This month wraps up an amazing opportunity for the convenience industry to come together during a very tumultuous year. The NACS Crack the Code Experience featured more than 50 content-rich education sessions loaded with insights and new ideas, more than 5,000 products displayed in hundreds of virtual showrooms, and numerous Cool New Products ready to adorn store shelves.

Educational opportunities offered during the five weeks of the experience provided tools for both retailers and suppliers to grow personally and professionally. From retailer-led education sessions on many different operational topics, to small-group meet-ups with industry leaders such as Sheetz CEO Travis Sheetz, to spotlight sessions with dynamic storytellers, to live small operator training, there were countless opportunities to learn and connect.

Clearly, Crack the Code attendees now have an edge: They will emerge from the pandemic ready to gain customers and generate revenue after what they learned during the past several weeks.

For those of you who were part of the experience, know that you can continue to revisit Crack the Code to watch any education sessions on-demand, on your time, until the year ends. And for those of you who missed joining us this year, we can share some of the highlights with you.

Gas Stations Eye an EV Future

Electric vehicle fast charging: “Why now? Why not now?” That point was made by Brad Petersen, director of retail fuels at Kum & Go, a retail chain with more than 500 stores in 11 Midwestern states. “Yes, the new EV sales are not drastic in numbers—less that 2% of the vehicle fleet—but we know it’s coming, and we want to be prepared for it and offer fuel to all of our customers, whether that be gas or charging.” Petersen was speaking at the session: “How to Succeed in the EV Market.”

The panel also featured representatives from Future Fuel Strategies, National Car Charging LLC, Smart Electric Power Alliance and EVgo, in addition to Kum & Go.

The session covered three basic EV charging options:

• The first involves an electric vehicle manufacturer such as Tesla establishing a charging network to support vehicle sales.
• The second involves an independent third party, such as EVgo, that will essentially partner with a retailer through a rental agreement (or with a municipality or commercial fleet) to support its charging network.
• The third model involves retailers working with a company like National Car Charging to set up and operate their own charging infrastructure. Supporting a third-party network is painless to the retailer but comes with risks.

The charging technology of choice, at least in retail applications, is DC fast charging, which dramatically reduces the amount of time required to give a vehicle a decent charge and get back on the road. The ideal site focuses on having a charging experience as close to liquid fuels as possible, while also providing opportunities for the customer to take advantage of store profit centers.

The panel offered a range of “dos and don’ts” around working with utilities, and made it clear that each utility will likely have a slightly different relationship than the next.

EV retrofits and new construction were discussed, and a final piece of advice given: Even retailers that are not ready to pull the trigger immediately should be making considerations with new site construction so that adding EV charging will be relatively painless when the decision to proceed is made.

NACS and Conexxus have partnered to create a turnkey, digital program that can validate a shopper’s age via his or her mobile device.

Digital Age ID Program

Paper is out and digital is in, according to Gray Taylor, executive director, Conexxus, who presented “Age Verification in the Digital Age.” Today, when shoppers display a paper ID to purchase age-restricted merchandise, they reveal their age—plus 32 additional personal facts—to the store clerk. “We need to reimagine identity and return privacy back to the consumer,” Taylor said. “And we’re going to start seeing that in the next 10 years.”

NACS and Conexxus have partnered to create a turnkey, digital program that can validate a shopper’s age via his or her mobile device, while protecting personal information, providing a frictionless experience and taking the burden of certification off the cashier.

The program will utilize the store POS to calculate age and validate IDs, while integrating with the retailer’s loyalty program. It also can collect information about an individual’s purchases, which could help authorities curtail “social selling”—the act of an adult purchasing numerous age-restricted products and then reselling them to teens. Best of all, the program will be free of charge.

The program will be implemented in three phases. Now through 2021, baseline capabilities will be available to participating retailers, including new processes for scanning a driver’s license to verify the customer’s age. The second phase, scheduled for later in 2021, will involve launching a consumer “ID Container” application for smartphones to replace the driver’s license scan. Phase three will add retailer- and supplier-desired capabilities, including loyalty programs and 1:1 couponing, plus convenient features for consumers, such as mobile payments tied to an “ID Wallet.”

“What we’re trying to do here is give the consumer the ability to maintain their own identity,” Taylor said. “And we’re trying to prove to government that we—private businesses—are ready for them to do the right thing with digital identification, and we will work with them and provide the ability for the consumer to use that digital identification.”

Beverages Give Retailers an Edge

A retailer with a robust beverage program can lead the pack when it comes to repeat customers and sales. “Eighty percent of consumers already have or plan to return to purchase dispensed coffee and soft drinks,” said Scott Reed, communication and data specialist at Bunn-O-Matic Corporation, during the “Beverages for the Win” session.

It’s no news that consumers have become more health conscious, and that includes what they drink. “More than 50% of consumers said they would visit a convenience store more often if there were more healthy food and drink options available,” Reed said.

Reed recommended that retailers consider how they can make their beverage program healthier. “C-store consumers who said they purchased a hot dispensed beverage based on health reasons jumped 5% from Q2 2019 to Q2 2020,” he pointed out. While younger consumers are the ones driving much of the push toward more healthy options, older consumers enjoy healthier beverages, too.

Top healthy beverages include coffee drinks, juice/smoothies, frozen dispensed beverages (particularly noncarbonated offerings) and tea. Reed also discussed how frozen dispensed beverages, particularly noncarbonated, have picked up. “People reverted back to old favorites [in the beginning of the pandemic],” he said. “Now we think consumers see noncarbonated [frozen dispensed] as [healthier],” and that’s been driving sales.

Tapping Into Food Trends

In “Feeding the New Consumer: Health, Food Trends, Pandemics and More!,” presenter Jack Li, haiku master at Datassential, shared data and trends about what consumers want in a foodservice concept. “The No. 1 message is meeting the consumer perception of safety,” he said. “Convenience stores are pretty high up on the list as one of the safest restaurants.”

Healthy continues to be important to consumers, but the definition of what healthy eating means has changed. “Functional foods, or positive nutrition, are foods and beverages that actually do something for you,” Li said. “We think this market will be huge in the coming years.”

Some functional foods that have been showing up on restaurant menus lately include chia seeds, bee pollen, turmeric and spirulina. “The key is that ‘fads’ are in fact now ‘trends,’” he said. “Everything moves faster, and we cannot ignore the more short-term stuff, as those are often part of the broader trend itself. It’s ever more important to shorten the innovation cycle and bring things to market more quickly.”

The bottom line for retailers is that food trends have become more fragmented. “It used to be there was an answer to the question of what’s the big food trend,” Li said. “But there’s no clear answer today because of the many smaller trends growing super-fast. The better question is what are all the trends happening, and which ones make sense for me to explore in my store?”

Daypart Dilemma

In “Understanding Dayparts and Optimizing Each Hour of the Day,” presenter Alex Williams, COO of Hammer Williams company/Jiffy Trip, talked with Roy Strasburger, president of StrasGlobal, about how his stores use foodservice, among other things, to differentiate from the competition.

Jiffy Trip has its own proprietary foodservice concept called JT’s, which offers self-serve and made-to-order options. For example, new Jiffy Trip stores have roller grills with JT’s branding and graphics. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the roller grills are manned by crew members instead of allowing customers to serve themselves.

JT’s also serves extra-large pizzas, serviced from hot cases at checkout. “We built our checkout counters around being a food destination,” Williams said. “We put a pastry and donut case at checkout in the mornings and have our hot food cases there as well.” The chain has a well-stocked grab-and-go section—a great way for retailers to get started in foodservice.

Beyond foodservice, Jiffy Trip shared several ideas to boost sales and garner repeat customers. “We started using promo endcaps in each store with quarterly promotions,” Williams said. “But then we realized three months was too long—customers wanted fresh, new items.” Now Jiffy Trip rotates those items every two to four weeks. The chain also brought in seasonal apparel, which has brought great margins.

Williams discussed an H2O cave for case water, two liters, 12-packs and other waters and non-alcoholic beverages. “We tried to take a little bit away from grocery or dollar stores and added more variety than most convenience stores in the water category,” he said. Jiffy Trip also expanded its alcohol footprint into larger beer and wine sections. The beer caves have saved on labor because staff doesn’t have to restock as often. Plus, customers enjoy having a wide variety of beer cold, giving Jiffy Trip a decided advantage over the competition.

Explore all the session topics covered at this year’s Crack the Code Experience at www.convenience.org/crackthecode