Mission accomplished. When John MacDougall challenged his team at Nice N Easy Grocery Shoppes to come up with a company mission statement, he left pretty simple instructions. “Keep it short, keep it focused and let’s be true to ourselves,” he said. The result was a concise proclamation of the chain’s commitment to the customers it [...]
The bar has been raised on sandwiches—indeed, on all freshly made to-go dishes—as consumers’ expectations continue to rise and new competitors from outside the c-store universe appear on the horizon. Convenience stores are finding themselves more and more in conflict with players from the fast-food and grocery stores seeking the same “fare” share. With that [...]
Some version of pizza has been around ever since a working man in Ancient Greece discovered that a flat round bread (plankuntos) embellished with assorted toppings made a hearty, thrifty and convenient dining experience. Little did that anonymous cook suspect that his humble meal would one day launch a major industry. According to Blumenfeld and [...]
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. [...]
C-store operators burning the midnight oil thinking of ways to increase their business may have inadvertently stumbled upon their answer. While late night has grown into an identifiable daypart on its own, too many retailers either haven’t yet recognized it as such or simply don’t have the traffic to warrant promoting it. But for those [...]
Savvy c-store operators know that everything in a store should be contributing to sales, including displays and fixtures. More retailers are coming to realize that display and fixture design can, if done right, provide the flexibility needed to highlight food offerings as well as dry goods products and keep the sales space fresh, interesting and [...]
Convenience store operators in search of faster cooking times and longer holding times are finding foodservice equipment that can help. But which pieces, at what price points, with what sort of ROIs and in what sort of configuration remain questions that must be weighed and answered. For an industry whose core competency isn’t food, and [...]
Fast Facts About Pizza • Americans eat approximately 100 acres of pizza each day, or about 350 slices per second. • Pizza is a $30 billion per year industry. There are approximately 69,000 pizzerias in the U.S. Approximately three billion pizzas are sold in the U.S. each year. (Source: Blumenfeld and Associates) • Pizzerias represent [...]