OAK BROOK, Ill. -- Best dressed is the best-understood best practice of the convenience store industry. According to the second annual CSP-Service Intelligence mystery shop program, employee appearance was the category best-executed across the board. The composite score was the highest of the five categories (91.1%), with 9 of the 12 retailers scoring 90 or above.
Atlanta-based RaceTrac and overall repeat champ QuikTrip of Tulsa tied for the most-consistent incidence of employees wearing both a company-branded uniform and a nametag as well as exhibiting [image-nocss] good grooming. Each scored 99.3, followed by Exxon/On the Run (97.4); BP Connect (96.7); Circle K (96.3) and The Pantry (96.1). [For the complete mystery shop results and a feature on QuikTrip, see the August issue of CSP magazine.]
On the question of whether employees were wearing both the uniform and the nametag, the composite was just 66.4, with QuikTrip doing best by far (98.7 to RaceTrac's 93.3). Nametags were missing more often than uniforms for those scoring lower.
QuikTrip CEO Chet Cadieux told CSP Daily News that employee appearance is another aspect of consistency. When [customers] come into the store, they expect to be greeted by a person in a red shirt with a silver or gold nametag on, he said. If you've been doing that consistently for a long time, it would really throw somebody off their balance as a customer if it wasn't the case.
Dave Zaborski, senior vice president of operations at The Pantry, Sanford, N.C., offers his chain's policy on the subject: We ask our employees to wear a Kangaroo company shirtcollared or golfwhich depends on the job class, he told CSP Daily News. We ask them to wear khaki-colored or dark blue or black slacks or knee-length skirts along with closed-toe, closed-heel shoes. We require socks, belts, nametag, no fake fingernails. Necklaces must be worn inside the shirt, no dangling earnings. In this day and age, we allow tattoos within reason but nothing graphic. Common sense and good judgment is the rule of thumb.
Jamie Mason contributed to this report.
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