Central Ohio Energy (Mansfield, OH) opened its commissary about threeyears ago. Company executives saw a need for a fresh and consistent productand couldn't pinpoint a vendor that could provide the quality it needed andbe flexible about returns. The Ohio chain operates nine locations: eight In-n-Out Marts and one Easy TripStore. The Easy Trip, which is [...]
When a particular category say, foodserviceaccounts for almost 12% of the industry’s total inside sales (which it did last year, per the National Association of Convenience Stores’ State of the Industry report), retailers will work to control it as much as possible. In fact, retailers have spent millions of dollars and man-hours to add cost [...]
Running a convenience store business comes with its share of benefits.For Brian Bach, co-owner of More of Everything, the perks include a companycar…or van, to be more precise. The van features the logo and addresses of More of Everything's two locations,as well as logos of key vendors who helped Bach and business partner Cory Churchillpay [...]
Oregon retailer More of Everything caters to captive audiences in area shopping malls. It also attracts droves of race fans with exclusive and collectible items. Brian C. Bach’s passion for all things NASCAR came gift-wrapped with his DNA. His father, a photographer, freelanced for the Los Angeles Times and covered NASCAR and Indy races at [...]
Customers pulling in to one of Jerry Dorminey's NASCAR-themed convenience storesor travel centers are immediately drawn to the Nextel Cup car on display (above).Thanks to his racing connections (he owned his own race team in the 1960s and'70s), he's able to put an actual racecar on each property, like a shiny metalcalling card beckoning the [...]
Restrooms aren’t just another convenience for customers, especially as foodservice When VERC Enterprises (Duxbury, MA) first started offering restrooms, all the facilities had exterior entrances. It wasn’t the most convenient set-up, but the 20-store chain felt they would work just fineuntil a customer brought something unusual to the attention of the manager of one of [...]
Everything in the restroom is a cost center
They say the minute a robot can do a job is the minute a person is no longer required to do that job. Employees might not want to hear that unless it is to perform an unpleasant task like cleaning the restroom. iRobot (www.irobot.com) partnered with The Clorox Co. to develop the Scooba Robotic Floor [...]
A commitment to compliance and community powers Daily’s in its quest to be Rick Hamilton had seen just about everything by the time he decided to enter the convenience retailing business. After returning home from a tour of duty in Operation Desert Storm in the early1990s, he settled in Nashville and went to work as [...]
To make its uniforms more appealing to employees, QSR king McDonald's is preparingto invest $80 million in new duds that could put employees on People magazine'sBest-Dressed List. A report in Advertising Age says the chain has had serious discussionswith design moguls Russell Simmons, P. Diddy and Tommy Hilfiger, among others,to develop uniforms that riff on [...]
Pizza delivery didn’t work out as expected for this small Carolina chain. Mike and Brad Woodie were probably the type of kids who weren’t afraidto fall off their bicycles. The twopresident and vice president, respectively,of Woodie’s (Charlotte, NC)looked at the neighborhood around their newestWoodie’s store in uptown Charlotte and saw loads of high-rise apartments, condosand [...]
Rick Klyczek is what you'd call a NOCO "lifer." He started working for New York's NOCO Energy Corp. right out of school as an assistant manager in the company's NOCO Express retail division. He quickly moved up through the ranks to become store manager and then district manager before moving into various executive-level positions at [...]
Lawsuits and fraud investigations targeting the soon-to-be embattled insurance industry have retailers reconsidering the coverage they pay for and from whom they buy it. Until it became the subject of billion-dollar fraud investigations,the mere mention of “insurance” would cause many retailers’ eyes to glaze overwith disinterest. But today, with criminal charges pending and millions of [...]
Irving Oil developed the ’Irving Promise’ as a guide to reinforce the importance of doing whatever it takes to simplify the lives of its customers throughout its network, including its newly reimaged Bluecanoe stores (see Making Over Mainway, p. 18). Irving Oil developed the “Irving Promise” as a guide to reinforce theimportance of doing whatever [...]
Irving Oil’s Mainway stores make way for BLUECANOE, an uncommon concept driven by best-in-class service, an intense focus on fresh foods and a unique sense of humor. People don’t pay much attention to washroom signs. But at IrvingOil’s new Bluecanoe stores, the signs are tough to ignore. Tim Guen, senior brand manager for the Portsmouth, [...]