Instead of managing their business from behind their desks, “we really focus on making sure that we’re actually in the stores,” Brett Kimmes, co-owner of Carroll, Iowa-based Kimmes Enterprises/Country Stores of Iowa, said on Monday at CSP’s Cold Vault Forum in Lombard, Illinois. “We talk to our employees. We listen to our customers.”
The family-owned convenience-store chain, which has 15 locations in central and northwest Iowa, was founded in December 2013. While their store footprint is small, they serve about 2,000 people per location, Kimmes said.
Being in small-town Iowa, the company is very proud of its community, he said.
The company started a pride pump program where it allocates one gas dispenser at every location and gives 2 cents back per gallon to all the local schools. The company also has branched out and added a local hospital and a local YMCA that partners with Big Brothers Big Sisters. Kimmes said that in the next few months, he expects they’ll break $200,000 in donations. The next hurdle will be $250,000.
One of the things that makes Country Stores of Iowa a bit different, “by at least today’s standards, is that we still operate very hands-on,” Kimmes said.
“We’re in our stores, we don’t always have the best pieces of technology [or] equipment,” he said. “We're looking at data through Excel spreadsheets that we download off of our back-office software. We don’t have the new dashboards that maybe some of you might have.”
However, Kimmes said they listen to “everything that everybody throws at us. We do our best to pay attention to all the small details, which you only really get from walking inside your store, looking around, seeing where the opportunities can exist and where they are.”
A lot of decisions come from experience, intuition and instinct that they have developed over the years in the industry, he said.
This doesn’t mean they ignore data, Kimmes said, adding that they love to have it when it’s available.
Decisions based on feedback
Because data isn’t always available, they make a lot of decisions based on the feedback they get from customers and from the stores, Kimmes said. Every community is a little different and there is not a one-size-fits-all scenario among their stores, Kimmes said.
“I have a store in Denison that’s definitely more heavily Hispanic, so we have a lot more on the import side of beverages,” he said, adding that they take pride in making sure each community is being served what they’re looking for.
It matters to be present and stay connected to the business, he said.
“And while technology does continue to evolve and grow, we still believe there’s tremendous value and experience in having common-sense decision-making and having firsthand knowledge of your overall operation,” he said.
On average, their stores are visited by Kimmes, his dad, brother or someone else in the organization at least two or three times a week, he said.
“It’s constant feedback,” Kimmes said. “It’s constant knowledge, knowing what’s going on, how we can improve and make things happen. We spend a lot of time talking to our employees."
He mentioned one employee who has been with the company for more than 10 years, since she was 18. She’s now a store manager.
“This is the lifeblood of what she really enjoys to do,” he said. “She loves working with customers. Speaking of customers, we love talking to them. Living in a lot of these communities, it really does allow you to get the good, the bad and the ugly from the people that shop at your stores every single day. For better or worse, it is always good information to have.”
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