This episode is sponsored by Cenex®
In this episode of “At Your Convenience,” CSP Editor Chuck Ulie talks with Jennifer Loper of C3 Brand Marketing, Overland Park, Kansas, who spoke at CSP’s C-Store Foodservice Forum June 18 in Schaumburg, Illinois. At the forum, she presented with Julia Foley, C3’s senior insights and strategy supervisor.
On this podcast, Loper talks about what kid-friendly convenience-store foodservice offerings look like, how to get started, the importance of communication with customers, knowing safety standards and more.
“At Your Convenience” brings industry experts and analysts together with CSP editors to discuss the latest in c-store news and trends. From mergers and acquisitions to foodservice and technology, the podcast delivers the story straight to listeners in short-format episodes, perfect for the morning commute or a quick break at the office.
Listen to their conversation above, or read the transcript here, which has been edited for length and clarity:
Chuck Ulie:You spoke this morning about food and fun, how entertainment can drive family business. Jennifer, how can convenience be more kid friendly? And what does that look like? And why does it matter?
Jennifer Loper: Great question. So C3, our history has been in serving restaurants. So really getting their family and kid consumer excited about connecting with the brand. And what we’ve discovered is that convenience, now being in foodservice, they have the same opportunity. So it’s really simple. The two main ingredients to attract families with children and to create this environment in convenience is the same as it is for restaurants. It’s food and fun. You have to have the right food, and the convenience foodservice folks are experts in that. They understand what kind of food is kid-friendly.
You have to make sure it’s something they’ll eat. We hear parents say, ‘All I want is something my kid will eat. Doesn’t have to be the healthiest, but I want food that they’re going to eat. And then we want some fun. We want a little bit of entertainment.’ And that can look a lot of different ways. For convenience, it could be a kids meal that they create. And you’ve got fun packaging, and it’s around their branding. And essentially what we do is we take a core brand and we translate it for kids.
And so the packaging has a fun illustration, could have some games. You have the right food and then you have a little piece of fun. It could be a small toy, a sticker, a tattoo, something little. It doesn’t have to be big. And it just brings a moment of joy, a little fun in the day. So it’s pretty simple, but super impactful.
Ulie: Any c-stores doing this nowadays?
Loper: So what we learned some today (during the forum) is Wawa currently has a kids box and they have food kids like, and I think they have a small sticker. So they’ve gotten into that area. We had a few other folks raise their hand and say they’ve tried it. Many of them without the fun component, like the toy, the entertainment.
Ulie: What would you say to a retailer—let’s just say they have 30 or 40 stores, not huge, and they’re interested in this, but they’re kind of scared. How would you allay their fears of doing something like this?
Loper: I think it’s all about knowing about your consumer. You’re gonna know your consumer best in terms of how they interact with your brand. And so one of the things I think that’s interesting to figure out with convenience is how do we package the kids meals. Do we have it pre-packed? I’ve heard people say, ‘I don’t like that as much because there’s a little waste there that maybe we don’t want.' Do we have it come through the ordering system in the kitchens? We can have a lot of fun and entertainment for dimes and not dollars. At C3 we do custom programs, so scale is our friend. The more units we create the more cost effective we can be, but if you’re to going into it initially, just think, ‘Hey, I’m going to try this out.’ You don’t have to spend dollars per kid; you can spend dimes and you’ve got to make sure you communicate you have the kids program. You do that on your social media, You could do that outside at the pump. That communication that you have it available is really critical. They have to know it exists, and then we’re experts in making sure that we can align the brand, translate it to kids and make it fun that kids are interested in and it makes sense for them. So, you could have milk say and then a roller-grill item, maybe a corn dog or a hot dog; super kid friendly. And you could throw in a fun sticker. You could start with a sticker pack; there’s a lot of entertainment stickers. They are what we call evergreen toys. A kid in 1965 and a kid in 2025 loves stickers. Adults love stickers if you look around and you see stainless steel water bottles with stickers.
Ulie: Are there any hidden things to watch out for if I’m a retailer? I own 50 stores and I want to start this up.
Loper: So, what we do is we like to call, and I can speak for C3 obviously, and we are an extension of your team. We are a marketing partner, we’re also a supply-chain partner. So, we’re experts in not only creating the fun, making sure it aligns with your brand, we’re also experts in manufacturing it, but we’re also experts in getting it from point A to point B. And so a lot of our experience is around understanding the number of kid visits with the quantity of items that would be your entertainment. So we could have a brand come to us and say, ‘Hey, I think I see this many kids.’ They have some data around that. Let’s make that many pieces to start out. We have enough experience in doing this. We think you should start out with maybe fewer, and here’s why. We take our collective experience of 39 years, and that’s a benefit to the retailer around usage, compliance. We would love to say every brand we work with is 100% compliant, but we know things aren’t perfect.
Ulie: So making sure they’re doing everything they have to do correct, and you help them do that?
Loper: Yes, we do.
Ulie: If my store has a mascot, you could even help me make a stuffed animal gorilla or a little plastic gorilla?
Loper: Yes, you come to us because we actually do that. All of the product development is done at C3. It’s so fun. The people I work with are amazing. We have industrial designers, toy designers, illustrators, art directors, all are C3 employees. And so everything that we create for a brand is custom. We don’t have a warehouse filled with items, not that there’s anything wrong with businesses that do that, but we don’t have anything pre-made that we would just put a logo on. We create every item custom, whether it’s a sticker or a three-dimensional plastic toy. We work with manufacturing partners. We don’t have a manufacturing facility in Kansas City, but we work with those manufacturing partners and they design our toys and entertainment for us. We manufacture all over the world.
Ulie: Is there any downside to any pitfall? Anything someone considering this might be blindsided by? What should they know before they jump into this?
Loper: When you are giving away something to a child in particular, the safety standards are extremely high, and this can be an area where people don’t have expertise. Restaurants, convenience, lots of businesses don’t do this. When you are giving away an item, the level of responsibility for safety is higher because the consumer is not opting in to purchase that item. So at retail, at a Target, as an example, Chuck, you say, ‘I want to buy that Hot Wheels toy.’ You are opting in as a consumer. When you are given something, you’re just given that item. You’re not opting in. So the level of safety standards is even higher.
Ulie: Legally, I would be held to a higher standard?
Loper: Yes, as a manufacturer. And so we do all age testing. So, if you look at our packaging, on many of our restaurant clients’ toys, it states this toy is intended for kids 3 and older. We safety test for every age because we realize the reality that that child could have a younger sibling in the house. So, the minimum safety standards are here. C3 exceeds all of those safety standards. And then we have a proprietary safety manual. We work with a safety lab that goes in on our behalf and tests prior to production, during production, after production and prior to deployment on the water.
Ulie: That’s very impressive. And did you say “on the water”?
Loper: On the water before it leaves the port in China, as an example. We have an entire department at C3 related to safety, product integrity. The creative and the fun part is a lot more fun to talk about, but the safety part is enormous and huge to our business, and we’re leaders in that area.
Ulie: Is there anything else you’d like to talk about in this world before we say goodbye?
Loper: I think a lot of times, when you look at just the data of sales, and we see this in all the industries that we work with, as an example, you could see in your convenience-store purchases that include kids, if they had a kids meal as an example, that could be 5% of their overall sales. But what we’ve discovered through our research is when kids are present, and this is in the restaurant industry and also in convenience, the check can more than double because, number one, kids don’t come by themselves; they can’t drive. And so you’ve got a parent, maybe two parents, and then you have a kid and maybe two kids. And we all know if we’re parents or if you’re an aunt or an uncle, you’re a little bit more open to spending to get an extra dessert or that extra thing in the convenience store. I’m going to be open to that and feeling a little bit more generous. So, the opportunity to attract families is significant to increasing your sales in your bottom line.
Ulie: And that’s a crucial reason why c-stores should consider this.
Loper: Yes, absolutely.
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