Every element of the National Convenience Store Advisory Group’s Fall Conference was designed to help retailers turn customers into fanatics about their brands. How do you motivate your stores (and staff) to peak performance? How do youget to the next level of sales and profitability? The answer may lie in developinga closer connection to your [...]
Open Pantry Food Marts of Wisconsin continues to pour more of itself into the gourmet coffee business. Recently, the chain put a dynamic new face on its stores by focusing on its Willow Creek Coffee offer . While the new store design has been implemented at only seven of the chain
Roughly 610,000 consumers are using Paycheck Secure (www.paychecksecure.com ), BioPay’s biometric payroll check cashing system, at more than 400 retail locations throughout California. To date, Golden State retailers have cashed more than 5.8 million checks, totaling $2.7 billion, through Paycheck Secure since its launch in 2001. An additional 57,000 individuals in Arizona, Utah and Nevada [...]
Rutter
Retailers selling coffee by the cup might be missing the boat. Even though many convenience retailers are completely capable of selling coffee in to-go carafes or “box” packages, they willingly forfeit those sales to specialty coffee retailers, according to Gary Allanson, president and CEO of International Dispensing Corp. (www.idcdispensing.com). “One of the trends we’ve been [...]
Thorntons Inc. (Louisville, KY), which operates more than 150 stores in fivestates, has rolled out ShrinkTrax from loss-prevention solutions provider TraxRetail Solutions (www.trax-usa.com) following a successful pilot. ShrinkTraxis a proactive loss prevention solution guaranteed to prevent cashier and vendor-relatedshrink before it happens. Intelligent data mining technology analyzes data pointsthroughout the store, arming store managers with [...]
Board members of North Carolina
Deploy Solutions (www.deploy.com ) has developeda recruiting and talent management solution configured specifically for theconvenience store industry called C-Store Advantage. The foundation of the programdirects all applicants to a kiosk and/or Web solution when applying for an availableposition, which helps achieve consistency and compliance in the applicationprocess. Then, using assessments for traits such as dependability [...]
In an effort to better serve the convenience store market, Giorgio Foods Inc. (www.giorgio foods.com) has introduced a new pizza program that uses premium ingredients to provide pizzeria-quality pizza with minimal preparation required from store employees. Two styles of pizza are available: pre-baked or traditional. Depending on the style and cooking technique, fresh pizza can [...]
Retailers stir up new business by targeting “new movers.” Since opening Smith’s Service Center (Lancaster, PA) in 1979, John Smith hadtried advertising in the Yellow Pages and utilizing the Welcome Wagon serviceto ferret out new customers, but he’d experienced limited, immeasurable results. “There were seven similar businesses to mine in the Welcome Wagon package,” says [...]
Meijer Stores Inc. (Grand Rapids, MI) is the first supercenter chain to adda contactless card payment option at its gas pumps. The chain’s 150 stores thatsell gas will have more than 1,850 fueling positions upgraded with a Gilbarco(www.gilbarco.com) contactless card system. Theintegrated system is currently the only product certified by all three majorcard companies for [...]
When eyeballing the top line, retailers won’t confuse maps with tobacco or packaged beverages anytime soon. But this segment deserves the respect it might not be getting. Americans continue to amass near large citiesbut they also have begun to poolin many smaller, traditionally rural towns. Take Atlanta and Asheville, NC,for example. Since 2000, the 10-county [...]
In-store health clinics are spreading like the common cold to a rising number of major drugstore and hypermarket chains, including Wal-Mart Stores Inc., CVS Corp. and Rite Aid Corp., according to a Wall Street Journal report. These clinics offer routine medical services such as strep-throat tests, sports physicals and flu shots, charging $25 to $60 [...]
Chevron Corp. (San Ramon, CA) has opened 43 ExtraMile Convenience Stores in the Seattle market. The stores feature a fresh look, healthier snacks and premium coffee, as well as easy access to chilled waters, energy drinks and more appetizing to-go food options. The ExtraMile stores opened throughout the city this summer to develop a potential [...]
By the end of the year, Redbox intends to have more than 1,000 of its DVD-dispensing kiosks in the U.S., most of them in McDonald