Allsup’s Express, adjacent to the Texas Tech University campus in Lubbock, Texas, is not an average convenience store.
The approximately 2,500-square-foot space was laid out with the Allsup’s Burrito top of mind, Derek Gaskins, chief marketing officer at Yesway, said. From the second customers walk in the doors of the Lubbock store, they see the burrito case—the Allsup’s staple foodservice item was even advertised at a football game when a plane flew above the field with a 60-foot-long “World Famous Allsup’s Burrito” banner behind it.
That’s not to say the store doesn’t have grocery and c-store staples as well to meet fill-in grocery shopping trip needs, Gaskins said.
The store acts as an innovation lab for Fort Worth, Texas-based Yesway—which acquired the Allsup’s chain in 2019. For example, its success with self-checkout machines has given Gaskins more confidence that self-checkout has a future in the c-store channel. The machines “saved us,” during surge times, he said.
- Yesway is No. 21 on CSP’s 2022 Top 202 ranking of U.S. convenience stores by company-owned store count.
Gaskins spoke with CSP Daily News in early February—following the company's announcement that it has raised $190 million in new equity to fund new-store construction in 2023—to talk about how the new concept performed in its first six months of opening and what the company has learned from it. The interview has been edited for clarity and length.
Q: How has Allsup’s Express been performing since it opened in August?
A:The store has been performing very well. We are pleasantly surprised at the reaction and how the community has embraced it. The location is literally across the street from Texas Tech, which is a huge campus and quickly growing. The other piece that is a pleasant surprise is with the store being right downtown, it has also gotten quite the local and professional following.
It's our first [Allsup's] without fuel, and it's QSR [quick service restaurant] forward, with the burrito standing tall, but also includes our dispensed beverage programs, bean-to-cup offerings and gourmet coffee, and even cold beverages, but we also have fill-in. We understood that downtown didn't really have grocery, and so we were able to leverage some of our strengths around fresh bread, milk and eggs, that are all Allsup’s branded, as well as other grocery fill-in items that a college kid or that a downtown resident would need.
Q: What have you learned since the store opened?
A: The key learnings [are] around flexible staffing to meet big needs. On football Saturdays, we underestimated how big that surge could be. So making sure that we had staff. And, we were fortunate that in the Lubbock area we have about a dozen other stores, but there were times where we would have to pull inventory from some of those stores because we just couldn't keep up. … You don't want to run out of burritos when that's what you built the whole store on. So being flexible and nimble with that was a big learning.
The other learning was the early morning. I didn't think this would do a good morning trade. And the operations team actually convinced me and leadership to open up earlier. There are hospitals and professionals who were downtown, or people in the nearby hotels, who were in walking distance who wanted access to something as early as let's say 5 or 6 a.m. I thought lunch will be huge, and kind of afternoon and then late night. But that morning daypart that COVID hurt in most traditional convenience retailers, in this instance, we found that it was pretty valuable.
The last thing would be influencer and brand ambassador partnerships. We actually put together a street team, for lack of a better term, that was comprised of some college kids as well as folks who are passionate about the burrito. We named them “burrito ambassadors.” And we also had a social media campaign with burrito influencers. And that has really helped because, at the end of the day, the passion for food is what separates great brands from good—and we've been able to bottle and target that passion for the burrito in social and mobile and on the campus to create something really breakthrough.
Q: How do you meet the college students where they’re at?
A: We were already on Instagram, and my marketing team got us on TikTok and Snapchat … it’s because we had to be where the consumers are. And that street team, is not to be taken lightly. … We had kids on bikes wearing burrito shirts, handing out coupon books and going to student [fraternity and sorority] rush when the kids came back to campus. Partnering with the [resident assistants] in dorms and giving them coupon books to give to some of the students. It really took it to a different level.
I think that younger college age demographic, they appreciate the authenticity of that. So we really wanted to recruit those students to help spread the word and to also be our labor force, and convince them that you can work in the store and think about convenience retailing as a long-term possible occupation.
Q:Are there immediate plans to open a new store near any other college campus?
A: Yes, nothing that’s final yet, but we are absolutely looking in the geography, let’s say in New Mexico and Texas and Oklahoma, for locations that we could procure and do this same concept, or at least Allsup’s.