How has the industry changed over the past 30 years?
Let me give one example: When I started in this industry, Wawa did not sell gas. Now they sell massive amounts—yet I can also see a time when Wawa will no longer sell gas and will focus on EV charging or other fuels.
In the early 1990s, convenience stores were primarily small, independently owned businesses. NACS member leaders ran their businesses and were highly entrepreneurial. They also focused on relationships, whether in communities or in the industry. Those relationships fused our organization together, and that personal connection continues to hold tremendous value in how we view NACS and the industry today.
What changed? With success, those smaller operators got larger, and their sophistication helped reimagine convenience. Sheetz wanted to become the company that put Sheetz as we knew it out of business. That’s a radical concept that pushed innovation around how it interacted with customers, focusing on customization and made-to-order foodservice. Sheetz also put a focus behind the scenes, adopting computerized inventory systems, improving efficiency and self-distribution to ensure popular items were always in stock.
Outside our channel, indirect competitors started to become direct competitors. Hypermarkets set their sights on our gas business. Supermarkets and big-box retailers put more of a focus on convenience in their stores, and even launched their own convenience store concepts. Some of our new competitors succeeded. Many did not. The problem was they were replicating what they saw as the convenience model, but our industry was reinventing itself yet again, with a focus on enhancing the overall customer experience, providing clean and well-lit environments, introducing loyalty programs and offering freshly prepared food options. And a big focus on nice, clean restrooms—no more restroom keys for customers attached to 2x4s.
The smartphone also revolutionized our industry, and that doesn’t mean that it was all for the better. When I started at NACS, a top traffic driver to c-stores was drivers getting lost and asking for directions—or buying maps. Camera film was a big seller, and so were greeting cards. The smartphone wiped out all of that in about a decade, and the Internet took a big bite out of magazine and newspaper sales. But that spurred another reinvention. Many stores introduced mobile apps that allowed customers to locate nearby stores, browse promotions and make mobile payments. This digital transformation made transactions more seamless and convenient for consumers.
The past decade we’ve seen our industry pivot around big, emerging trends, especially healthy choices. In the early 1990s, you never saw fresh fruits, vegetables, salads or organic snacks in stores. Today, customers increasingly expect them. Similar innovation happened with beverages—flavored water, functional beverages, kombucha, you name it.
On the surface, over the past 30 years everything’s changed. But really nothing has changed. Our industry remains highly entrepreneurial. We focus on our ever-changing customers’ needs, and our success is tied to our willingness to share great ideas with each other and to collaborate with our supplier partners. But if I were to boil the past 30 years down to one word, which will probably define our next 30 years as well, it’s the word “fun.” When you genuinely like what you do and who you work with and believe in what we can all achieve together, a lot of great things can happen in what feels like a blink of an eye.