Road Trip Stop: What’s New At Your Convenience Store

Road trips require convenience store stops. Whether for gasoline, a cold beverage, occasional hot coffee, a quick snack or the required bathroom break, the promise inherent in the category description is the reason for the choice.

Over the past few years, convenience store chains have invested heavily in driving more traffic to make up for declining tobacco, alcohol and gasoline sales. That’s resulted in a wider range of snack choices, improved cold and hot food options, more beverage brands that you can count in a short visit, and (generally) cleaner restrooms located inside the store to encourage in-store visits coupled with the inevitable impulse buying.

So when my real-job duties required three days at the 2017 National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) trade show in Chicago, I also did a little reconnaissance and note-taking about the latest and greatest road trip offerings making their way to your favorite interstate C-Store stop.

Here are a few of my finds:

• The More Things Change. The C-store is “concept-convergence” on steroids. I can remember when 7-11 described the operating hours of your basic C-store, featuring a short list of frequently-needed critical consumables. While it may not be possible to jam more operating hours into a 24-hour cycle, C-stores are offsetting that reality by cramming every type of consumable merchandise into growing spaces. Which may beg the question: Is this a c-store, retail store, supermarket, or restaurant? The simple answer is, “YES!” Maybe I should file the trademark for Convenient-super-retail-theatre-raunt stores.(TM)

  

• The More They Remain the Same. Don’t fret because your c-store did not forget you really love salty snacks, cold beer, (new!) tobacco or tobacco-less products, beef (or venison or wild boar) jerky, energy drinks, bottled water, the occasional roller-dog, 30+ basic flavors of ice-cold dispensed beverages and earning your loyalty points all in a NASCAR-fast pit stop of three-minutes or less. Mission accomplished!
• Lights. Cameras. Technology. I found my friend, former colleague, chef extraordinaire and food innovator Joe Knauss at NACS, in booth 7567. He was expertly demonstrating nearly all the trends in the c-store world: healthy, craveable, customized, frozen coffee or fruit beverages dispensed from a highly-branded, touch-screen-driven, internet-of-things-managed, truly-amazing self-operated machine that produced a drink that was every bit as good as the one you ordered from your favorite purple-haired barista without the quirky attitude and high price. That’s just one example of the incredible array of IoT deployment in the buildings, systems, equipment, fixtures and employees that comprise today’s c-store, controlling everything from the temperature of your fresh food to the TV-onboard fuel pumps and including the display-embedded touchscreen that engages, entertains and sells you the latest, coolest, must-have product. (Full disclosure:  in a former life, I had some influence and input into the design of that drink machine, so my opinion may be influenced by my pride.)

  

• Marketing Rules. At the show and in-store, you can expect even more bombardment of every one of your senses, desires, weaknesses and emotions by the newest marketing campaign. You can still find blinking LED lights, talking shelves and cardboard likenesses of your favorite MMA, NBA, NFL and NASCAR stars. Yes, wandering hot dog wieners, a scary 7-foot-tall big foot selling jerky, Budweiser Clydesdales and every type of costumed character abound. But they pale in comparison to the creativity, characters, equipment and money behind an endless array of energy drinks. I’ll admit to being 61 and easily confused, but I confess to walking past one exhibit at least 20 times that featured young, in-shape, spandex-attired models with no apparent body fat, spinning-style exercise bikes, a 20-foot-tall video screen playing non-stop exercise scenes and a guest appearance by CeeLo Green. I’m an avid bicyclist who has chalked up more than 2,000 miles YTD, so my attention may have been diverted to the styling and features of the bikes. That said, other than the generic category of energy drink, I still have no clue what brand, type or flavor of energy drink they were selling. But I’m determined to find out – even if I am forced to return another 20 times! Watch for internet, TV and store-based version of those marketing campaigns.

That’s my Day One wrap up, compiled and noted while also diligently working my assigned exhibit (Booth 6858, offering store controls and monitoring systems made easy, but without any sports stars, internet celebrities, pop icons or NASCAR drivers. We do have fidget spinners!) Come by and see me Thursday and Friday, share your best stories, and let me know what you found most interesting.

The End, sponsored by Budweiser.