C-Store Goulash

Meaty tidbits from around the Retail Petroleum Industry

After a month of original exclusive blog content (check out our past posts if you missed them), we thought we’d catch our breath and take this opportunity to share some of the more interesting items we’ve stumbled across during our web-based journeys. We guess we could call this entry a digest, but, you know…food. Food good. So we’re calling it a goulash. Let’s not waste another moment.

C-Stores in the Media

The Disney Channel’s Gravity Falls is one of those cartoons an adult can watch without losing a few IQ points. In fact, we’d probably follow it even if we didn’t have grandchildren, so it was with much interest that we viewed a recent episode that took place in a haunted C-store. It’s called The Inconveniencing. Try to find a rerun on the Disney Channel or Disney XD sometime, with or without your kids. It’s interesting to see their take on a C-store and what might haunt one.

If you’re looking for something a little more adult, the History Channel’s Modern Marvels TV series features an episode solely devoted to the convenience store. You can view it here. Definitely worth watching and always good to see the industry getting the positive recognition it deserves.

Food, Food, and More Food!

If there’s one thing we’ve found out in the little over a year we’ve been publishing this blog is that our readers always respond enthusiastically to articles about food, especially when there’s a C-store tie-in. Here are a few food-related items that have caught our interest over the last few weeks:

• The general public still seems surprised by the high quality, healthy food you can get at a C-store, but they’re learning, as evidenced by the food site Cooking Light which recently published a gallery of healthy convenience store snacks. Another food site, epicurious, did the same for what it considered, “The 10 Healthiest Foods You Can Find at the Gas Station”.
• Convenience Store News referenced this interesting article by the Hartman Group on the difference between food fads and meaningful shifts in food culture, a differentiation important for any C-store operator to grasp.
• And speaking of trends, even though this illustrated article from the Washington Post about the changing habits of food shoppers goes beyond the scope of our industry, it contains some basic facts that are pertinent to every C-store owner.

The Weird and the Wonderful

Of course, no digest, er, goulash, of C-store items would be complete without a few oddities, so let’s get to it:

• We’ve celebrated the wonderful Buc-ee’s beaver before, but this blog post from a music business consultant has a nice close up of the mascot in all its bronzed glory.
• Weird stories about Japanese C-store offerings have become somewhat of a staple of this blog, but this week we thought we’d change it up with this article on what you can find at Don Quijote Hawaii, a C-store in our 50th state.
• Okay we lied. We couldn’t leave out Japan. A fan-favorite comic artist has created “Stands”—beings that embody protective supernatural powers—to represent the major C-store chains of that country. Very cool.
• We’ll finish up with a historical item: an article from the August 1958 issue of Popular Science on the strange buying habits of gas station consumers. Are they any stranger than today? You make the call.

Well, that’s it for this week. With Halloween looming large over us like a bloated, blood orange Harvest Moon, I’m sure you can guess the theme of next week’s post. Until then, stay spooky!