Where are you going in the next 30 minutes of leaving the convenience store?
This is a question NACS always asks c-store shoppers during its annual convenience voices study that involves talking to about 10,000 shoppers.
“We interrupt their shopping days, ask them lots of questions about why you’re here and what are you looking for and did you find it?” said Lori Stillman (pictured left), vice president of research and education at Alexandria, Virginia-based NACS, speaking at a session on winning dinner at the NACS Show in October in Las Vegas.
Stillman was joined by Carrie Wiggins (center), director of foodservice at La Crosse, Wisconsin-based Kwik Trip, and Richard Cashion (right), chief operating officer at Lubbock, Texas-based Curby’s Express Market.
Last year, 25.7% of those shoppers said they were going to a quick-service restaurant.
“These are customers that we already have in our store, and I know the stores we do the survey in and many of them have a fantastic food program,” she said.
‘If you’re going to put together a great campaign, big or small, you really need to make sure everybody's involved in that.’
Despite this, she continued, “We aren’t top of mind. They aren’t thinking about it. So we just redid the survey this year and, in 2024, sadly, that number has increased rather than decreased.”
The percentage of those going to a QSR after a c-store visit now stands at 28.7%, up 3 percentage points, she said.
“And yet the industry's food offer, over the course of the last year, has only gotten better,” Stillman said. “So, we’ve got to figure out how do we connect with those shoppers, whether they’re driving by or they’re already in our stores to say, ‘You don’t need to make another stop. We have exactly what you need right here, right now.’”
NACS asked shoppers why they are going elsewhere.
Variety
The first reason is variety, Stillman said.
“In many cases, they might be looking for pizza but happen to be at a store that has a great chicken program [and is] not known for their pizza,” she said “So, we’ll give them a little bit of props for that.”
Second is quality. “The perception of the quality is not where we want it to be in the mind of that shopper if they’re saying, ‘I’m leaving here because I can get a better pizza, hot dog, hamburger somewhere else,’” she said.
Third is price. “We know that consumers today are increasingly price sensitive,” she said. “So, as we think about winning the dinner game part, knowing we have to grow the dinner daypart at c-stores, retailers must think big.
“Be known for something,” Stillman continued. “Figure out how to use your marketing program, your digital, your social media, to drive customers to interact with the brand to bring them into the store and give them an offer that makes sense knowing that right now customers are strapped financially.”
$10 or Less
If a c-store can offer a great meal for less than $10 per person, it can compete with QSRs, she said, adding that doing so doesn’t mean a c-store has to reinvent its foodservice program.
“It means you have to let the customer know you’re in the game, that you’ve got options that are relevant to them and you, too, are easy to order from and easy to customize,” she said. “Perhaps you’re connected to DoorDash or others.”
Ultimately, however, “It’s really about keeping it simple and being really present with a clear message,” she said. “Interrupt the pattern, get the customer that you already have to think about dinner as part of the experience that you can deliver.”
‘We know that consumers today are increasingly price sensitive.’
She added, “Be known in their mind when they’re craving the best pizza in town; they’re probably going to go to Curby’s because they know the quality of that pizza program.”
Retailers also must grow with existing customers, she said. “How are you engaging those shoppers who are already in your store?” she asked. “Do you have a sampling program? Have you trained your staff to really speak up and sell those food programs?”
Kwik Trip
Carrie Wiggins of Kwik Trip then spoke about the c-store chain’s No Ordinary Chicken Campaign, which ran from Feb. 27 to April 8 of 2024. Kwik Trip learned what permutations worked and what didn’t.
“The eight-piece price was magic, it worked, we nailed it and profitability was great,” Wiggins said.
However, she said, the boneless wing price “didn’t really work for us. We sold a lot of units, but we also created a lot of waste alongside that. So, after the promotion, we actually wound up raising the price on the boneless wings a dollar to make it a lot more profitable for us.”
As part of this promotion, Kwik Trip rolled out a coworker retail kit.
“For the first time, our marketing department decided to put together a kit of decorations for the store,” she said. “The marketing department did a fantastic job making something that gave us a cohesive look across our 840 stores.”
‘We aren’t top of mind. They aren’t thinking about it.’
Materials included stickers to place around stores, in-store posters where employees would write their favorite piece of chicken, danglers, billboards and more.
“Last but not least, they got us really cute paper hats,” she said. “The great thing is quite a few of those wound up in local schools. What a great advertisement for you.”
Wiggins added, “If you’re going to put together a great campaign, big or small, you really need to make sure everybody’s involved in that.”
A retailer cannot develop a great concept and not get its buying department in charge of it as well.
“Or if you are working with a supplier, get them involved to know that you’re really going to be pushing chicken,” Wiggins said. “We had to work with our buying department, and that started really early on in preparations to figure out what units we thought we would push out. And it turns out near the end of the promo, we had to work with additional suppliers on our chicken tenders. We also had to work with our warehouse and our transportation department.”
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