It’s hard to imagine a convenience store without rows of coolers stocked with packaged beverages like energy drinks, ready-to-drink coffee and carbonated soft drinks. Packaged beverages accounted for an impressive 17.20% of total in-store sales in 2022—translating to $37,496 in sales per store, per month.

Traffic to the beverage cooler stays consistent throughout the day as commuting customers pick up their morning energy burst, travelers search for something cold to quench their thirst and evening commuters purchase a beverage to go with their evening meal.

The constant demand for packaged beverages makes the category unique. Most convenience store merchandise categories have some hot spots throughout the day (for example, beer tends to pick up more sales on Friday afternoons), but heatmap sales data from PDI Insights Cloud showed almost round-the-clock demand for packaged beverages.

The hours of 6:00 a.m.-8:00 a.m. picked up 18.98% of sales, suggesting that consumers opted for a packaged beverage as a part of their morning routine. The lunch daypart hours between 12:00 p.m. and 2 p.m. were not far behind, snagging 17.76% of daily sales.

Packaged beverages have been a top performing category in terms of sales and gross profit growth over the last 10 years and can be counted as one of the most versatile.