Tobacco

For C-Stores, Flavor Bans Force Backbar Pivots

At the NACS Show, retailers unpack their experience of flavor bans
NACS Show
Photography by CSP Staff

Convenience stores are continuing to adopt their back bar in the wake of flavor bans, but what they are not adjusting is their commitment to prohibit underage sales.

“When it comes to the backbar selection, convenience stores have zero incentive to sell these products to those that are not of age,” said Lonnie McQuirter, director of operations at 36 Lyn Refuel Station in Minneapolis, in the talk Backbar Pivots Amidst Flavor Prohibitions at the NACS Show in Las Vegas.

McQuirter was joined on stage by Robert Wade, category and supply chain manager for ExtraMile Convenience Stores LLC, Pleasanton, California, and moderator Melissa Vonder Haar, marketing director of iSee Store Innovations, St. Louis, to discuss the effects flavor bans have had on their stores.

Vonder Haar began the session by clarifying that she believes the flavor bans are not bans but rather something else.

“I actually want to reframe this, it’s not bans it’s prohibition and it didn’t work with alcohol, it’s not working with cannabis and it’s definitely not going to work with products that have been legal in this country for hundreds of years,” she said.

Vonder Haar said that flavor bans include more than 380 local flavor bans and more than 190 local menthol bans. “Two states now have menthol prohibitions,” she said.

The education session zeroed in on two bans: California’s statewide flavor ban of all flavor tobacco products in December of 2022 and Minneapolis’ citywide flavor bans in 2017.

“That was a really big hit to all retailers in California because flavor at the time constituted about 40% of our total tobacco sales,” Wade said.

Adding to the complexity in California is trying to navigate the various restrictions and regulations on the cities and counties level, Wade said.

“As a tobacco retailer in California you are constantly reading any state, city, local ordinance that goes on,” Wade said.

Wade also discussed the latest enforcement of flavored tobacco laws in California with the signing of Assembly Bill 3218 which will further bolster enforcement efforts of the state’s ban on all flavored tobacco sales in the state.

“This bill removes any chilling, cooling, or numbing sensation or characteristics from it as well,” Wade said. “Just because you do get a flavor ban doesn’t mean that is the end of the story.”

Wade said a city or county will enact or take that banning even further to penalize stores.

Turning to the Midwest, when it comes to Minneapolis’ flavor ban McQuirter told the audience that what the council members failed to recognize is that many people who operate convenience stores are trying to make a living for their household and their families legitimately and responsibly.

“These are not the stores that are going to be open today and gone the next week or looking to sell to underage customers,” McQuirter said. “Without a thriving retail community, you don’t have a thriving community.”

Customer habits were also affected, McQuirter said.

“There is a healthy customer base of mine that is thoroughly upset that they can no longer buy their Grizzly Wintergreen,” he said. 

Another headwind with flavor bans is that c-store customers have bled into other retail channels and c-store operators need to remember to focus on their customer and make sure they are not just a tobacco retailer for them, Wade said.

“The tobacco customer isn’t just a tobacco customer,” Wade told the audience of convenience-store operators and managers, “they engage in other categories as well.”

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