It has been a busy few months here at NACS Research. The State of the Industry Summit in April kicked off what is just the beginning of a packed year ahead.

The State of the Industry Report® of 2023 Data will hit shelves this month. We’re gearing up for another successful summer of NACS Convenience Voices survey work—last year we collected almost 10,000 responses, and our goal is to surpass that number this year. My colleague Jayme Gough, research director at NACS, unveiled the NACS State of the Industry Talent Insights Dashboard, and interest has been through the roof. Both one-year and five-year versions are updated with 2023 data and available for purchase. Our propriety database, CSX, and the NACS SOI Data Archive continue to grow.

For those who joined us at the Summit in Chicago this year, thank you. We were thrilled to see both new and repeat attendees. I hope you were as excited to bring NACS State of the Industry data back to your operations as we were to share it.

I’ve been with NACS for 15 years, and if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s that you must manage what you measure. And conversely, you can’t manage what you don’t measure.

To be profitable in 2024, retailers will have to be laser-focused on expense control.

There were a lot of themes at this year’s Summit: expenses, transaction counts, basket value and fuel margins are just a couple that come to mind. All of these were explored in the 15+ sessions at the Summit, giving attendees a deeper understanding of the industry in which they operate.

Before you dive into this issue’s thorough recaps of the Summit sessions, I want to call out some trends I saw in the data. Increasing inflation and retail prices continued to be an issue in 2023. Looking further into 2024, we may see this impact diminish, but without inflation-fed prices, we will likely see declines in merchandise sales performance and considerably lower growth rates in foodservice. It is imperative that retailers focus on building inside transactions and basket values as growth of inside sales will likely slow in 2024.To be profitable in 2024, retailers will also have to be laser-focused on expense control. Although operating expense growth slowed in 2024, there seems to be no permanent relief in sight.

But it is not all bad news. Retailers selling fuel in 2023 were able to earn outstanding margins to subsidize gross profits in-store. Employee and manager turnover rates declined and the slowdown in growth of expenses, like wages and benefits and repairs and maintenance, allowed retailers to add some additional dollars to the bottom line.

Our goal here at NACS is to provide the data you need to build your business, and we cannot do it without you. So here is a heartfelt THANK YOU to the over 30,000 convenience stores across the United States that supplied operational data to NACS for this year’s report.

Thank you for reading. As always, reach out to me at [email protected] if you have any questions or want to get involved with NACS Research. See you next year at the 2025 State of the Industry Summit in Dallas.