Without a doubt, convenience retailers are weighing how to recapture consumer trips lost during the pandemic, draw in new customers and retain higher basket rings—and foodservice is a key part of the mix.

Texas-based TXB, formerly Kwik Chek, has embraced fresh, made on-site food, along with private-label brands. In fact, food is the centerpiece of the growth strategy for the company, which officially became Texas Born, or TXB, in 2021. Brandon Frampton, vice president of foodservice operations at TXB, is mixing up the menus. “Food is our foundation,” Frampton told NACS Magazine.

In a wide-ranging March interview on everything from food as theater to capturing QSR traffic to packaging, Frampton shared how TXB is approaching foodservice and what’s ahead for the convenience retailer that has 47 stores and counting in Texas and Oklahoma, with its first TXB new build coming soon in June 2021 in Georgetown, Texas. Here’s an edited version of our conversation.

KS: We’ve written about the rebrand to Texas Born, and Kevin Smartt (TXB CEO and 2020–21 NACS chairman) has talked about the open kitchen strategy with some of your new stores, so tell me about the thinking behind that.

BF: People are really buying with their eyes, right? I think food is an emotional experience, and if you walk into our locations, and this is many of our locations, along with our new Texas Born locations, which are going to be even bigger and grander, there’s really a lot of theater behind it. You walk in and can watch people searing steak and chicken for fajitas. We’re grilling tortillas and everything else, so you really get a visual to making this food from scratch. When you walk in, we don’t just have food for sale. You get to see it and watch it happen, and that speaks to customer confidence in the food.

If you want a fresh grilled quesadilla or fresh queso or something that really is going to hit the spot, it’s not something everyone has.

Even internally we’ve changed just some of the vernacular—we call our stores restaurants now. We’re purchasing the food from Texas whenever possible. We’re making it. We’re marinating our own chicken and cooking it, so it’s part of what we do for sure, and we want our guests to see that, too. 

KS: Why focus on freshly prepared food? It would be easier to outsource that stuff, but you guys are actually doing it on-site.

BF: We think it’s twofold because we look at it as the consumer is getting more sophisticated and their level of expectation is higher. It’s hard to say how much consumer expectations have accelerated with COVID, but their buying habits and their take-home experiences have changed, and you know, we have internal dialogue—has it accelerated three years or five years? I'm not sure, but it accelerated. The consumers are savvier.

There are a lot of great convenience store companies out there. There are a lot of great individual operators. There’s the cokes and smokes, and you can really buy that anywhere. If you want a fresh grilled quesadilla or fresh queso or something that really is going to hit the spot, it’s not something everyone has.

KS: You’re making me hungry actually. I could go for one of your burritos now. I see that you’re using some limited time offers. Do you have a sense of how often you change those out or what the responses are? I presume that you’re using them to drive loyalty or just spotlight your menu changes. Can you talk a little bit about that?

BF: If we look at really the whole LTO, ours is a little more dynamic. The team did a great job— Jimmy Crowder (head of menu innovation at Kwik Chek/TXB) and the team did a great job with innovation last year, and that’s continued. We change out pretty quickly, and then we anchor something around an advertisement. So this first quarter was quesadillas, really on that breakfast segment to get back that breakfast traffic. There’s more traffic out there, so we have an anchor. But then our innovation team is just incredible. We’re sampling different things in different markets to really see where it’s going to go. We have a saying, ‘It’s sell’em what they want when they want it.’ And it’s worked out really good, and we’re small enough to do that. [Offers are] quarterly, but if a product picks up and really hits home, we’re nimble enough to extend it.

Rebuilding Daypart Traffic

KS: You mentioned trying to recapture the breakfast daypart, and that’s been a struggle industry wide as commuting patterns have been disrupted with people working from home. Are you seeing some of that breakfast traffic pick back up?

BF: We absolutely are, and we’ve done a couple things. I’m looking at the report right now, and we’ve actually grown that breakfast daypart even more than I would have expected. It’s actually over-indexing and outpacing the rest of it, so we were able to capture more of that.

Now part of that was being prepared and just operational excellence where you know we’re ready for the guests when they get here. And then really we anchored it around breakfast quesadillas, and we’ve marketed those and done a great job with them, and the presentation is fantastic. They look great.

Breakfast is clearly going back at a significantly higher rate than the rest of our dayparts. The dinner daypart we’re picking up as well, so breakfast and dinner really picked up. 

KS: So you said lunch is static, but let’s talk about that dinner daypart because that’s been in areas of the country where that breakfast is still struggling, right? The focus has been, let’s see how we can pick up this dinnertime customer. What’s TXB doing to try to woo those folks in?

BF: Last year everything dropped off, but dinner for us dropped off even more. We really caught back breakfast. It is over-indexing, but we left it late last year, and we needed something new fresh and cool.

We’re adding items—not only new items but add-on items and snack items, too. Queso and chips are just an incredible product that we’re making here at the location fresh. It’s out on display, so you can see it. We’re sampling. It’s awesome, but before we started we did a soft launch.

And then we’ve got other innovation. We’ve got Scorpion Bites, so something in that afternoon daypart. It’s one of some of the great things we’re doing. It’s deep fried—you gotta love it—deep fried jalapeños. We’ve got some special sauce. They’re going to be really good, so we’re going to do a full launch on that and our sides.

The sampling, the testing is going great. We spent a lot of energy around the innovation on having really great products—not good product, great product.

Introducing Customers to TXB Food

KS: You mentioned sampling. Are you actually having samples out for customers, or are you offering them tastes? Or are you talking about just sampling internally?

We’re trying to change perception, and we’re not going to change it with a bag in a bag in a bag.

BF: It’s part of what we’re doing with Texas Born. It’s a comprehensive program. We’re on the front of what we’re calling an engagement service. We’re inviting people to try and buy, so it’s not just walk up and accidentally grab something. In the past people have called them hosts, but we really look at it as a concierge service that is out sampling the products, that can talk about it and really invite people to try it, and they’ll buy it. It’s more than just what you would see sampling. We’ve got great products, and once our people try them or our guests try them you know they will like them.

KS: That’s awesome! OK, I’ve never been to one of your stores—a road trip is definitely on my list. So when you walk into one of your stores, where is the food, where is the foodservice? Do you have the back bar and the checkout counters right up front and foodservice in the back? What’s the experience when a customer comes in and they’re hungry? How do you get their attention?

BF: If you walk into our new location, Georgetown, which opens in late June, you run into food. You don't feel like you’re walking into just a convenience store. You feel like you’re walking into a food store, and we have an entire half of the store dedicated to food. Again, you can have a tortilla come out of the tortilla press, land on a flat grill, and they’re going to make it in front of you. We’ve got all kinds of drinks and specialty drinks and gourmet products.

If you walk into our legacy locations, they are like that as well. Take store No. 62, one of our flagship stores. They’re big. They’re beautiful, but when you see the renderings of our new stores and what it’s going to look like, it blows me away, just the way architecture is on the money.

You look at everything that Texas Born is, and what we’ve done with the building, the food, the team members, the people, it’s a culture. It’s not just a name or something we’re doing this week.

Facing the QSR Leakage Challenge

KS: You were talking about basically the stores being restaurants and the food, and one of the issues that we’re seeing in the industry as a whole is we’re losing some consumers who go to the convenience store but then they go to a QSR afterwards to eat. So this challenge is, how you convince those folks who are going to go to Wendy's or Chipotle or McDonald’s or whatever afterwards to actually try the food in the store and eat from the convenience store?

BF: It really is our biggest problem. We’ve built the awesome food. It’s fantastic, it really is. I think our marketing is great as well, so you look at the two pieces that really some of the traditional QSRs struggle with—either the food isn’t top quality or they’re not marketing very well—and I think we’ve done a great job with that. I know we have, so now it is really convincing the consumer that our food is awesome, and that goes back to where we’ve looked at our strategy and said there has to be more to it. We have to go out and hunt and capture and invite people to try and buy because the food is great. 

I’ve had many experiences here where once the people try it they later say, ‘I had no idea it’s so great,’ and they’re like, ‘now I come here.’

We’ve got the people that have been part of the front end of the sampling on the case, so both our guests and our employees are like, ‘Hey, I need to take a pint of that home. My family loves it, it’s just that good.’ So our No. 1 problem is to really convey the message of freshness and quality, and that’s how we’re going to do it with the engagement service, along with the marketing and everything else and product innovation. There’s a lot of cool stuff out there. Scorpion Bites is fun; it’s delicious. Same thing with queso and chips.

Thoughtful Packaging

The other piece to that where I think the c-store channel is missing, we call it a bag in a bag in a bag. In a lot of stores you buy a burrito, say, and they put it in a wrapper and then they put it in a bag, and then you bring it up to the counter, and they put in a bag. It’s a bag in the bag in the bag. When you really look at the entire experience, it just doesn’t convey what the QSRs give, which what you were talking about, how do we capture those customers?

Well, our vessels and how we’re selling the food are changing as well. Now, when you buy two tacos and chips and queso—it’s groundbreaking—it comes in a box open-faced with the jalapeño and queso. So now I can eat it in my car. I can take it back to my office.

You know when I shop a lot of competitors’ stores they have good food—I think we have awesome food—but I come back, and I pour my food out of a sack, and the sack falls on my desk, and I pour that out of a sack, and another wrap sandwich falls on it. That’s where QSRs have beaten us in the past, and that’s where we’re going to catch them today. Part of it is the vessel.

KS: You’re basically talking about the food packaging or content in containers, right?

Food’s in the future, and it’s here to stay, and the people with food will win.

BF: Right. We could have started with branding like TXB, and that’s cool in the branding, but it’s really like, how are we going to make it portable so the guest can eat it in the car or in their office? The QSRs have done a nice job at it.

KS: It’s elevating the presentation, kind of like this unboxing. It’s almost like a gift as opposed to, well, my husband just got some breakfast burritos today from a Mexican restaurant and, yeah, it’s exactly wrapped in a wrapper in a bag in another bag. We unrolled it and put it on plates, and we ate it at home. So that concept is interesting, but is it cost effective as opposed to wrapping it in the paper that you would normally do?

BF: We’re not to cost neutral, but we think the benefit far outweighs the cost, and it’s not as far off as we originally thought.

The same thing with our Scorpion Bites. When you buy those, they are going to come in a box with really great dipping sauces we’re making on-site. We think the vehicle and the vessel to consume the product and the experience—you know when we were testing the packaging it’s just like you said. You open it. There’s two open-face tacos, a jalapeño and some chips and queso. Your experience is just different. We’re trying to change perception, and we’re not going to change it with a bag in a bag in a bag.

KS: In dispensed beverages, are you doing anything innovative there to get people to use the fountains again, or are you not seeing an issue with it?

BF: The decline there is significant. Right now, there’s a tradeoff in the 20 ounce and everything else, but we think once we get to summer, that’s going to be our big push. A part of it is the consumer, and you know there are a lot of pieces of this puzzle, but are we doing anything new and great right at this very moment? Yes, yes, and news at 11, so we will be ready for summer for sure.

Advice for Small Operators

KS: All right, sounds good. In general, do you have advice for smaller operators? I know you guys aren’t huge chain wise, but you’re bigger than obviously the single-store operators. Can you share something for that one or two store operator who really wants to innovate that food offer to get people into their stores?

BF: It’s a great question, and I would share that food is the future. I mean it really is. We look at convenience stores and the folks that have been doing this a long time and not only are categories declining but the margins are declining as well. So there are declining margins, and regulations are increasing. Food’s in the future, and it’s here to stay, and the people with food will win. Advice for the smaller teams is just develop great products. You can look at some of the best places we go, and this is personally or professionally, and they are places that just rock because they have awesome food and great experience.

KS: I have to ask about the chips and queso. What makes them so special?

BF: We’re actually making that from our own in-house salsa in the back. You can see the particulates of jalapeño. It’s not just out of the machine. I mean it’s got particulates in it and just a great flavor. The habanero queso—so what makes it great really just is the freshness. Again back to the freshness piece.

KS: For your chips, is it white corn or is it yellow corn?

BF: I’m gonna hold that one. We’re testing multiple items, so we haven’t landed. I know where I think we’re going to land, but we will see sampling of all of them.

KS: I am somewhat partial to the thinner white corn chips, but then occasionally, I’ve gotten some really good yellow corn—the thicker chips.

BF: OK I’ll give you a bigger peek. We will be a thin white corn. It’ll be a thin chip that’s very light, so you get the cheese, right? Lots of cheese, and it’s kind of like the old burger theory right? Get a big bun and a little bit of burger? You’re going to get great queso and a little bit of chip.