PAR, a foodservice technology company that recently acquired Stuzo, a convenience-store and retail fuel software provider, plans to expand its presence in the convenience-store industry with technology that seamlessly follows the customer throughout the store.
“The reason why PAR is invested and continuing to invest in convenience and fuel is that these industries are colliding,” Joe Yetter, general manager of guest engagement business at PAR, told CSP.
PAR, New Hartford, New York, acquired Stuzo for approximately $190 million paid in cash and stock. This acquisition strengthens PAR’s business strategy to expand its market by addressing the expanding convenience foodservice market. With the acquisition of Philadelphia-based Stuzo, PAR Technology now serves more than 25,000 sites.
At a time when retailers are focusing on food as the fastest growing revenue line, Yetter said, both PAR and Stuzo are motivated to work together in the space.
“The challenges that retailers have and the challenges that restaurants have are similar,” he said. “Consumers expect technology, and the ability to manage that technology, the number of vendors, the number of providers that retailers have to deal with today and tomorrow is only going to grow exponentially.”
The way to solve these challenges, Yetter said, is with a unified commerce platform, which means seamlessly integrating tech products, such as PAR’s digital ordering, loyalty offers, point of sale (POS) and processing for digital wallets, and Stuzo’s mobile payment processing and retailer-facing technology.
“[With Stuzo, we want] to expand that suite of offerings in the convenience and fuel space and bring a similar ethos of highly integrated commerce solutions to retailers of all types,” said Yetter.
The fuel and convenience space is fragmented, Jake Kiser, chief customer officer at Stuzo, told CSP.
“In many cases, it is accelerating faster than many of us had expected,” he said.
During the pandemic, technology such as order ahead and digital menus were pushed out quickly but trailed off, Kiser said. Now, the vision for tech is not just to exist as a standalone product, but to act as a digital extension of the brand.
“We want to make sure that these things are integrated into this shared database,” said Kiser. “In the end, technology should be silent and as frictionless as possible for the enterprise and should be empowering them to achieve the business outcomes they care most about.”
It should be about more than the buzzword or the flashy feature, he said.
“It's intertwined into the success of these enterprise retailers and midsize retailers that we are working with,” said Kiser. “The combination of PAR and Stuzo serves to be an option in the market that makes life easier across the board—whether you're doing loyalty, whether you're running a tobacco program, whether you need a mobile application, whether you're trying to manage your store employees, whether you're a major oil all the way down to a small company owned and operated—the technology stack has purpose built to make life easier as technology becomes more prevalent. It is not meant to solve a single problem in a vacuum.”
The partnership was a result of the two companies’ “rubbing shoulders” in the industry.
“We've been talking for some time about a partnership here,” said Yetter. “Both of our platforms are really strong and in a lot of ways we think that we can help each other and create something that's even better than what we have today individually.”
Retailers can expect nothing to change, Yetter said.
“We really do value relationships with customers, and we felt that from day one at PAR, and even sitting here on day four, I think we would affirm that we are very energized by that,” said Kiser. “The experience that this team brings to our team is something we know is going to benefit our employees and customers immediately, so we're very excited about that.”
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