 98.3%, it uses stainless steel and a “lot of warm tones with our graphics package and some of the finishes that we have on our equipment and countertops,” she said. “Our stores are really well lit. There’s a perception sometimes that convenience stores may not be as clean or safe, and it’s really important for us to portray that in a different way.”
She adds that this aspect is important to females, a target audience for Tri Star. Boulanger said Tri Star did research a few years ago to understand who uses Twice Daily—and how. “We identified four different target audiences and one of them was moms,” she said. “Then we learned that they use us after school when they pick up kids from their practice, for snack time and things like that.”
From there, Tri Star began targeting and advertising to these audiences, playing off how they use Tri Star—to “have a little more of an emotional connection with people and not as transactional.”
“You can buy a candy bar anywhere, but we want them to think about us when they buy the candy bar,” she said.
“We have pretty high standards,” she adds. “We have a vision statement and it’s well known throughout our company and doesn’t just hang on a wall. We live it and we talk it and we walk it. We do all of those things.”
Boulanger said customer readiness is important at Tri Star, including “making sure that we take care of the guests every day. That drives your decision-making processes and what you do, and then it sets your people up for success, too.”
She adds that Tri Star’s biggest opportunity is from a foodservice standpoint. “We’re in our infancy in a lot of ways in that,” she said, adding that it takes a village to make things run the right way.
“It has to be a well-oiled machine and everybody working toward the same goal,” she said.
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