Technology might drive innovation, but it isn’t always enough. Obstacles from many different directions can thwart progress, according to convenience-store executives who spoke on a panel about culture and innovation at the 2023 Conexxus Annual Conference held in San Diego April 30 to May 4.
The market isn’t necessarily willing to pay for improvements, such as automation. It also can be fickle, as urban convenience stores discovered during COVID-19.
Loop Neighborhood Stores
Varish Goyal, president of Loop Neighborhood Stores, a unit of Vintners Distributors, recalled spending $20,000 on a Sally the Salad Robot, a machine that made salads to order. It worked, he said, but the company didn’t roll it out because of the cost. “We didn’t have enough business to justify it,” he said.
Goyal, a medical doctor with an M.B.A. who joined his family’s convenience store business in 2002, said he wanted to bring healthier food to Loop Neighborhood Stores and Vintners Distributors, but the market still prefers fried chicken. “Not everything works,” he said. “We quickly learned while you might have a desire of getting something healthy, when you come into a convenience store, you didn’t always pick up those items. We had to change the assortment.” The company’s unbranded convenience store, Poppy, offers Crunchy SettingMunchy, a fried chicken item offered all day long.
- Vintners Distributors is No.57 on CSP’s 2022 Top 202 ranking of U.S. c-store chains by number of company-owned retail outlets. Look for the 2023 Top 202 in the June issue of CSP magazine.
Nouria Energy Corp.
Doug New, chief information officer at Nouria Energy Corp. Worcester, Massachusetts, said achieving innovation is incredibly challenging. “We don’t talk about innovation very much in our company. What we do talk about is differentiation,” he said. Nouria stands out by holding quarterly town hall meetings to give employees a say.
With demand for electric vehicles growing, the company plans to build a second floor above its stores where, while waiting for their cars to recharge, consumers can “hang out for a while, get some food, eat something," New said.
- Nouria Energy is No.47 on CSP’s 2022 Top 202 ranking of U.S. c-store chains by number of company-owned retail outlets.
Jacksons Food Stores
Setting aside time to think about improvement and innovation is part of the challenge to achieving results. At Jacksons Food Stores, Robert Hampton was named vice president of tech services and innovation and asked to find ways to help improve the convenience-store chain. “Tech is not just a line item on a balance sheet. It helps us differentiate. It can be the difference between a good store and a great store, spending the money wisely,” he said at the conference.
Hampton is tasked with writing recommendations for innovations worth pursuing, which don’t have to be exclusive to the company, he said. CEO John Jackson encouraged him to visit other stores to see what’s working. Meridian, Idaho-based Jacksons operates c-stores under the Jacksons Food Stores and ExtraMile by Jacksons Convenience Store brands.
On one store visit where food offerings were supposed to be the focus, Hampton noticed what he thought was a computer printer on the floor. It turned out to be Cobi, a floor-scrubbing robot. It sparked an idea for improvement at Nouria's warehouse. “It occurred to me we’ve got to clean floors at the distribution center,” he said. This discovery led him to a floor-scrubbing robot meant for larger spaces. “It’s autonomous, but it’s great for warehouses,” he said.
“John has instilled a culture of going around, asking questions and not being afraid to fail. We’re going to spend some resources but we’re going to learn a lot along the way,” he said.
- Jacksons Food Stores is No. 25 on CSP’s 2023 Top 40 update to the 2022 Top 202 ranking of U.S. convenience-store chains by size.
HJB Stores
Convenience-store executive Raymond Huff, owner of HJB, said he has learned from his own experience how success can lead to labor reductions. As a teenager, picking up litter from a convenience store parking lot was his job. Once the lot was consistently free of litter, the problem disappeared as customers followed the example he set and threw away their garbage. When the lot no longer needed to be cleaned every day, Huff was reassigned to other tasks, which gave him a solid foundation in the business. He now owns a chain of urban convenience stores in office buildings.
It doesn't help to be the owner when major economic turbulences hit, like the ones following Sept. 11, 2001 and the onset of COVID-19 in March 2020. “Then COVID came. They shut down the United States. Everyone left the buildings,” Huff said. The workers who had shopped at his stores stayed home. “It was horrible.” His business model involved capturing the foot traffic of 5,000 workers walking past his store on the way to their offices, which had ballooned to 15,000 people including visitors before COVID.
“We were doing great. We had 24 stores at the time. We’re down to six.” Office buildings are empty in Denver, San Francisco and Los Angeles, he said. “The owners are giving their buildings back to the bank. They can’t pay rent.” As much as technology has enabled remote work, he said, the convenience industry needs to encourage employers to bring workers back into corporate offices.