To stay competitive and capture more of the Gen Z and millennial audience, convenience stores must always be innovating.
“Respective to foodservice, they’re looking for a couple of key things: innovation and functionality,” said Donna Hood Crecca (pictured left), principal of CSP sister research arm Technomic, Chicago. “They’re looking for things that can nourish them, give them energy, power them through their day. Things that contribute to health, whether it’s gut health or mental health.”
Crecca spoke last week at CSP’sConvenience Retailing University along with Billy Colemire (center), vice president of marketing and brand at Boise, Idaho-based Stinker Stores. The session, Turning Data into Strategy for QSRs and C-Stores. was hosted by Abbey Lewis (right), vice president of content strategy for CSP.
Crecca said these are groups are also very engaged with global cuisines and global formats. “So, pulling in an interesting ingredient—turmeric or something in a smoothie or whatever you want to do,” she said. “That’s going to pique their interest. They’re looking for those types of innovation.”
’24-Hour Daypart’
These younger consumers are gravitating to snacking. “I like to think for Generation Z, snacking is a 24-hour daypart,” Crecca said. “That’s how they live, so this is a channel that people go to for snacks, and we need to own it. We need to reinforce that we are the place for really good and tasty snacks, better-for-you snacks, indulgent snacks, whatever your snack desire is.”
Crecca added. “That’s another threat from the QSRs because they’re starting to play in snack. Think about Subway’s footlong cookies, things like that.”
She added: “We need to play defense there and really innovate to continue to engage that younger consumer.”
At Stinker, Colemire, said, the snacking occasion is an area of focus for the company right now.
Spud Alert
“We’ve really worked to put some sweet snacks in the cold case to complement those chicken tenders or that burger,” he said. “We’ve private-labeled so many cheesecakes. We’re doing a lot of the sweeter stuff right now, and there’s a lot of opportunity in the savory side. I’m really excited – we have some potatoes coming in 2025, 2026.”
Colemire said Stinker considers demographics when making decisions in foodservice offerings, but “we don’t ever want to have so many facts that we get into this situation where it’s analysis paralysis and then you don’t move forward at all.”
Stinker will evaluate the demographics from a socioeconomic perspective and other facets, and its focus when examining demographics is, “Is there a trending flavor profile that’s coming up that we don’t meet right now, and if we’re going to do that, how can we do that?” Colemire said. “We try to cross-utilize a lot so we don’t make the operations overly complex.”
He added, “We’re pretty confident that we have a quality product. We source high-quality ingredients and have a tremendous marketing merchandising team promoting that and executing it, so we look at the demographics, but it’s not the end all be all.”
Beware Big Discounts
Colemire also warned of excessive price discounts, which can devalue a product.
“You don’t want to be known as cheap,” Colemire said. “That’s a negative connotation.” Dropping prices for a limited-time offer is one thing, he said, but “those deep, deep discounts are not sustainable.”
Colemire said he’s seeing a lot of combo offers and “very price-driven discounting right now” from QSR and c-store competitors. But for Stinker Stores, “We’ve tried to make sure that the value to us is not always price; it’s the value that we offer, it’s having that one-stop shop in our app and CPG (consumer packaged goods) offers and working with a lot of those partners.”
Colemire said Stinker is paying attention to the combo offers, “but we can’t erode margin forever, so rather than trying to beat the QSRs on the combo—that’s a little difficult based on the scale, we have 105 stores—it’s more of being innovative now. They’re not going to be able to do these combos for three to four years from now, so how can you continue to differentiate yourself from the QSRs?”
Crecca touched on the importance of reaching consumers via social media, getting messages “out there in very visual ways: reals, videos, those types of things, and get the consumer engaged,” she said. “That’s where they’re looking to get cues on: ‘Hey, what’s cool, what’s hot, what’s now?’”
Members help make our journalism possible. Become a CSP member today and unlock exclusive benefits, including unlimited access to all of our content. Sign up here.