Food Retailing Options Transform the Industry

The c-store has become the consumer’s departure point for a multitude of dine-in choices.

The blending of retail food channels, once an exception, is now a c-store industry feature. Having an onsite meal in an attractive environment adds a little extra to the consumer experience. If done right, “dine in” encourages return trips.

It’s a global trend. Intriguing mashups of food retail concepts—Quick Serve, Fast Casual, high end Foodservice—are as varied as the entrepreneurs that come up with them. Whether store-branded, or in partnership with a third party, food retail concepts have broadened the industry’s scope—and heightened the expectations of the consumer.

SSCS customer, Onvo, a recently re-branded, growing mid-size chain headquartered in Scranton, Pennsylvania, serves as a good example to start with. Across almost 40 sites you’ll find different concepts for dine-in, including Quick Serve (Burger King) and Fast Casual (IHOP). The concept’s appeal comes, in large part, from the eating area: it ties everything together in an attractive communal space.

Over in Dromiskin, Ireland, on the main road to Dublin from Northern Ireland, you’ll also find a Burger King at a c-store, in this case, an Applegreen site, but the comparison stops there.

Overwhelmed as it is by the “wingspan” of its forecourt, the above picture doesn’t do justice to the futuristic building sitting just behind it. Inside you’ll find an expansive food court, flooded with natural light. Unique (to the U.S., at least) pockets of food retail surround the perimeter of this dining space: the U.K.’s Chopstix noodle bar, Braeburn Coffee and its chromium island of “intelligent” coffee machines, and the notable confections—unique donuts, anyone?—that you can get from The Bakewell, Applegate’s branded bakery.

Back in the U.S., Cumberland Farms, a Westborough, Massachusetts chain, is boosting its dine-in offerings by partnering with Wonder, a food hall concept that has worked successfully with Wal-Mart, and has 20 or so standalone stores, too. Wonder is kind of a Foodervice hub within a Cumberland Farms’ site, where the third-party’s own brands are offered next to those of the store—pizzas, burgers made in store, freshly assembled Mexican food—there are a lot of other options, too.

For our final stop, we’re travelling across the Atlantic Ocean to South Korea, which some say may be displacing Japan as a leader in Asian c-store innovation. Comfortable, attractive dine-in spaces again form the center of appeal, but to an even greater extent. In urban areas, at-night dining out on the town often translates to at-night dining out at the c-store, adult beverages included. Will the neighborhood bar be the next channel that the c-store industry incorporates? We know of one Lawson that’s already done it.

Every day, leading operators reap the success that comes from mixing, matching, and blending food channels. If it looks like a handful to manage, it would be, if it wasn’t for the technological tools that can pull information from a variety of origination points and tie it all together for you.

No matter how many retail moving parts an operation has, they all generate sales data that good c-store software, like our Computerized Daily Book, can translate and organize into timely, meaningful, and clear-to-follow information placed on the desktop or device. Give us a call at (800) 927-7277 and we can tell you a little more about the technology that can keep your retail food options—all of them—under control and making money.