Convenience-store retailers, battling growing prices and a shrinking labor pool, are crafting foodservice menus whose main ingredient is simplicity.
“Labor is really driving innovation,” said Michelle Weckstein, director of foodservice and beverage brands for Bainbridge, Georgia-based Southwest Georgia Oil Co.’s 76 SunStop c-stores.
Trends today, Weckstein said, are not centered around “what new fun things are you adding to your menu?” Instead, “It’s really more innovation around what food items can we bring in that have very little steps, that may be freezer-to-oven [and] that do not require a lot of people to properly execute.”
That simplicity, however, must include quality, she said.
“There are a lot of things out there you can pop in an oven and serve,” she added, but this convenience in preparation must be accompanied by quality.
One example of simplification is a breakfast casserole SunStop used to make that included potatoes, eggs, gravy and leftover breakfast meats. The retailer replaced that in-house item with one from Bob Evans.
“The quality is superb, and the consistency is the same,” Weckstein said.
Other examples include boil-in-the-bag items. “I just yesterday sampled a jambalaya that was out of this world,” she said. “It’s something we could use as a [limited-time offer], put it over rice or over grits; we have both of those items right now. We could throw in sausage and chicken as repurposed proteins, and that saves a step. I don’t have somebody in the kitchen actually making that with canned tomatoes and peppers and onions and spices.”
In addition to simplifying, retailers also are focusing on reducing waste.
Preserving Margins
Kenneth Rivardo, senior specialist, food operations, for Dallas-based Sunoco, which operates 79-company owned c-stores, said due to rapidly increasing costs from manufacturers, he and his team have been focusing on low-waste programs and trying to preserve margins.
One of the more successful ways Sunoco has been doing this is focusing on made-to-order programs and reducing grab-and-go products. This strategy lessens “the investment of putting out a lot of product that then goes to waste, and then [a retailer’s] margin just dwindles for that day,” Rivardo said.
It’s easier for newer locations to focus on made-to-order meals, however, because customers expect the grab-and-go model at established locations, Rivardo said.
“I just yesterday sampled a jambalaya that was out of this world.”
“It is a fine balance,” he said. “It’s an investment because ultimately what a store’s doing is investing in that product and potential sale.”
Rivardo said he finds many locations need the grab-and-go business to serve customers for whom two minutes in a c-store “might seem like an eternity.”
“There are other customers, though, that I feel slip through our fingers if we only rely on a grab-and-go program,” Rivardo said. “Those are the customers concerned about how long a product has been in a warmer. Is it fresh?”
This is why locations able to offer both made to order and grab and go have an advantage, he said.
Stick to Basics
In readying made-to-order items while observing costs and waste, Rivardo said he focuses on key ingredients to build multiple offerings.
“Stick to the basics, still providing what the customer’s looking for but not being so diverse as to having a cold station with 12 to 15 different fresh ingredients spread out,” he said.
Rivardo’s strategy is in line with what surveyed retailers told CSP sister company Technomic in the fall 2022 report C-Store Foodservice Update. “Shelf life,” at 94%, is the most important attribute of an item being added to a foodservice program in 2022, up from fourth place in 2020.
“One of the ways around that is slim down the offering and the amount of components.”
For example, Rivardo is cutting waste by reducing offerings that have a short shelf life, such as spinach and lettuce. “We’re going back to the basics, sticking with the lettuce and removing the spinach,” he said. “If we have two highly perishable items and they’re not moving as much, you’ve essentially doubled your cost.”
That cost comes in the form of the products themselves and the labor to prepare them. While product costs have risen, Rivardo said, he can raise retail prices only so high on customers before losing their loyalty.
“One of the ways around that is slim down the offering and the amount of components,” he said.
Enhance, Don’t Overwhelm
As restaurant operations consultant at US Foods, Menomonee Falls, Wisconsin, Tracy Hall sees this desire by retailers to optimize their menus.
Coming out of the pandemic, operators are looking to add items to their menus, she said, but they are doing so with a more streamlined approach and “with a lot more thought around how each and every menu item will cater to their dining base and not overwhelm, but enhance, their bottom line.”
“Cross-utilization amongst ingredients has weighed in very heavily over the past couple of years,” she said. “My advice to my customers is to make sure every additional new product can be used in at least two different ways to maximize the product. Freezer, refrigerator and back-of-house areas are limited, and you want every SKU to count and to work as hard as possible toward your bottom line.”
“Ultimately what a store’s doing is investing in that product and potential sale.”
Some of these new products might include Hispanic foods, which Weckstein says are growing in popularity. She’s going to try more grab-and-go Hispanic foods like tacos, fresh burritos and Mexican bowls.
At her company’s stores in the South, chicken tenders still reign supreme, “but people are more willing to try different sauces. So, instead of just your traditional barbecue and traditional hot sauce, we ran some specials with mango habanero and an Asian sauce, and that took on very well,” Weckstein said.
She added, “We do a lot with sandwiches and subs, and I’m finding that people are asking more for wraps now than subs, and I think that’s because of the bread. Less bread, less carbs.” In the breakfast arena, sweets such as doughnuts and cinnamon rolls with a cream cheese icing “that are to die for” have dropped in sales in the last year, said Weckstein, who attributes this to a health movement. “People are eating more egg-based items or more eggs and bacon as opposed to junk food for breakfast—or they would rather have a biscuit with a protein.”
Pork Over Chicken
While customers alter some choices, so does Weckstein, specifically to combat “through the roof” food costs. To deal with high beef and chicken prices, she has focused on pork-based LTOs in the last year. For example, she replaced chicken wings with a “hog wing,” or pork shank with a bone handle (pictured).
“The pork was affordable, and the value was there because they’re pretty big pieces—and they’re delicious,” she added. “I was really trying to find things that were lower in cost where our customers could really get a perceived value or still afford to eat in our stores, and not have a heart attack every time they ordered something.”
Hall added that many operators are looking for an easy way to add simple swaps to their menu that can cater to specific dietary considerations, including vegetarian and flexitarian.
“We’ve recently launched a pre-prepped gluten-free crispy battered shrimp (pictured) that comes flash frozen so, if requested, an operator can easily swap it into a taco or salad dish.”
Likewise, US Foods offers simple vegetarian swaps such as plant-based pork strips as an alternative to traditional pork or beef offerings in a taco or fajita. “We help them add that flexibility with flavorful, on-trend products that won’t add unnecessary costs to their bottom line,” Hall said. “Working with an operator to identify a few simple areas of the menu where they can menu simple swaps that will taste just as good as the ‘real thing’ and can align with their dining concept is one of my favorite consults.”