CBX, a strategic branding and retail design consultancy, has completed a new prototype design for Toot’n Totum, a 62-unit privately held convenience store/gasoline retailer based in Amarillo, Texas. The fast-track design, which debuted November 2010 in Amarillo, is housed in a newly built facility. CBX completed a new identity for the store and Toot’n Totum’s [...]
San Diego State University At a Glance San Diego State University (SDSU), founded in 1897, is the fifth-largest university in California with a student body of approximately 38,000 full- and part-time students. Its retail arm, Aztec Shops Ltd., was founded in 1932 as a not-for-profit corporation that functions primarily as an auxiliary of the university. [...]
Nice guys do finish first. Nice N Grocery Shoppes Inc., the Canastota, N.Y. operator of 82 convenience stores, was named Convenience Store Decisions’ 2009 Convenience Store Chain of the Year. Nice N Easy will be honored at an invitation-only gala at the Wynn Las Vegas during the NACS Show on Oct. 21. “The last line [...]
It’s been a challenging year for convenience store operators, marked by wild fuel price fluctuations and exorbitant credit card fees. Despite the adversity, Chevron stood apart as one of the premier industry leaders. By advancing its Image Refresh program, growing the Texaco brand and introducing a no-fee credit card for its branded marketers, it was [...]
Shame it isn’t as simple as signing on the dotted line. "You’d think," said Lynn Mitchell, one of six owners at the new RediGo Food Mart chain in Lake County, Ohio, "that we could sit down, have a few beers and come up with a name." But then you’d be thinking like someone who never [...]
The U.S. Marine Corps’ Parris Island facility is roughly a five-hour drive southeast from Bountyland Quick Stop’s Westminster, S.C., headquarters. That said, new suppliers en route to one of Bountyland’s 11 stores might want to drop by the Marine boot camp and let a drill instructor toss them around for a bit. It’ll spare [...]
A bid from PetroSun Fuel of Seattle bested a slew of bids from other convenience store and petroleum operators who last month were hoping to snatch up the 600 remaining ConocoPhillips c-store and retail gas sites on the West Coast. PetroSun’s newly created affiliate, Pacific Convenience & Fuel LLC, acquired the sites and joins the [...]
There was a time not long ago in this industry when bigger was always thought to be better. Fortunately, the folks at Rutter’s Farm Stores knew better. With 52 stores in five Pennsylvania counties, Rutter’s focus has never been on reckless expansion simply for the sake of having a larger store count. Rather, its has [...]
The Discovery Trifecta Location: Coolidge, Ariz. Opening: September 2008 Key Features: 2,400-square-foot c-store on one acre; 1,400 square feet for Little Caesars pizza; four pumps offering unbranded standard fuels and E85; a sizable coffee cafe; beer cave and 20-head soda fountain top it off. Details: Positioned within a town of 9,000 residents, the store will [...]
WILSON FARMS TIMELINE * 1960: Tops Markets is co-founded by Savino Nanula and Armand Castellani. 1969: Tops Markets opens the first Wilson Farms Neighborhood Food store in Tonawanda, N.Y., naming the store after a company-owned farm in Wilson, N.Y. 1978: Wilson Farms expands in N.Y. to Rochester and later to Syracuse. 1980s: Tops Markets is [...]
Rick Pajak breathed new life into Wilson Farms’ hot and cold dispensed category by treating condiments less as an afterthought and more as a category of its own. “We look at the condiment section as one of the longest stops in the store,” he said. “Why not give them the right space and right opportunity [...]
Scott Zaremba grew up in the fuel business. As president and CEO of Zarco 66, the petroleum company his father founded in 1968, Zaremba is battle-tested in the trenches and has the scars to prove it. But what motivates this savvy industry veteran every day is the opportunity to push the boundaries of creativity and [...]
There’s a profitable parable tucked somewhere inside the hodge-podge of mix-and-match cereal containers laid out on a table in the University of Rhode Island’s Corner Store. Something deeply religious, or at least something that screams "diversity" and "open-mindedness." For every Tony the Tiger, there’s a Lucky Charms leprechaun. For every Cookie Crisp, there’s a Cinnamon [...]
Try as they might, the triumvirate at Nine West Marketplace in Goldsby, Okla., just couldn’t get the beer drinkers in their small Oklahoma town to help themselves to the brews in the beer cave. "We tried everything under the sun to get them to go in there," said Carri Moore-Colwell, one of three owners at [...]
Folks in Walla Walla, Wash., say their town is so nice, you have to say it twice. Bill and Loretta Singer (pictured on front) may be inclined to say it three or four times, seeing as the dynamics in this small town 13 miles north of the Oregon border have grown their relatively young convenience [...]