The NACS Leadership Forum focused on smarter tech, growth strategies that lead to success and what’s at the core of convenience retail.
52
The Rise of Agentic AI
The 2026 Conexxus Annual Conference posed the question: What does it look like if stores can think for themselves?
62 Who’s Buying Your Gas? And Why?
Consumers make their buying decisions before they even get in the car—for food or fuel.
68 Modern Maintenance
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Global Takes on the Tech Landscape
The United States is tech-forward, but there are lessons to be learned by taking a global view.
Subscribe to NACS Daily—an indispensable quick read of industry headlines and legislative and regulatory news, along with knowledge and resources from NACS, delivered to your inbox every weekday. Subscribe at www.convenience.org/NACSdaily.
percentage of c-stores that sell beer.
CATEGORY CLOSE-UP PAGE 88
As markets continue to evolve, the future of fuel is being shaped by all three branches of the federal government and at the state level.
Despite volume softness, c-stores retain No. 1 status for beer sales among brick-and-mortar retail.
By the Numbers
EDITORIAL
Jeff Lenard VP of NACS Media & Strategic Communications (703) 518-4272 jlenard@convenience.org
TREASURER: Lonnie McQuirter, Director of Operations, 36 Lyn Refuel Station
OFFICERS: Chris Bambury, Bambury Inc.; Tom Brennan, Casey’s; Varish Goyal, Loop Neighborhood Markets; Charles McIlvaine, Coen Markets Inc.; Natalie Morhaus, RaceTrac Inc.; Travis Sheetz, Sheetz Inc.
GENERAL COUNSEL: Doug Kantor, NACS
MEMBERS: Lisa Blalock, BP North America Inc.; Brian Donaldson, Maxol Limited; Tony El-Nemr, Nouria Energy Corp.; Terry Gallagher, Gasamat Oil Corp./Smoker Friendly; Erin Graziosi, Robinson Oil Corp.; Raymond Huff, HJB Convenience Corp. (dba Russell’s); Mark Jordan, Refuel Operating Co.; Thomas Love, Love’s Travel Stops & Country Stores; Crystal Maggelet, Maverik Inc.; Rich Makin, Wawa Inc.; Brian McCarthy, Blarney Castle Oil Co.; Andrew Mitchell, Toot’n Totum Food Stores LLC; Jigar Patel, Fastime; Stanley Reynolds, 7-Eleven Inc.; Kristin Seabrook, Global Partners LP; Doug Yawberry, Weigel’s Stores Inc.; Scott Zietlow, Kwik Trip Inc.
PAST CHAIRS: Brian Hannasch, Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc.; Victor Paterno, Philippine Seven Corp.
SUPPLIER BOARD REPRESENTATIVES: Bryan Morrow, Chobani & La Colombe; Kevin LeMoyne, The Coca-Cola Co.
NACS SUPPLIER BOARD
SUPPLIER BOARD CHAIR: Bryan Morrow, Chobani & La Colombe
CHAIR-ELECT: Kevin LeMoyne, The Coca-Cola Co.
VICE CHAIRS: Mike Gilroy, Mars Wrigley; Jim Hughes, Supplying Demand Inc. dba Liquid Death; Danielle Holloway, Altria Group Distribution Co.
MEMBERS: Tony Battaglia, PMI U.S.; Ryan Calong; Jerry Cutler, InComm Payments; Jack Dickinson, Dover Fueling Solutions; Matt Domingo, Reynolds; Mark Falconi, Greenridge Naturals; Ramona Giderof, Diageo Beer; Adam Gryzbek, BIC Corp.; Kevin Kraft, Tropicana Brands; Jay Nelson, Excel Tire Gauge LLC; Jordan Nicgorski, JUUL Labs; Nick Paich, TriggerPoint Media; Bria Troy, PepsiCo Inc.; Melissa Vonder Haar, iSEE Store Innovations LLC; Jason Zagaria, Primo Brands; Derek Zahajko, CAF Inc.;
GENERAL COUNSEL: Doug Kantor, NACS
STAFF LIAISON: Bob Hughes, NACS
RETAIL BOARD REPRESENTATIVES: Tom Brennan, Casey’s; Scott Hartman, Rutter’s; Kevin Smartt, TXB
PAST CHAIRS: Vito Maurici, McLane Co. Inc.; David Charles, Cash Depot; Kevin Farley, Farley Retail Advisors
Subscriptions
(NACS),
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Subscriptions are included in the dues paid by NACS member companies. Subscriptions are also available to qualified recipients. The publisher reserves the right to limit the number of free subscriptions and to set related qualifications criteria.
That’s the Premier Promise Make quality your priority while keeping value in mind. Premier Manufacturing, Inc. is owned by U.S. Tobacco Cooperative, a cooperative of U.S. farmers who grow the finest U.S. flue-cured tobacco to make high-quality, value-priced cigarette brands for adult consumers.
Big Numbers, Bigger Ideas
I’ve been interviewing candidates for an open role within NACS Media. In interviews I try to give a sense of the scope of NACS. The organization hosts an annual event with 25,000 attendees, has a top-notch government relations group, is growing its global reach, and benefits from outstanding leaders on our board and committees. “NACS is incredible,” I tell potential hires.
I also give a sense of the scope of the industry. There are about 152,000 c-stores in the U.S., one in eight Americans has worked at a convenience store, and about 2.5 million people currently work in the industry. Those are some of my go-to factoids. Another that I seldom fail to mention is that U.S. c-store sales are big enough to be a top 20 country in terms of GDP. And I talk about the great people who make the industry go. “The industry is incredible,” I tell them.
Maybe subconsciously all that shaped this issue. It’s low-key a testament to the community that makes NACS work and to the industry itself.
Lauren Shanesy contributed two articles in this issue on c-store events. Her coverage of the Conexxus Annual Conference highlights the growing role of agentic AI, and her coverage of the NACS Leadership Forum offers key insights from a range of c-store leaders. Combined, they paint a picture of a community that works together so that everyone advances.
We also have coverage of tech, including global tech trends. I’m in my fourth year at NACS and I’m still wrapping my head around the global c-store community and the best ways to bring global insights to U.S. readers. Did you know that Meiyijia, a Chinese c-store operator, has 35,000 locations and is adding 4,000 a year? The scope of this industry is incredible, and the insights that can be shared are nearly endless.
Turn to page 52
for coverage of the Conexxus Annual Conference. A key topic of conversation: the rise of agentic AI.
In addition to coverage of Conexxus and global tech, this issue puts a spotlight on POS systems and how AI can be used for store security.
To take it all the way back to the top: NACS Media is growing and changing. What topics should we cover? What’s important to you? Drop me a line at bnussbaum@convenience.org.
Ben Nussbaum is the NACS publisher and editor-in-chief.
Showing Customers She Cares
After working in the tax industry for 15 years, Kayla Wormstadt pivoted to convenience a decade ago and fell in love with the job immediately.
“The fulfilling part of this job is that people really need us. We are essential. We make their day a little bit easier, a little bit brighter and the world really needs that,” she said.
Nothing proved that more than when she helped a customer who had a medical emergency. She provided lifesaving CPR and stayed with him until the ambulance arrived.
“He had collapsed, and we were trying to get him talking. Then all of a sudden he went limp and I saw his neck turning purple, so I just started doing CPR. He had no pulse for a minute and a half, but we kept going. We got him back before the ambulance arrived, and I just kept saying to him ‘My name is Kayla. You’re okay. Help is on the way and I’m here holding your hand.’”
“His family sent me a Christmas card this year,” Wormstadt said, “and just knowing he was able to be there with them was everything to me.”
Kayla
Wormstadt, store manager, Cubby’s, Mitchell, South Dakota
WHY SHE LOVES WORKING IN CONVENIENCE
I’m a people person. I love the new faces and the old faces. We have everyday regulars who start off their morning here or come for their daily lunch break. We know them by name, we know their families and what’s going on with them. It’s a big family. And if we don’t know their name, we are eager to learn it. By the next time they come in, we’ve learned it.
If we don’t know their name, we are eager to learn it. By the next time they come in, we’ve learned it.
WHAT SHE FINDS FULFILLING ABOUT HER JOB
We are part of people’s lives. Maybe a customer just needs someone to talk to, or we really helped them find something they didn’t even know they wanted. We can make or break their day. If we can start or end everybody’s day with a smile, just a little bit of kindness, that makes such a difference.
WHY SHE WOULD ENCOURAGE SOMEONE TO WORK IN CONVENIENCE
It’s not a routine. Every day is something different, with new faces and old faces. It’s forever changing. There’s forever something new coming in or going out, whether it’s products or people. It’s not a job where you’re going to be bored. And if you like to meet people and talk to people, then it’s the best place.
s will s will
Uniting Visionary C-Store Leaders in Warsaw
At the 2026 NACS Convenience Summit Europe, attendees will be immersed in Poland’s small format stores with a breadth of service offers.
The global c-store industry is growing at a rapid pace, with innovative retailers redefining convenience within their markets.
This year at NACS Convenience Summit Europe, participants will see firsthand how retailers in Warsaw, Poland, are shaping the future of convenience retail and delivering exceptional customer experiences.
From June 16–18, participants will be immersed in convenience in Warsaw, where small format stores offer grab-and-go foodservice, beverages, coffee, and services like parcel pickup, food delivery, courier services and bill payment. Convenience stores in Warsaw are attractive shopping destinations with longer hours of service and accessible locations.
Sessions will focus on top-of-mind issues and ideas for growth:
Digitizing Your Business: How retailers can exceed the needs of their alwaysconnected consumers and transform store operations with technology—from in-store sensors that track shopper behavior, to AI-powered checkout cameras and theft prevention and fully automated replenishment systems that reduce out of stocks.
Building Resilience and Reducing Supply Chain Risk: Industry experts will share strategies for increasing flexibility, diversifying sourcing, leveraging data analytics and building stronger partnerships with their suppliers.
Who Are Your Younger Customers: Tech-savvy Gen Z and Gen Alpha are reshaping convenience retail as both customers and employees. Gain new ideas for engaging the younger generation by modernizing in-store offers and focusing on company culture.
The Future of Food in C-Stores: Explore ways to elevate food offers amid consumer expectations for quality, freshness, speed and value. Insights will focus on menu development, kitchen design and digital integration.
Trends and Opportunities for Convenience Retailers in Europe: Gain insights into emerging behaviors across key European markets. With a special focus on Poland, find out how Polish consumers are embracing modern convenience formats, healthier food choices, digital payments and loyalty-driven experiences—all while placing a high value on affordability and traditional offers.
To see the full agenda and register for the 2026 NACS Convenience Summit Europe, visit convenience.org/CSE.
NACS Foundation Executive Director Kevin O’Connell presents a Miami nonprofit with a check.
Be Mine: Convenience Has Heart
The newly created NACS Foundation campaign gives back to local Miami nonprofits.
The Convenience Has Heart campaign—launched just before Valentine’s Day—shows how convenience stores are the heartbeat of their communities.
Debuted by the NACS Foundation during the 2026 NACS Leadership Forum in February, the campaign embodies how much the c-store industry “cares very deeply about the community and people we serve,” said Kevin O’Connell, executive director of the NACS Foundation.
“We are not just convenience stores; we are community hubs and we take care to make sure we show up in all the ways our communities need,” he said.
Two Miami-area nonprofits each received a $1,000 donation to help further their work of providing services to first responders and food pantries in the area. The nonprofits also represent the mission of two NACS Foundation pillars: Response Relief and Neighborhood Nourish:
• The First Responders Resiliency Foundation, which provides care for those who voluntarily sacrifice their physical and mental well-being for others; and
• Food for Life Network, which is dedicated to eliminating food insecurity and malnutrition for Miami-Dade residents with chronic illnesses.
“The First Responders Resiliency Foundation’s aim is to be proactive in providing resources and education to improve the mind and body… Donations such as this one ensure first responders get the education and treatment they need,” said Emily Gould LCSW, mental health coordinator of the Miami-based group.
“For more than 40 years, Food for Life has made sure no one in Miami goes without a meal. More than 287,000 residents struggle with food insecurity and more than 14% of children lack consistent access to meals,” said Jonathan Welsh, director of marketing and communications for Food for Life.
During the NACS Leadership Forum, attendees wrote personal cards with messages of thanks and encouragement to local first responders and food pantry clients. The cards were filled with coupons for a free Wawa Sizzli breakfast sandwich and hoagies and delivered on Valentine’s Day to both organizations.
More About the NACS Foundation
The NACS Foundation unifies and amplifies the convenience industry’s charitable efforts. Through programs like 24/7 Day and Neighborhood Nourish, more than 30,000 c-stores now work together to honor first responders, fight hunger and invest in future industry leaders through scholarships. Learn how you can get involved at conveniencecares.org.
Member News
RETAILERS
Chestnut Group, which operates Chestnut Market stores, appointed Ryan Oettinger as its new chief executive officer. With over two decades in convenience retailing, wholesale petroleum sales, marketing, c-store operations and technology, he brings extensive leadership experience, strong operational discipliwne and a track record of driving strategic growth while building high-performing teams. Prior to Chestnut, Oettinger held several senior leadership positions at Chevron, Pilot Flying J and Vontier.
Chestnut’s four founding brothers: Mickey, Sal, Sam and Cal Jamal, have transitioned to serve on the company’s board of directors, providing strategic oversight and ensuring continuity of Chestnut’s values and culture.
Mickey Caley joined Terrible’s as its new accounting manager. He has over three decades of experience in accounting, gaming and hospitality, having previously served as general manager at Poker Palace Casino and as controller at Station Casinos.
Rutter’s hired Mike Katz as director of real estate. Katz brings over 20 years of experience in the commercial real estate industry, with a
background that spans sales and leasing, property management, training, document review and preparation, information technology and operations.
Robert Hampton
Robert Hampton joined Yesway as its chief technology officer to lead the company’s information technology strategy and oversee all aspects of enterprise technology, digital transformation, cybersecurity and innovation. Hampton previously served as the chief information officer and vice president of technology solutions and innovation for nearly a decade at Jacksons Companies.
InConvenience Inc. announced that Tom Kelly has joined its team as director of operations. Kelly has over 25 years of experience in c-stores, QSR, fast casual restaurants and travel center operations.
SUPPLIERS
Just Born Quality Confections appointed Melissa Sellers as its general counsel. She brings more than two decades of legal leadership experience across manufacturing, food and consumer packaged goods, advising Fortune 500 companies and privately held organizations on complex legal and business matters.
Convenience & Energy Advisors (CEA) announced Christina Mathisen as vice president of marketing.
Mathisen brings more than 10 years of combined experience from QuikTrip and Circle K, where she led enterprise loyalty initiatives, CRM strategy, digital engagement and national marketing programs across thousands of retail locations.
Keep NACS in the know— send your updates to news@convenience.org
Calendar of Events
JUNE
NACS Convenience Summit Europe
June 16-18 | Hilton Warsaw City Warsaw, Poland
JULY
NACS Financial Leadership Program at Wharton
July 12-17 | The Wharton School University of Pennsylvania Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
AUGUST
NACS Executive Leadership Program at Cornell
August 2-6 | Dyson School, Cornell University Ithaca, NY
OCTOBER
NACS Show
October 6-9 | Las Vegas Convention Center Las Vegas, Nevada
For a full listing of events and information, visit www.convenience.org/events.
Ryan Oettinger
Mike Katz
New Members
NACS welcomes the following companies that joined the Association in January 2026. NACS membership is companywide, so we encourage employees of member companies to create a username by visiting convenience.org/create-login. All members receive access to the NACS Online Membership directory and the latest industry news, information and resources. For more information about NACS membership, visit convenience.org/membership.
NACS HUNTER CLUB
SILVER
Electrify America LLC Reston, VA electrifyamerica.com
BRONZE
SaveAround Partner Solutions Inc. dba Velocity Logic Group Binghamton, NY velocitylogicgroup.com
Regal Health Food International Inc. Chicago, IL regalsnacks.com
Roth Brands Colorado Springs, CO
Showcase Batavia, NY
Simply Brands USA Inc. Romeoville, IL simply-brands.com
Summer Fresh Salads
Woodbridge, Ontario, Canada summerfresh.com
Superior Paper Products Marshfield, WI superiorpaperproducts.com
Tillamook Country Smoker Inc. Bay City, OR tcsjerky.com
Titan Energy Cookie LLC. titanenergycookie.com
TK Architects International Kansas City, MO
TNR USA Inc.
Uberall Detroit, MI uberall.com
Wagging Dog Bakery Rye, NH waggingdogbakery.ca
Wet Hydration Henderson, NV
Wilde Brands Winchester, KY
ZBSS Corp. zbsscorp.com
Members of EG America’s leadership team invited Coleman Nee (center), the National Commander of Disabled American Veterans, to attend a check presentation at the company’s headquarters in Westborough, Massachusetts.
EG America Donates $580,000 to Disabled American Veterans
The retailer raised the funds through its annual in-store campaign in November.
For the seventh consecutive year, EG America hosted an annual in-store fundraising campaign for Disabled American Veterans (DAV), a nonprofit dedicated to serving veterans, their families and caregivers. The company raised $580,553 for the organization in November 2025.
The month-long initiative invited customers across EG America’s network of convenience stores, including Certified Oil, Cumberland Farms, Fastrac, Kwik Shop, Loaf ’N Jug, Minit Mart, Quik Stop, Sprint Food Stores, Tom
Thumb and Turkey Hill, to contribute $1, $5 or an amount of their choosing at checkout.
“Each year, DAV supports more than one million veterans by helping them access the healthcare and benefits they’ve earned, connecting them to meaningful employment opportunities and ensuring their voices are represented on Capitol Hill,” EG America said.
“We are proud to support DAV and the critical work they do on behalf of veterans and their families,” said Russ Colaco, CEO of EG Group. “This fundraiser is made possible by the generosity of our guests and the dedication of our team members across the country, and we’re grateful to play a role in helping DAV continue its impact year after year.”
EG America has raised more than $4 million for DAV since the inception of the partnership.
In the Community
Every year, the convenience retail industry dedicates billions of dollars to advancing the futures of individuals and families in our communities. The NACS Foundation unifies and builds on NACS members’ charitable efforts to amplify their work in communities across America and to share these powerful stories. Learn more at conveniencecares.org
1 ALLTOWN FRESH FIGHTS HEART DISEASE
In honor of Heart Health Month, Alltown Fresh, part of the Global Partners brand, ran a campaign to fight heart disease and benefit local children’s hospitals.
Alltown Fresh locations across Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire and New York donated a portion of proceeds from every Breakfast Power Bowl sold in February to a local children’s hospital in each state, supporting critical care and the healthcare professionals who serve the region.
2 RUTTER’S SUPPORTS FALLEN OFFICERS
Last fall, Pennsylvania-based Rutter’s ran a fundraising campaign at all 45 of its York County locations to aid the families of five York County law enforcement officers who lost their lives or were seriously injured in the line of duty in 2025. Customers contributed $18,000 and Rutter’s Children’s Charities donated an additional $37,000, bringing the total to $55,000 for the York County Safety Collaborative’s Honor Their Service Fund.
3 NITTANY MINITMART RAISES FUNDS FOR LOCAL FOOD PANTRIES
Pennsylvania-based Nittany MinitMart raised $26,756 for local food pantries through its Fuel the Hungry round-up campaign in December 2025. Customers at each store were invited to donate their extra change at checkout, with proceeds going directly to food pantries near each location, keeping donations local and ensuring they benefited nearby families.
4 LOOP PARTNERS WITH THE GRATEFUL GARMENT PROJECT
California-based Loop Neighborhood Markets partnered with The Grateful Garment Project, an organization “dedicated to restoring dignity and compassion to survivors of sexual violence.”
The Grateful Garment Project provides immediate, essential resources to survivors of sexual assault, human trafficking and commercial sexual exploitation—“ensuring that every individual who seeks help through a Sexual Assault Response Team (SART) facility or community-based organization is met with care, comfort and respect. From new clothing and toiletries to snacks and other necessities, support helps survivors regain a sense of dignity.”
5 TERRIBLE’S DONATES TO LOCAL CHARITIES
Nevada-based Terrible’s raised over $300,000 for local charities, including HELP of Southern Nevada, Toys for Tots and Kony Coins for Kids, through a round-up campaign. “We’re proud to serve and make an impact across communities in southern Nevada, Arizona, California and Utah. A huge thank you for being deliberately different with us in 2025. We look forward to making more positive changes together in 2026,” the retailer posted.
6 QUICKCHEK HOSTS SOCK DRIVE
QuickChek team members
“showed the power of generosity” during a sock donation drive benefitting New Jersey-based organizations Benny’s Bodega and the Flemington Area Food Pantry.
“Thanks to their incredible commitment, we were able to make a meaningful impact for individuals and families in the communities we serve. A heartfelt thank you to our communications team, district and store leaders and all partners who kept the momentum strong,” QuickChek posted.
Spotlight on Transportation Energy Policy
As markets continue to evolve, the future of fuel is being shaped by all three branches of the federal government and at the state level.
BY MATT DURAND
If it feels like transportation energy policy is coming from every direction at once, that’s because it is. The rules that affect the types of vehicles that consumers buy—and the vehicles retailers can profitably sell—are being set and reset through overlapping layers of congressional action, federal agency rulemakings and court challenges.
NACS is advocating for durable and technology-neutral policy choices that reflect market realities and protect consumer choice—and that can be a challenge amid partisan gridlock among members of the House and Senate. The most consequential choices are often made through fiscal policy, where procedural maneuvers or political pressures can help push large legislative packages over the finish line.
We saw this recently with a $500 million cut to the National Electric Vehicle Infrastructure (NEVI) program, which was attached to a must-pass government funding bill, and with the many changes to alternative fuel tax credits included in the One Big Beautiful Bill.
Outside of these large omnibus-type bills, passing standalone legislation is difficult with a closely divided Congress, even with bipartisan support. One exception was at the beginning of the current Trump administration, when Republicans and Democrats agreed to block states like California from enacting EV mandates—but this was only possible using a special process that prevented a Senate filibuster.
More often, policy is determined by what Congress does not do, such as repeated unsuccessful attempts to pass year-round E15 legislation despite broad stakeholder support.
EXECUTIVE BRANCH REGULATION
The White House and federal agencies wield significant power through the regulatory process.
Recent regulatory actions underscore how quickly the ground can shift. For example, the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) recently repealed tailpipe emissions standards for greenhouse gases, and the Department of Transportation (DOT) proposed to recalibrate fuel economy standards for cars and trucks. Both standards were so strict that they would have functioned like a federal EV mandate. These actions mark a major policy shift with real implications for the transportation energy market.
Other less publicized actions have an impact as well, even if they sometimes send mixed signals.
California, too, is in the process of amending its unique fuel specifications to allow for E15.
After temporarily freezing and then resuming NEVI funding, DOT revised its implementation guidance to favor sites with extended-hour operations and amenities like c-stores, while also proposing strict made-in-America requirements that may be impractical for the current supply chain. EPA has proposed aggressive new targets under the Renewable Fuel Standards (RFS), but has also granted exemptions to refiners in a manner that could create inefficiency and instability in the market.
LITIGATION AFTER REGULATION
When agencies regulate, litigation typically follows. From the uncertainty of a new lawsuit to the details of the court’s final judgment, these cases can have major implications for the convenience industry.
Two recent Supreme Court decisions—Loper Bright and Corner Post—sent shockwaves across the regulatory landscape, upending decades of administrative law precedents and making it easier for regulated businesses to challenge burdensome regulations. A series of other cases, most prominently West Virginia v. EPA, have shifted the balance of power by requiring clear congressional authorization before agencies can regulate issues of substantial economic or political significance.
Other important cases are awaiting a decision. NACS is involved in multiple pending lawsuits concerning EV mandates, for example, and there are likely to be challenges to the EPA and DOT actions on tailpipe emissions and
fuel economy. Decisions under the RFS are frequently litigated as well, and the Supreme Court recently struck down the Trump administration’s global tariffs.
STATE AND LOCAL REGULATION
Of course, the story of transportation energy policy does not end in Washington. Across the United States and the political spectrum, state and local governments are using the tools at their disposal to influence federal policy and to fill in the gaps.
Some states are attempting to backfill the loss of federal money for EV programs, with California alone proposing more than $250 million for infrastructure funding and consumer rebates. Others are acting through their public utility commissions to address issues like electricity demand charges or leveraging state contracts to incentivize private investment on public properties.
For liquid fuels, seven Midwestern states have opted out of the federal
NACSPAC LIST
More often, policy is determined by what Congress does not do.
standards for summertime gasoline— creating a regional boutique fuel specification that is both more expensive and less fungible—in an attempt to incentivize E15 without the need for congressional approval. California, too, is in the process of amending its unique fuel specifications to allow for E15.
At the local level, cities and towns sometimes use zoning and other ordinances to control where and when fuel can be sold. Local officials also have influence over which codes are adopted and how they are enforced. These codes can affect
everything from site design to daily operations, with some jurisdictions requiring minimum staffing levels to monitor gas dispensers and others proposing to limit the proximity of EV charging equipment.
Transportation energy policy is rarely a single conversation about one fuel or one technology. Today, it involves a complex ecosystem of tax incentives, fleet rules, infrastructure requirements, litigation risk, utility regulation and safety standards—all interacting in real time across all levels of government.
As these debates unfold, NACS is advocating on Capitol Hill to ensure the convenience industry has a seat at the table. You can lend your voice, too. Visit convenience.org/advocacy to learn more.
Matt Durand is the NACS deputy counsel.
NACSPAC was created in 1979 by NACS as the entity through which the association can legally contribute funds to political candidates supportive of our industry’s issues. For more information about NACSPAC and how political action committees (PACs) work, go to www.convenience.org/nacspac.
NACSPAC donors who made contributions in February 2026 are:
Matt Beale
W. Capra Consulting Group
Jay Blazensky
InStore.ai
Sajid Chaudhry NSR Petro Services LLC
Marc Della Torre
InStore.ai
Matt Domingo Reynolds American Inc.
Paige Fickler-Cleveland Fickler Oil Company Inc.
Jim Forsyth FKG Oil Company dba MotoMart
Tony Gaines JOEY
Terry Gallagher Gasamat Oil Corp/Smoker Friendly
Robert Gallo Impact 21
Paul Goldean Pace-O-Matic
Herb Hargraves Victory Marketing LLC
Jeffry Harrison Rovertown
Jeff Hassman PDI Technologies
James Hervey Verifone Inc.
Scott Hill
Jack Link’s Protein Snacks
Scott Holton Gallo
Faheem Jamal Chestnut Market
Jen Johnson Verifone Inc.
Kevin Lemoyne The Coca-Cola Company
Michael Lindberg CHS Inc. (Cenex)
Richard Makin Wawa Inc.
Doug Middlebrooks Advantage Solutions
Tony Miller W. Capra Consulting Group
Bryan Morrow Chobani and La Colombe
John Nelson Vroom Delivery Inc.
Paul Neuhoff GSP
Morgan Neuhoff Bratten GSP
Matt Pascal Pace-O-Matic
Jigar Patel FASTIME
Carl Rick Kwik Trip Inc.
Maggie Rogers Advantage Solutions
Ryan Sheetz Sheetz Inc.
Nick Stanley Johnson Junction Inc.
Christian Stein Center Independent Oil Stores LLC
Bria Troy PepsiCo Inc.
Marvin Vines The Coca-Cola Company
Melissa Vonder Haar iSee Store Innovations
Brandon Warshaw InStore.ai
William Weigel Weigel’s Stores Inc.
Mike Wilson Cubby’s Inc.
Michael Winton Republic Amusements
THE EVOLUTION OF
The future of checkout? Total store operations.
POINT OF SALE
Veteran retail tech manager Bill Wade can count on one hand the number of truly game-changing point of sale innovations.
BY STEVE HOLTZ
“When I came aboard, the two biggest technology disruptors were pay-at-the-pump and barcode scanning at the front counter,” said Wade, a more than 35-year manager at PDI Technologies.
Around the time he joined PDI in the late 1980s, self-checkout was slowly finding its way into stores with mixed results. Since then, developments in point of sale (POS) have been “a lot of going over the same ground again and again and again. And sometimes it feels like you’re just grinding things into finer and finer and finer pieces,” Wade said.
“But that’s because we’re solving a lot of the same problems through multiple generations of technology,” he continued. “We’re still having to address those same issues because we still live in what amounts to Dodge City on a Saturday night from a data-security perspective.”
That’s where suppliers find themselves even now, as artificial intelligence becomes a new base on which to build overarching retail tech, with POS at its core.
“The POS is the hub of everything that’s going on at a site,” said Scott Negley, senior director of product management at Dover Fueling Solutions. “It controls the forecourt, the back office, the in-store transactions, the overall business flow. ... What we’re seeing now from [retailers is] they want to be able to do things with a little bit more flexibility, with a little bit more control and speed.”
Here’s a look at what is driving POS innovation forward today—and what’s slowing down potential generational changes.
THE HOLDBACK: CONSUMER HABITS
Amazon, the second-largest retailer in the United States, announced in January the closure of its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores, which were built on innovating the point of sale.
“Limited customer adoption.” That’s the reason an Amazon spokesperson cited for discontinuing its palm reader technology, but it could apply to the entire brickand-mortar experience.
Frank Beard, head of marketing at Rovertown, said that the “ain’t never gonna” attitude is a frequent hurdle to overcome when introducing new technology, particularly when innovation overreaches or fails to adequately explain the how and why of a change.
“You’ll see a company come out with something and claim everything is different. ... They’ll deploy something that’s cool, but it just fizzles out. It doesn’t get adopted,” said Beard. “And oftentimes, it’s because it asks too much of that consumer to change their habits. Consumer habits do change over time, but they change slowly over time.”
The End of Amazon Go
The second-largest retailer in the United States announced in January that it would shut down its Amazon Go and Amazon Fresh stores. This included 15 Go sites and 57 Fresh locations that were part of a nearly decade-long test of autonomous, checkoutfree brick-and-mortar convenience and grocery retailing.
“While we’ve seen encouraging signals in our Amazon-branded physical grocery stores,” the company said in its news release, “we haven’t yet created a truly distinctive customer experience with the right economic model needed for largescale expansion.”
In truth, Amazon did create a distinctive consumer experience through previously unimaginable technology. However, it counted entirely on this technology as its differentiator, losing anything resembling charm or community.
“Amazon, with unlimited resources and cutting-edge tech, couldn’t make it work because the customer experience wasn’t there,” John McCauley, partner and director of brand design at Paragon Solutions. “This is the lesson: Technology is a tool, not the destination. The most successful stores aren’t the ones with the most tech. They’re the ones where customers feel something: a sense of place, community, authenticity. Customer experience trumps technology every time.”
Similarly, Matt Riezman, partner and vice president of brand and retail media at NexChapter, wrote that retailers who’ve spent years building store operations should get a confidence boost from the collapse on Amazon Go.
“The fundamentals you’ve mastered (location strategy, in-store execution, local market knowledge) still matter more than cashierless technology and digital novelty,” he wrote. “Yes, more shopping trips shift online every year. But rather than viewing this as pure threat, smart operators are asking: What can we offer that only a physical location can deliver?”
Beard believes that’s what slowed down acceptance of self-checkout for so long. “It’s basically the best new technology of the 1980s,” he said. “It’s old tech. It’s basically turning the register around and saying, ‘You do it.’ But it’s only in the past five years that selfcheckout has really seen mainstream adoption.”
“And it took a pandemic to do it,” added Tyler Cameron, a former retailer and current head of strategy and analytics at Rovertown.
Autonomous checkout in the United States seems to be following a similar arch: super cool from the retailer point of view, but maybe too much tech too soon for consumers.
“That doesn’t mean the vendor didn’t do a good job with [the technology],” Cameron said. “The customer just wasn’t ready for it.”
PAY-BY-PHONE GROWS MORE IMPORTANT
As Cameron noted, the Covid pandemic, as disruptive as it was, deserves credit for accelerating many of the retail tech innovations in the past half decade. And it’s not just self-checkout; it’s mobile ordering, mobile payment, delivery and loyalty apps.
The history of mobile payment goes back to early experiments in the late 1990s. But it wasn’t until Starbucks added mobile payment capabilities to its loyalty app in 2011 that consumers began taking notice. The launch of Apple Pay in 2014 brought a new level of adoption for contactless payments.
Today, more than 55% of eligible users—those with a cellphone and payment method—have used mobile payment, according to Auriemma Group, a New York-based consultancy to the consumer payments and lending industries.
And there’s room for growth, according to Beard, comparing U.S. adoption of pay-by-phone to that in China. There, more than 80% of smartphone users rely on payment services Alipay and WeChat Pay to make purchases.
“Of course, those were helped along by government intervention, but it illustrates the room for growth,” Beard said. In the United States, PayPal leads the market with 36% of users preferring it over other digital wallets, according to the IPC.
With agentic AI on the rise, there’s a future where the phone plays a much bigger role. Imagine telling
Checking In on Self-Checkout
First introduced in the early 1980s, self-checkout has a checkered history of test runs and exits by retailers. Since the Covid pandemic, self-checkout has slowly gained traction in stores around the world. Here’s a look at some statistics that illustrate where it stands today.
96%
Percentage of U.S. grocery stores offering self-checkout in 2024, according to a January Capital One Shopping Research.
1/3
Portion of convenience and fuel outlets offering self-checkout kiosks in 2024; another 37% were testing the technology, according to Incisiv.
79%
Percentage of consumers who use self-checkout regularly, per Capital One Shopping Research. In 2021, only 30% of shoppers had ever used self-checkout; in 2018, only 15% had ever used the technology.
36 million
Number of Americans who have stolen from a self-checkout kiosk, per Capital One Shopping Research.
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They’ll deploy something that’s cool, but it just fizzles out. ... And oftentimes, it’s because it asks too much of that consumer to change their habit.
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Such a fully-integrated system would be a great experience for a customer, Cameron said, “but there are a lot of real-world hurdles—such as laws—that would have to change.”
And its retailers’ general willingness to adapt and a desire to overcome these hurdles that keeps the convenience channel relevant, according to Wade.
“It’s been said that our channel is recession-proof. I don’t attribute that entirely to gas, cokes and smokes … and the fact that these are products that stay in high demand,” he said. “It’s also because of the adaptability of the people in this industry.”
THE FUTURE IS IN THE CLOUD
Outside of a POS system that incorporates all of a c-store’s operating technology into a single cohesive network, the overwhelming request from most retailers today is a system that operates in the cloud.
“There’s been a really big shift to cloud-based POS,” Rovertown’s Cameron said. “I think of it as the untethering of the cash register. It used to be this huge bulky thing that had to live on a countertop somewhere, and now that it’s cloudbased, it doesn’t have to be. It can be on a phone. It can be on a small tablet. It can be in a number of places, and I think that untethering is the big innovation over the past few years.”
And there’s more to come, according to POS Nation’s “5 Convenience Store Trends To Help You Thrive in 2025” report.
“Gone are the days of juggling separate inventory, payroll and reporting tools. One behind-the-scenes convenience store trend is switching to a centralized system that handles sales, staffing and ordering into
Retailers Are Ready for a POS Update
One in four convenience retailers are planning to upgrade their POS system in the next two years, according to a survey conducted by Dover Fueling Solutions (DFS) in partnership with NACS Research. Among retailers with 10 or fewer stores, the number jumps to 30%.
Scott Negley, senior director of product management at DFS, said the findings are “a reflection of a couple of different things that we’re seeing now. … I think the direction we’re seeing from the larger players, they want to be able to do things with a little bit more flexibility, with a little bit more control and speed.”
In addition, retailers are eager to move away from maintaining or adding more hardware, preferring virtual programs over on-premise devices.
“[They want] those applications up in the cloud so that [they’re] not as affected by potential issues with hardware disruption or systems going down,” he said. “More importantly, if I’m cloud-based, I’m a little bit more nimble when it comes to fixing something that may have gone awry, so my uptime [is better].”
The survey also found that retailers are on the hunt for easy-to-learn and easy-to-use POS systems. When it comes to choosing their next POS solution, one characteristic trumps everything: ease of use.
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a single dashboard, giving owners real-time visibility into daily operations,” noted the report.
“That’s the way POS is going to go,” Wade agreed. “We’re centralizing the business logic in a way that allows us to deploy technology at the point of interaction.”
Scott Negley, senior director of product management at Dover Fueling Solutions said the “significant push” toward virtualization will speed this centralization. “Retailers are asking how they can become less reliant on hardware, on-premise-type devices,” he said.
That’s one of the reasons Dover, a longtime provider of fuel dispensers, got back into the POS business with its 2024 acquisition of Toronto-based Bulloch, a leading supplier of POS and related digital solutions for the convenience retail industry in Canada.
“We’re very excited to be able to do things that maybe we couldn’t before. [We now have] the opportunity to control the entire forecourt transaction from the point-of-sale out to the dispensers,” said Negley.
This consolidation of entry points will increasingly allow retailers easier access to manage pricing, transaction data, loyalty and marketing campaigns.
“That’s what we’re seeing,” Negley said. “[Retailers are asking]: How do I make sure I can sync two applications or two platforms [to] deploy a campaign faster, with more control and more reliability?”
Regardless of retailers’ desire, Cameron again comes back to the idea that any successful innovation must have the consumer in mind. “The [innovations] that have worked well were the ones that complemented the way customers shopped—they didn’t ask the customer to change too much.”
READY FOR REVOLUTION?
So when will the next great POS update happen? It’s happening right now, in real time, and at all times.
The way we shop today in a store is largely the same way we shopped in a store 50 years ago … you grab your item, you walk to the front counter and you get checked out.
And it’s a good thing. Budget-wise, adopting a new POS system is a costly affair. Realistically, a retailer isn’t going to make that investment more than once or twice a decade.
Still, 25% of retailers plan to upgrade their POS system in the next two years, according to a retailer survey conducted by Dover Fuels Solutions in partnership with NACS Research. And with artificial intelligence accelerating the pace of innovation, the challenge for retailers is deciding whether a solution can be as simple as hanging a new app on the existing tech stack or if it needs to invest in a completely new system.
“You don’t want a system that’s going to be a white elephant in two or three years,” Negley said. “There’s a lot to consider: Does it support a virtual, containerized solution? Will you be able to update as needed?”
Those were among the goals for Tennessee-based Weigel’s when it invested in the new NCR Voyix Edge system in 2024.
Faced with hardware reliability issues, slow loyalty transaction speeds and the challenge of integrating new technologies, Weigel’s sought a “hardware agnostic” virtualized POS systems, according to supplier NCR Voyix.
“NCR Voyix Edge’s agile infrastructure and hardwareagnostic approach enabled us to run their latest POS software on our existing Verifone hardware, delivering enhanced resilience and the agility to elevate the customer experience,” said Michael Bee, director of IT, Weigel’s. As a result, “Loyalty transactions are easily 40% faster.”
Huck’s Market, which has 135 locations across the Midwest, deployed Tote’s AI point-of-sale platform at its flagship location in Carmi, Illinois, in early 2026, with plans for a rapid chain-wide rollout by the end of the year.
“Huck’s invests heavily in clean, modern store environments, and the old system didn’t reflect that. Managers noted the new POS is a clear departure from something that felt like it was from a past era,” said Murat Tokad, president and CEO of Martin & Bayley Inc., parent company of Huck’s Market.
Managers at Huck’s Market have reported that clearer transaction guidance, including improved visibility into EBT-eligible items, was a meaningful day-to-day improvement that reduces confusion for both staff and customers.
“Both the POS and self-checkout clearly display how much of a transaction is EBT-eligible, which cuts down on confusion at the register. Managers flagged this as one of several surprise-and-delight moments they’ve encountered so far,” Tokad said.
Fewer boutique applications. More cross-functionality. Ease of use. These are the things retailers want out of their point-of-sale systems today, and slowly, they’re getting it.
That’s the next great POS update.
Steve Holtz (Steve@HoltzMC.com) is a c-store journalist with more than 20 years in the industry and president of Holtz Media Consulting.
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networking and insights from industry leaders. Here are some of the highlights. and what’s at the core of convenience retail.
LOOKING FORWARD TO THE FUTURE
In January, Amazon announced it would close all of its Amazon Fresh and Amazon Go just-walk-out locations. To Gleeson, that’s a sign that people are still the most important part of the store.
“The first time I visited an Amazon Go, I thought, ‘There’s no service in this. There’s no warmth. It’s just a transaction. I could do this online,’” he said. “I also think Amazon didn’t understand retailing at a local level. You can’t get away from our ability to understand our local customers and then cater to their needs.”
Gleeson, who is in his first year leading NACS, outlined his key areas of focus:
• Foodservice: “We are a threat to QSRs, because as an industry we’ve got the locations and the service. They have been losing ground, especially on price.”
• Advocacy: “I think this year could be a breakthrough year for the Credit Card Competition Act (CCCA). The NACS
“We are the only industry that actually sells a concept called convenience. That is true today, it was true 20 years ago and it will be true 20 years from now.
As you think about your businesses, think about the consumer and how we can support their needs at different times.”
—Frank Gleeson, president and CEO of NACS
government relations team has done a phenomenal job the past 20 years to position us for this moment. But it won’t happen without everybody in our industry participating and advocating.” The CCCA, which has bipartisan support, was recently endorsed by President Trump and was then reintroduced in Congress.
• Technology: “With technology, we want to make sure we are future-proofing the industry and moving at pace,” said Gleeson. Three programs from NACS could be key to this: Thrivr (convenience.org/thrivr), TruAge (mytruage.org), and Prospr, a digital coupon program.
“We’re thinking about how we can improve 1%, and when you aggregate those, then you become 10% or 20% better. Those small things will matter,” said Gleeson.
THE OXXO WAY
FEMSA opened its first OXXO store in Mexico in 1978 and now has over 35,000 locations in 19 countries. In 2024, FEMSA announced it would bring OXXO to the United States with the acquisition of Delek’s DK stores.
OXXO didn’t start as a convenience retail success story. It started as an experiment that took more than 20 years to figure out, said Constantino Spas Montesinos , Americas and mobility director at FEMSA.
FEMSA started as a brewery in the 1890s. “Mexico is a market of a lot of exclusivity, and a lot of regional brand loyalty and protection,” said Montesinos. The brewery needed a way to distribute more widely and was looking for a non-traditional route that would allow it to break through the high number of distributors in the country. Enter the concept of running a c-store.
“They said, ‘Why don’t we showcase how to execute our brands at the point of sale? Now, that’s definitely not a customer-centric approach, and it didn’t work,” said Montesinos. After 20 years, OXXO’s growth was stalled at 1,000 stores.
“But FEMSA’s leaders have a long-term, generational view. They knew there was an opportunity, so they continued to iterate, and finally recognized that in order to grow and to serve the customers better, they had to shift to truly understanding the consumer and start to adjust their value proposition along those lines.”
OXXO’s growth took off when it shifted from selling products to solving everyday pain points, Montesinos said.
Winning Offers That Work
“We recognize that every market is completely different. That no matter how much success we’ve had in the past, when we enter a new geography and a new context, it’s basically starting from zero. We learn about the consumers, their shopping patterns, their path of purchase in every single shopping mission and the idiosyncrasies of the local culture. We have to understand how we can add value to the communities while also being faithful to our company beliefs,” said Constantino Spas Montesinos, Americas & mobility director at FEMSA.
15 MILLION
The number of global customers OXXO serves each day
5
The number of new stores OXXO opens each day
The company focuses on four success pillars:
1. A customer-centric, layered value proposition as a differentiator: “One thing that characterizes us is that we’re constantly working to identify what is the next layer of value that we can add to the customer,” said Montesinos.
One example of this is that OXXO offers extensive bill pay and financial services, effect ively functioning as a banking access point in underbanked communities. “If you add ... all of the bank branches in Mexico, it’s not even half of the stores that we have in Mexico. So [OXXO stores] have become a place of convergence, not only for our traditional merchandise, but also for many other things,” Montesinos said. “And we continue to identify what services we can offer and what type of pain points can be solved for the community in our stores. Most of them are non-fuel stores, so they’re neighborhood stores.”
• Brazil: Displaying fresh-baked bread in store windows and replicating café culture helps OXXO compete with traditional bakeries.
• Chile: Ultra-small format locations in train stations cater to on-the-go customers.
• Colombia: OXXO stores here focus more heavily on foodservice, coffee and bakery programs. They offer indoor and outdoor seating and Wi-Fi.
2. Operational excellence in systems and processes at scale: “Everything is standardized, everything is measured, there are no deviations. This drives a lot of consistent execution across such a wide network,” said Montesinos.
3. The “store factory” mindset: OXXO’s underlying growth strategy focuses on the idea that a repeatable system allows it to open high-quality, standardized stores quickly and at scale.
4. Culture as infrastructure: Culture is embedded into OXXO’s processes, and its leadership believes the systems don’t work without the culture, and vice versa. Montesinos said FEMSA’s leaders create an environment of trust, collaboration and local empowerment that mobilizes the organization toward growth.
“Every new market and format adds learnings and capabilities that enhance our network and our platform. Our approach [as a company] going forward is based on four elements: humility to learn, flexibility to adapt, patience for the long term and conviction to win. At FEMSA, growth is a mindset, not a milestone.”
—Constantino Spas Montesinos, Americas and mobility director, OXXO
While it is the dominating brand in Mexico, FEMSA learned that scaling a concept globally doesn’t always translate across geographies. When it initially expanded into Colombia in 2009, its first country outside of Mexico, it tried to replicate the model exactly—the same systems, pricing, structure, processes and products. The result was years of stalled growth.
“Nothing happened for many years until we learned and understood that each market has particular idiosyncrasies, processes, etc. The value proposition for the consumers needs to be different,” said Montesinos. “We needed to start understanding and finding the right balance between what makes us successful at the core and what can make a store successful in one particular market.” The brand is consistent—but the mission, food, products and components of the business model change by market, he said.
USING AI VS. DOING AI
Sol Rashidi, an AI expert and consultant, emphasized that “using AI” and “doing AI” are not the same thing. Your company could have 500 Microsoft Copilot licenses, and that could certainly help your employees in their day-to-day work.
“But could you imagine measuring productivity on how many emails you wrote faster? That’s using AI,” she said. Doing AI is harder. It’s a shift that requires organizational redesign and change management, not just introducing new tools. Doing AI “requires you to take your function, your role, tasks and subtasks, and identify what should be outsourced to any number of AI mechanisms versus what fundamentally requires human judgment and discernment.”
One of the areas where she said companies trip up most often: deciding what use cases should be AI-led and which should be human-led and AI supported. “It’s a distinction that makes a massive difference in your approach,” Rashidi said.
Additionally, AI solutions should match the complexity of the business problem you’re trying to solve, and one of the biggest mistakes companies make is using AI just for AI’s sake.
“If my problem is to cut a piece of paper in half, why on earth would I introduce a chainsaw into the mix if scissors do the job? Guess what? A lot of things don’t necessarily need artificial intelligence. There’s amazing tech from the past 30 years that solves the problem, but sometimes we get stuck in the shiny toy syndrome. Don’t overcomplicate a situation if you don’t have to,” she said.
Successful AI implementation requires two non-negotiables, she said. First, good data governance and smart AI security both protect data and can prevent runaway costs, errors and unintended agent behavior. Second, workforce preparation is essential. This means making sure employees are truly AI literate, not just giving your people a quick training session.
“Pushing AI into production is not what will determine your success. It’s the adoption that determines your success,” she said.
For more about agentic AI and how it could transform the convenience retail business, check out “ The Rise of Agentic AI ” on page 52.
“[Up to] 88% of companies right now are stopping, pausing, canceling or rethinking their AI deployments at the proof-of-concept level. We are still learning. We are still figuring this out. But I encourage you all not to ignore AI at this point in time. It’s going to impact us generationally.”
—Sol Rashidi, AI expert and consultant
WHAT’S FUELING THE INDUSTRY?
Fuel is still driving (and funding) the c-store business.
“In NACS State of the Industry research, the profitability of the forecourt always stands out every year, and that’s not talked about enough. It’s not as sexy as foodservice or AI, but ... that’s where the money comes from,” said Jeff Burrell, vice president of retail engagement, research and education at NACS.
Here’s how two retailers shape their fuel strategy to remain competitive:
ALIMENTATION COUCHE-TARD/CIRCLE K
Circle K sells 42 million gallons of fuel per day across its more than 17,000 global sites. “Fuel is critical to our business. Fuel is 49% of Circle K’s gross profit overall—our biggest category.
It’s a main driver of traffic into our stores,” said Casey Thomas, head of North America supply at Alimentation Couche-Tard.
Circle K has centralized its fuel operations globally to manage supply, pricing, logistics, fuel marketing and B2B sales, allowing the company to drive efficiency and scale, Thomas described.
“In the U.S., that’s largely through pipeline terminals. We now own five terminals in the U.S. For a long time, we were heavily branded, which meant that we didn’t participate much in the supply chain. In an unbranded world that we’re growing into, there are more options for supply, though there’s more risk in terms of the availability of that supply by region,” said Thomas.
“We are starting to add bulk supply and ship our own product. It’s all about how do we find that next incremental value?”
GLOBAL PARTNERS
Global Partners is one of the largest independent owners, operators and suppliers to retail and convenience stores. It supplies approximately 1,700 fueling locations, operates more than 200 company-owned sites and operates 55 liquid energy terminals with approximately 22 million barrels of storage capacity, said Jeff Mansfield, vice president, branded wholesale supply at Global Partners. Its strategy centers around vertical integration, which allows it to manage volatility, understand regional demand and optimize margins by aligning wholesale, retail and terminal operations.
“Our strategy has been ‘buy, integrate and optimize.’ Optimization is what I focus the most on. A lot of it goes back to understanding what your competitive landscape looks like, knowing what the logistics are or what the next best alternatives are,” he said. “We have to have the right allocation, the right cost and the right relationships. … I think if you have those three things, you can have success.”
Lauren Shanesy is a writer and editor at NACS.
Jeff Burrell of NACS (left) speaks with Casey Thomas from Circle K (center) and Jeff Mansfield (right) of Global Partners at the 2026 NACS Leadership Forum.
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The Rise of
AGENTIC AI
The 2026 Conexxus Annual Conference posed the question: What does it look like if stores can think for themselves?
BY LAUREN SHANESY
Everyone has had a day at work where they wished they could replicate themselves. Or replicate their top employee. Agentic AI may be the next best thing.
Essentially, AI agents can act autonomously without human oversight, acting within parameters humans have set for them. They “use AI techniques to make decisions, take actions and achieve goals,” said Bradford Loewy, director of product solutions at Bulloch Technologies, during a panel at the 2026 Conexxus Annual Conference in January.
Here’s an example from Clerley Silveira, engineering manager at Invenco by GVR. Today, generative AI can help you plan a vacation by giving you a suggested day-by-day
Agentic AI has transformative capabilities, but speakers at Conexxus made one thing clear: We shouldn’t automate just for automation’s sake.
itinerary with possible flights, timelines, activities, places to stay or eat and other logistics. Agentic AI will go a step further. Based on the preferences or rules you give it, it will go ahead and make the bookings for you.
“Once we are at that stage, where you no longer have to take the action yourself, that’s when we’re going to have a true agentic AI. And that is what’s going to be really transformative,” said Silveira.
The Agentic Store of the Future
What does agentic AI mean in a c-store?
Many operators might already be using AI for automation. An example is a forecasting report for inventory that helps optimize what to order and when. A human still has to place the order. Or maybe your AI software can already place orders for you based on reorder triggers, but it can’t take other factors into account and adjust orders accordingly based on shifting dynamics such as weather, events, promotions or supply chain disruptions that are programmed into your system.
“Where agentic AI really starts to play into it is when it makes these tasks become menial. These processes that we count on, the agent can start to take over those for us,” said Michael Munz, marketing operations manager at Petrosoft.
FUEL
On the forecourt and in underground tank storage, Jack Dickinson, director of partner development at Dover Fueling Solutions, said operators are working on both reactive and preventative agents that can start responding to today’s automated systems.
Conexxus is a non-profit organization that sets convenience industry technology standards and defines strategic technology roadmaps to navigate the evolving retail environment, ensuring your operations stay ahead in the competitive landscape. To learn more about Conexxus and how you can get involved, visit conexxus.org or reach out to Linda Toth, executive director of Conexxus, at ltoth@ conexxus.org.
“Think about managing leaks. Now you can look at meters, what’s in the tanks, and look at deliveries coming in and fuel going out. You can do that today and be reactive,” said Dickinson, but the future might hold automated dispatching. Imagine an agent that knows the location and schedules of technicians and can reroute as new priorities evolve.
Even better, imagine an agent that knows everything on a technician’s vehicle and can route according to what parts are likely to be needed at what location.
“Preventative and operational efficiencies can really be automated. You can allow the systems to start making decisions and plug into other aspects of your operations and your systems that they’re not connected to today,” said Dickinson.
INVENTORY MANAGEMENT
“Inventory today is a living system,” said Petrosoft’s Munz. “It’s tied to supply chain realities, seasonal patterns, customer demands, in-store loyalty, manufacturer loyalty, incentives, and increasingly things like shrinkflation and tariffs.”
“AI follows rules. It triggers automations based on learned and trained context, and that’s where we’re going to have to start to do our biggest amount of work in training
For a consumer-facing industry that touches millions of customers every day, using AI as part of core business infrastructure changes the risk profile of the business.
AI agents. AI will need to understand patterns, predict outcomes, adjust actions accordingly,” Munz said. “So instead of restocking and forecasting just because something hits a number, agentic AI is going to be able to take [everything into
consideration]. It might delay or accelerate an order because it detects a coming promotion, a weather event or a shifting customer demand due to shrinkflation or pricing sensitivities.”
FOODSERVICE
Foodservice is one of the most complex operations in retail, said Mike Weber, chief growth officer at Upshop. Many operators are still managing foodservice with spreadsheets, mental math and yesterday’s sales. As margins tighten and labor pressure increases, that approach is becoming unsustainable, he said.
“This method puts the onus on your team to make so many daily decisions in a
The Next Generation of Security
Without strong security and governance, AI is not innovation, it’s exposure, said J.B. Branch, a big tech accountability advocate focusing on consumer rights and data privacy at Public Citizen.
For a consumer-facing industry that touches millions of customers every day, using AI as part of core business infrastructure changes the risk profile of the business. “When failures happen, you lose consumer trust,” he warned. “We want to scale AI innovation. It is a positive thing, but you don’t want to erode consumer trust.”
“As we increasingly move towards agentic AI,” he said, “you will have one company with thousands of AI agents and another company with thousands of AI agents that are going to be interacting with one another in cyberspace without much human oversight. And that is concerning if harms or errors happen.”
One of Branch’s strongest cautions was around vendors and data sharing. He urged retailers to understand where their data is stored, which vendors can access it and whether it’s reused to retrain models.
Before deploying AI, Branch said retailers should consider:
• Defining data boundaries (what data AI can and cannot touch)
• Locking down vendor contracts (data use, retention and server location)
• Planning for failure at scale, not just edge cases
• Maintaining human accountability
“You need clear internal rules on what data you’re using, how long you retain it and what it’s used for,” he said.
Putting Yourself Out of Business
(in a Good Way)
Having started on the frontlines of his family business, Frank Gleeson, CEO and president of NACS, has a motto: “If you’re not serving the customer, you’re serving someone who is.”
During his Conexxus keynote address on innovation and technology in convenience, he drove home the point that frontline store employees have the hardest job in the organization—and innovation and technology that don’t make their work easier will fail.
“Technology is a huge enabler,” he said. “As you think about tech, it’s got to be about making things easier and removing friction.”
Better technology leads to better service, not fewer people.
The best technology tools, he said, simplify tasks instead of layering on new steps, reduce cognitive load on employees and eliminate unnecessary manual work and redundancies.
In his years as president and CEO of Aramark Northern Europe, he recalled working with a computer-vision self-checkout company in its nascent stages and implementing it in sports stadiums. “It was quite transformative at the time, and we knew that we were looking for something that would make [checking out] easier and faster for our customers, especially for high-volume outlets or outlets where our labor costs were particularly high.”
Importantly, this is not about reducing headcount, he said. Better technology leads to better service, not fewer people. When tools do their job well, employees can focus on what only humans do well.
With successful innovation comes failure— not all ideas are going to work, and they don’t always work quickly. Referencing the
self-checkout example, Gleeson told the audience that the deployment took years, not months, to roll out at scale. “And we tried a lot of other new technologies in stadiums that just weren’t successful.”
His advice to retailers when innovating: test small, fail fast and scale only what creates repeat behavior.
In a Q&A with panelists Chris Bambury, president at Bambury Inc.; Lonnie McQuirter, director of operations at 36 Lyn Refuel Station; Varish Goyal, CEO of Vintners Distributors, Au Energy and Loop Neighborhood Markets; and Jigar Patel, vice president of SAASOA USA and CEO at Fastime, the group pointed to examples of where technology delivers real value for operators:
• Mobile ordering and pickup that actually saves time
• Seamless car wash and fuel experiences
• Touchless entry points and payment flows
• Technology that quickly allows customers to customize their orders
• AI-assisted checkout that speeds transactions
• Automated cleaning and maintenance that frees staff for service
Innovation isn’t always about novelty or being first to market. Instead, it’s about introducing the right technologies that solve the right problem to transform a business.
Twenty-five years ago, the late Steve Sheetz, former president, CEO and chairman of the board at Sheetz, said his vision was to create a version of Sheetz that would put the Sheetz he led out of business.
“How would you put yourself out of business [today] if you were to innovate and grow?” asked Gleeson.
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short amount of time while under a lot of pressure,” Weber said. “The computer should be focusing on those things that can become automated so that your team can focus on what’s more meaningful.” Foodservice involves “thousands and thousands of smaller decisions” that can be taken off your team’s plate so they can focus on elevating performance and customer service.
Weber said that in foodservice operations, AI should be tracing all ingredients from the minute they come in the door, helping operators decide how much food to produce by location and daypart, tracking waste, guiding teams on how to drive markdowns and forecasting inventory needs for the next few days up through a few weeks out.
He said store-level demand forecasting is the most realistic and impactful starting point for AI in foodservice. “There is the opportunity to get up to 98% or 99% accuracy, which will mean you have extremely efficient stores.”
We have, and I can’t emphasize this enough, a freight train coming down the tracks called agentic shopping.
Once agentic AI is turned on and connected to forecasting systems, it will be able to make even better recommendations and optimize foodservice operations. “You can train your agent to focus on your most key metrics so that it is actually anticipating what should change in each of your stores based on the signals that it sees. If the agent keeps seeing a recurring pattern from a supplier, from a forecast or from behaviors in the market, it’s going to start prompting new recommendations,” Weber said.
MOBILITY COMMERCE
If you ask Gray Taylor, former executive director at Conexxus, what will define the future of convenience, there is one answer: mobility commerce, and agentic AI is the powering force.
Your car will serve as a connected piece of the convenience ecosystem—you can ask it
to stop for gas at your favorite store, create a mobile foodservice order or purchase a pack of cigarettes while it verifies your age. Your car will know your loyalty app and be able to pay for all these products before you arrive. License plate recognition technology will log your car at the pump.
But there’s a lot of work that comes with bringing this to fruition.
“We have, and I can’t emphasize this enough, a freight train coming down the tracks called agentic shopping. It’s being driven by the ability of consumers to find you online, of systems knowing your real-time inventory and what you have in the store and your pricebook,” said Taylor. “And AI will be making pragmatic decisions for the consumer, to go to this store I can make two right-hand turns, but to go to my favorite store I need to make two left turns. AI will start deciding that and learning preferences. So we have a big job ahead of us and its going to be a huge operational challenge.”
The Human Touch
Agentic AI has transformative capabilities, but speakers at Conexxus made one thing clear: We shouldn’t automate just for automation’s sake. “There’s a point where automation becomes counterproductive, especially when it overrides store-level judgment. That’s a human level thing, and we need to value it,” said Petrosoft’s Munz.
Retailers who succeed will be the ones that understand what to automate, what to protect and where humans must remain central in order to protect consumer trust.
“Retailers that win will be those who deploy the tech with clarity, balancing automation with human oversight to build trust by preparing for the risks and evolving guidelines, and recognizing that inventory is just one piece of a much larger AI-powered e-commerce platform,” said Munz. “The power of inventory in agentic AI is what everybody in this room thinks is going to be easy and it’s not. It’s about trust.”
Lauren Shanesy is a writer and editor at NACS.
Who’s Buying Your Gas?
And more importantly, why?
This is the first of a five-part series that explores exclusive NACS consumer data. To kick things off, Jeff Lenard of NACS looks at why, and where, customers decide to refuel.
BY JEFF LENARD
The need to refuel drives trips to convenience store forecourts—no surprises there. But what about going inside the store? Turns out, according to the 2026 NACS consumer survey, customers like to do both. Nearly two in three consumers (62%) say they went inside the last time they bought gas, with refueling being the main reason for their trip (72%).
These findings are in line with the 2025 NACS Convenience Voices program, which captures real-time insights from daily c-store shoppers while they are physically on-site at a convenience store: More than three quarters (76.2%) of refueling customers say they will go into the store on some of their visits, but not all.
Both surveys have significant value for understanding c-store shopper behaviors. For this article, and the subsequent four that will follow in future issues of NACS Magazine, we’re diving into the latest insights from this year’s NACS consumer survey.
Over the past 20 years, this survey has asked consumers about specific actions they take at convenience stores, including their journey to the store, on the forecourt and inside the store.
WHO IS THE AVERAGE GAS-BUYING CUSTOMER?
Roughly three in four consumers (72%) are frequent customers, meaning they shop at a c-store at least monthly. Men are more likely than women to shop at a c-store at least multiple times per week (34% vs. 22%), which is the widest gap recorded in the survey’s 20-year history. One in 11 consumers say they visit a convenience store every day.
HOW OFTEN CONSUMERS SHOP AT A C-STORE
9% Daily
24% Multiple times a week
21% Once or twice a week
18% Once or twice a month
72% shop at least once a month
19% Less than once or twice a month
8% Never
As mentioned, refueling is the main reason consumers come to the store. Frequent customers were the group most likely to cite a beverage purchase as the main reason for their visit (28%), while people ages 18 to 34 were the group most likely to seek out a store for a food purchase (40%). Most consumers who stop to refuel do so at least weekly (40%) or biweekly (28%).
Most consumers say they prefer to stop at convenience stores when they need to refuel (79%)—a drop of six percentage points from 2025.
WHERE CUSTOMERS BUY GAS
22%
Service/ Gas-only station
21%
Big-box retailer (i.e., Costco or Walmart)
57%
Convenience store
The most likely consumer subsets to purchase fuel from a big-box retailer are age 65 and older (38% of this cohort, a 16-point increase from last year) and those in the West (25%, a 3-point increase), a region that traditionally has the highest average gas prices in the United States.
MOST PLANS TO REFUEL ARE PREMEDITATED
Convenience stores are known for their immediate consumption items. About 80% of items purchased in a convenience store are consumed within the hour, according to NACS research.
But even though most purchases are addressing an immediate need—hunger, thirst or a low fuel tank—that doesn’t mean that the trip wasn’t planned. Increasingly, consumers are making their buying decisions not based on where they are on the road in relation to a convenient righthand turn into a c-store, but well before that.
Overall, three in four consumers say that they plan out their c-store visits —the rest consider their stops “spontaneous,” which suggests they decided to stop when they saw a store on their route or an advertisement or offer that motivated them to stop.
TRIPS TO THE C-STORE ARE
29% Planned
47% Sometimes planned
24% Spontaneous
76% plan their visits
16% of consumers say that they see sales, deals or discounts “very often.”
GAS PRICE AND ‘DEALS’ ATTRACT CUSTOMERS
Although average gas prices nationwide began 2026 at a comparatively low $2.80—25 cents lower than 2025— customers will seek the best gas price they can find.
Talking to customers about prices and deals starts with your loyalty program. Among c-store loyalty program members, more than half (53%) say they are more likely to shop at a c-store because of its loyalty program. Women are slightly more likely than men to say they are more likely to shop at a c-store because they are a member of its loyalty program (55% vs. 51%), and those 18 to 34 years old are the cohort more likely to shop at the store (59%) because of a loyalty program.
Only 16% of consumers say that they see sales, deals or discounts “very often” when shopping at convenience stores. And, they say that sales, deals and discounts are much more common in competing channels. Those who may be attuned to saving money, such as those age 65 or older, are least likely to say convenience stores offer deals.
About the NACS Consumer Survey
Charts and insights are based on a national survey of 1,207 consumers conducted January 30-February 6, 2026, for NACS by national public opinion research firm Bold Decision (bold-decision. com). In some cases, total may not add up to 100% because of rounding.
PERCEPTION OF WHICH OUTLET HAS MORE SALES, DEALS AND DISCOUNTS
C-stores vs. grocery stores
C-stores vs. fast-food restaurants
FINAL THOUGHTS … FOR NOW
Economic concerns are always top of mind with consumers. For c-stores, that puts the focus on overall value. Customers make buying decisions before they even get in the car, whether that’s for fuel or food. Retailers who win in this environment are the ones that best communicate their offer via their digital presence, whether online or via a loyalty app, to get customers onto the forecourt and inside the store. Future coverage of this five-part series will look at how consumers define convenience, the conveniences they expect from c-stores, important elements of customer service and attitudes and actions related to food.
Jeff Lenard is the NACS vice president of media and strategic communications.
OWL™ Technology utilizes advanced solutions to empower operators, prioritizing customerdirected creative control. This integrated solution allows you to fully manage point-of-sale systems, network design, digital signage, advertising and audio with centralized control and realtime analytics.
A Smarter Way to Run Fuel and Energy Operations
A single, unified software platform offers operators visibility into their sites—along with details on how to fix any problems that arise.
C-store operators face tight margins, lean teams and rising expectations for uptime—from dispensers and in-store equipment to EV charging. When assets go down, the costs show up fast in lost gallons, missed trips and higher service spend. Titan Cloud helps retailers connect maintenance, compliance, fuel analytics and supply planning in one platform. NACS Media spoke with Adi Raz, Vice President of Product and Data Science, about what that looks like in practice.
WHAT DOES A MODERN, SCALABLE MAINTENANCE APPROACH LOOK LIKE?
A modern approach shifts from reactive firefighting to proactive, planned maintenance. Start with the basics: Schedule preventive work and inspections, and track what’s due, overdue or failed so issues don’t surface too late.
Next, connect the data. Many retailers still manage assets, service calls, vendors and inspection records in separate places, making it hard to see what’s happening across the network. A scalable approach creates one view of asset health, work orders, contractor
performance, response times, downtime and costs—so teams can spot repeat issues and improve over time. Titan Cloud brings fuel and nonfuel maintenance together in one platform, from dispensers and refrigeration to car washes and EV chargers. Finally, focus on patterns. Knowing what fails most often—and where—helps reduce downtime, lower operating costs and drive fewer repeat failures and faster fixes.
WHICH ANALYTICS SHOULD OPERATORS PRIORITIZE?
Operators should prioritize analytics that help them make better decisions every day— not analytics that simply add more data. A good test is: “What changed, what matters and what should I do next?” If analytics don’t answer that, they’re not doing their job. That’s why exception-based reporting matters. Most operators don’t need a screen full of numbers—they need the few alerts that truly count, like unusual consumption, unexpected inventory movement or equipment behavior that signals a problem. When analytics surface the right exceptions, teams can focus fast instead of getting buried in noise.
ADI RAZ Vice President of Product & Data Science Titan Cloud
Analytics also need to connect to action. If a dashboard flags an issue but doesn’t trigger a workflow—like creating a work order, routing it to the right person or providing troubleshooting context—it isn’t very useful. Done right, analytics reduce alert fatigue, speed response and help teams stay ahead of downtime and loss.
WHERE DO YOU SEE THE BIGGEST OPPORTUNITIES TO REDUCE RUNOUTS, EMERGENCY DELIVERIES AND INEFFICIENCIES IN FUELING?
It starts with reliable forecasting. Runout prevention depends on understanding demand and adjusting as conditions change. Forecasting doesn’t have to be complicated, but it should update as new signals come in—so operators can see which tanks are trending toward runout and which sites are at risk.
The second big opportunity is loss and variance detection. Knowing fuel is missing is only step one: operators need to identify why—leak, theft, process gaps or bad data—so they can address root cause and protect margin.
Forecourt performance is another area where small issues become big costs. Slow dispensers, underused nozzles or declining equipment health can hurt throughput and customer experience—insights that help prioritize maintenance where it matters most.
Finally, exceptions should drive action. If a tank hasn’t had transactions in an unusual amount of time, the system should flag it quickly. The biggest value comes when fuel insights connect to maintenance workflows so teams can move from detection to resolution without hunting for answers.
HOW
CAN
RETAILERS AND DISTRIBUTORS IMPROVE FUEL SUPPLY RESILIENCE?
Resilience comes from better visibility and faster decision-making. Supply planning starts with forecasting—because it’s hard to plan deliveries if you don’t trust the demand signal. From there, teams need a way to manage constant change, like shifting
allocations, terminal delays, storms or traffic disruptions that can quickly throw off even a good plan.
Next is making smarter lift decisions: where to buy fuel and when. Titan Cloud’s Best Buy tool helps teams adjust decisions based on pricing, freight, allocations and inventory—so planners aren’t relying on guesswork.
Then comes routing and dispatch. With real-time visibility and optimization, operators can reduce empty miles, use drivers and trucks more efficiently and minimize last-minute changes. If a route is impacted mid-day, teams can adjust faster instead of scrambling.
Across maintenance, fuel analytics and supply planning, the goal is the same: Keep assets running, reduce surprises, and protect margin—without adding complexity or headcount.
“Operators should prioritize analytics that help them make better decisions every day.”
Titan Cloud’s Energy Asset Optimization Platform connects maintenance, compliance, supply and logistics and fuel analytics workflows.
LANDSCAPE GLOBAL TAKES ON THE TECH
The United States is tech-forward, but there are lessons to be learned by taking a global view.
BY LAUREN SHANESY AND LEAH ASH
As Director of NACS Global, Mark Wohltmann has traveled the world and seen convenience stores in dozens of countries. If you ask him, the U.S. is leading the way in technology. It has the most tech implemented in the most number of stores. But there are countries that pull ahead in certain areas—the future of payments, for example, can be found in India, Wohltmann said.
“For every issue and opportunity that you’re working on, everything that you have on your agenda right now, there’s someone somewhere in the world who has already done it—someone who has already implemented it, already thought about it, already tried it, someone who is more advanced than you are. Learn from them,” said Wohltmann during a presentation at the 2026 Conexxus Annual Conference.
“What’s different now isn’t just the technology itself,” said Brian Gray, managing director at Accenture. “It’s the speed.” According to Gray, tech updates that took up to a year to design and deploy can now happen in a matter of weeks. An accelerating rate of change puts the focus squarely on the basics: Your people. “The retailers that will pull ahead are the ones investing in their people as much as their technology,” Gray said, “upskilling their teams while at the same time moving beyond pilots and scaling these capabilities across their network.”
Christian Warning founder and CEO of The Retail Marketeers and a member of the NACS Global Industry Engagement Council, and based in Hamburg, Germany, said technology is “the central lever for both driving sales growth and boosting margins, plus protecting margins on the cost side. You could view tech as a defensive strategy.”
CHRISTIAN WARNING
40-60%
Reduction in fuel drive-offs from LPR
20-35%
Reduction in food waste via AI forecasting
15-25%
Shrink reduction with AI video analytics
1.5%
Estimated sales gain with mobile pay and self-checkout
THE VIEW FROM GERMANY
Home to some of the most successful discount retail models in the world—Aldi and Lidl—Germany has “one of the tightest margins in retail. There are very priceconscious consumers here in Germany, and therefore retailers really consider their cost position before investing, even if it’s an interesting tech.”
European retailers are focused on technology that improves cost and efficiency, and have been implementing AI in operations to reduce waste and maximize labor hours.
“Some of the best examples of this are self-ordering terminals and self-checkout. These have two major impacts: The average basket is higher because people add on more when they’re anonymous and can customize their meal, and customers are also willing to spend more if they use cashless payment. What you’re really doing here is transferring operational processes to the consumer, which reallocates your labor to more effective places,” he said.
Warning said that based on his company’s research, implementing self-checkout can reduce dedicated cashier hours by 2–4%. Self-
which prevents abandoned baskets and can lead to an estimated 0.5–1.5% sales gain.
“I think that’s the most powerful kind of tech use case, because it affects both sides of the P&L,” he said.
Retailers are also increasingly using AI for operations that improve cost and efficiency, such as food waste reduction through demand forecasting, which can reduce food waste by 20-35% according to Warning’s research; automated scheduling, task management, and replenishment systems that can reduce staff hours required for store operation by 5–10%; and loss prevention for both fuel and in store merchandise. License plate recognition and prepay for fuel cuts drive-offs by 40-60%, Warning said. “And AI video analytics integrated with inventory systems are proving effective at reducing shrink by 15-25%.”
AI models for predictive maintenance are widespread in Europe. From coffee machines and car washes to coolers and fuel pumps, “Everything has to be well connected and it has to be working. A dashboard can give retailers different escalation levels and alerts if machines might break,” he said.
Retailers in this region are using technology to unlock “new profit pools,” he said, specifically through loyalty and personalization, subscription models and retail media networks.
A key goal here is creating a frictionless experience for the consumer. Warning pointed to license plate recognition technology that’s popular in Nordic regions,
Everything has to be well connected and it has to be working.
where a system recognizes the vehicles of loyalty customers and can charge their account for fuel. “Car wash is also a really easy place to implement this and pair it with a subscription program. That has an immense margin and it creates the frictionless experience where you just go into the car wash and off you go.”
Warning is also seeing European retailers implement coffee subscriptions with loyalty apps. “That becomes a powerful marketing kit, because we all know that people are in a hurry. If you have them in your loyalty system and can get them to come in on a daily basis, that’s beneficial and the customer satisfaction index is higher.”
One advanced subscription use case Warning noted is from Respol, an energy company in Spain. If customers have the company’s other utilities at home, such as photovoltaic solar panels on their roof, they can get rewards or discounts which are redeemable for filling up cars at Respol gas stations. He said the company already has nearly 10 million users in Spain.
“By having the customer really locked into that system, they’re not driving to competitors to fill up. [Respol] is combining an old energy model with new convenience ideas, and bringing all of it together on a digital backbone.”
MAGNAR M ØKKELGÅRD
230K+
Circle K job applications processed through AI 13%
Circle K’s turnover reduction after using AI hiring tools
THE VIEW FROM NORTHERN EUROPE
“So far, [AI] is all about making the back offices more efficient,” in the Nordic and Baltic countries, said Magnar Møkkelgård, former VP M&A, Reitan, and member of the NACS Global Industry Engagement Council.
Circle K, which operates stores in all Nordic and Baltic countries except Iceland and Finland, won the 2025 NACS Convenience Retail Technology Award Europe, where it was recognized for its AI-powered staff assessment and hiring system—one of the best examples of what Circle K is doing with AI, Møkkelgård said.
The hiring system used AI for candidate evaluations, processing over 230,000 applicants and reducing turnover by 13% at the time of the award.
For Reitan Convenience, with stores throughout the Nordic and Baltic countries, the AI journey began with employees using ChatGPT on their office computers. But its expanding its use of AI—exploring the technology in demand forecasting, security, compliance, staffing and in overall concept development. “When Reitan uses the word ‘concept,’ it encompasses a lot. Not just the store layout, but also the assortment, promotion spaces, customer flow, service— everything, really,” Møkkelgård said.
One Nordic grocery retailer is experimenting with a scan-and-go solution, where customers scan products with their phone, put them into the basket and just walk out. Customers in this region love to use selfcheckout, but scan-and-go is not winning over customers, Møkkelgård noted.
“Trusting in technology—seeing that it really works—it’s difficult [for consumers].
I think that’s why we see that these solutions are not heavily used by the customers,” he said.
THE VIEW FROM ASIA
George Zheng, NACS Asia Pacific director, described AI use in China as both tangible and intangible. The tangible part: Improved versions of delivery robots or robots that can stock shelves. The real excitement, as in other countries, is the intangible use of AI. Zheng noted numerous cloud-based solutions that are being developed and implemented in the country, impacting everything from how to optimize expansion plans to customizing loyalty programs.
30%
Labor cost reduction at Wumart AI powered stores
85%
Shrink reduction at Wumart AI-powered stores
14 AI cameras power Lawson’s Japan store
A tech leader is c-store operator Meiyijia, with over 35,000 locations across China and growing by over 4,000 sites each year. The company partnered with AI-solutions company Huawei Cloud to build an integrated operational network that connects all of its stores under a single platform. AI-based digital assistants can answer customer questions or help them purchase products. When needed, shop owners can even switch to an “unmanned mode,” where the digital assistant looks after the store.
“The AI can’t always read a customer’s emotions or what they mean, so sometimes it gives the wrong answers or will repeat the same sentence over and over,” Zheng said. Meiyijia noted that the accuracy for its digital store assistants is, in many cases, still around 70%, but that the accuracy is gradually increasing.
NACS’ Wohltmann also shared three exciting examples he’s seen recently of advanced tech that “makes stores more efficient, more effective, faster, and ensures [retailers] have all the necessary tools that they need.”
Unmanned stores: Unmanned stores in China have boomed in recent years. They rely on AI and camera technology to support an experience similar to the one at Amazon Go stores. Unmanned stores are great places to collect data, said Wohltmann. “You get all the information. How many people came in—who, when, where did they go? How long did it take them to walk to and from certain areas of the store? How long did they interact with a shelf? How long did they interact with a product? Which product did they take? You get so much data, but you also don’t even need an unmanned store for that. You can just take the technology and use it in your existing physical stores. It’s not about operating as many unmanned stores as possible. It’s about how you get more data,” he said.
Drone delivery: For years, China has been a leader in the “low-altitude” economy— manned and unmanned economic activities occurring in the airspace up to 1,000 meters above ground. Government policy has encouraged growth in this space.
GEORG E ZHENG
MARK WOHLTMANN
Inside the store, 14 AI-powered cameras track items as customers pick them up and digital shelf displays make personalized product recommendations in real time.
Global Tech Leaders
“Industry progress is not only driven by innovative companies, but by the energies, determination and inspiration of the individuals who lead them,” said NACS chairman emeritus and CEO of international Henry Armour at the 2025 NACS Convenience Summit Asia.
Every year, NACS recognizes outstanding achievements and retail excellence in the European and Asian retail communities with the NACS Convenience Retail Awards.
Recognized two years in a row, Korea’s GS25 received the NACS Convenience Innovation of the Year Award in 2026 for its retail media network, GS Retail Media, which integrates in-store and mobile environments into a unified retail media platform powered by AI and first-party data. GS25 Retail Media links in-store ad exposure to real purchase outcomes, enabling a measurable return on ad spend and attention-based performance.
“The fantastic thing here is that the restaurants extend their reach without any additional employees, without any additional infrastructure besides this little receiving box that is being operated by the delivery company,” said Wohltmann.
Zheng noted that the drone infrastructure is “still being developed,” highlighting that drones can take longer for delivery because there isn’t always a dedicated location for a drone to land, and that people in many cases still have to walk to pick up their food from the drone. Zheng anticipates that drone delivery will be most popular longterm in rural or mountainous areas and in emergency scenarios.
Smart sensors: Lawson introduced an AI-powered store in Japan last year, with plans to roll out the tech to other locations. Inside the store, 14 AI-powered cameras track items as customers pick them up and digital shelf displays make personalized product recommendations in real time— as a customer picks up a dessert, the AI recommends a hot coffee to go with it.
It received the NACS Convenience Retail Technology Award Asia-Pacific in 2025 for its smart store format GS25 DX Lab. Customers can purchase products through facial recognition software, receive information on products through their palm print and view customized advertisements based on a person’s gender and age.
Germany-based Q1 Shop & Go won the NACS European Convenience Retail Technology Award in 2024. Q1 Shop & Go is an autonomous AI-based smart store that’s open 24/7. Product selection includes meals and groceries, fresh snacks and sandwiches, chilled drinks and coffee.
Fook Convenience Store won the NACS Convenience Retail Technology Award Asia-Pacific in 2024 for its AI membership marketing system. It uses smart cameras and location sensors to analyze shopping behavior, then pushes personalized ads to customers.
Accenture’s Angle
Chinese supermarket chain Wumart uses sensors from tech company Dmall to track and mitigate theft, make stores more efficient and increase profit, among other operations. In January 2026, Dmall said that by integrating its smart sensor tracking technology with Wumart’s POS data, inventory systems, in-store cameras and AIoT sensors in a 100-store pilot, the retailer saw a daily gross profit uplift of $421 per store, a 30% reduction in labor costs and an 85% decrease in shrink. Additionally, AI-driven energy management cut daily consumption by 26%.
“They measure and monitor everything. Every movement, every interaction,” said Wohltmann. “They can, in real time, analyze whatever is happening in the store. They know exactly how many people to send to which part of the store to restock shelves, to clean up or to help customers. They also have technology for self-scanning to detect fraud.”
Sensors of this magnitude might be “a bit overkill” for the average convenience store, he said, but the technology has proven to have a positive impact on operations.
“By applying AI as an operating intelligence foundation, the partnership demonstrates how thousands of daily microdecisions can be governed, coordinated and executed with consistency at scale,” said Dmall in a statement.
“It’s almost impossible to sit down with a c-level executive without AI coming up in the first few minutes of the conversation,” said Brian Gray, managing director, Accenture. And it’s not just talk. Retailers are investing real dollars—with the aim of returning real value. Gray’s seen a shift in the past year and a half away from a technology-as-innovation mindset and towards a paradigm where all tech investments have to drive incremental EBITDA.
He points to three essential drivers: Changing consumer expectations, as c-store customers increasingly expect the same level of tech they encounter at QSRs or other outlets; pressure on margins; and the need to adapt to operational complexity, including “matching the right talent with the right role.”
While the exact use cases of AI rapidly evolve, here are some areas where Gray reports that retailers are investing:
• Employee productivity
• AI camera and voice analytics
• Operational control centers (OCC): “Retailers globally are mobilizing operational control centers that provide real-time visibility across their network, with AI alerts to identify anomalies, performance issues and risks,” Gray said.
• Merchandising optimization
• Digital store operations: The goal here is to optimize labor through “better scheduling tools, leveraging sensors to automatically trigger tasks and maintenance alerts, using AI assistants to support store teams, and automating processes or transitioning them to shared services models to improve efficiency,” Gray said.
• IT software development
• Call center optimization
• Marketing and sales support: AI can unlock personalization.
BRIAN GRAY
Lauren Shanesy is a writer and editor at NACS.
Leah Ash is a writer and editor at NACS.
Cool New Products Guide
This advertorial-style guide of services and packaging appears monthly and is an information-packed tour of ideas and approaches that can change how consumers view your store or choose your brand. It spotlights the newest thinking in convenience and fuel retailing and gives you an advance look at ways of staying in front of industry trends. Products are categorized the same way we organize the Cool New Products Preview Room at the NACS Show each year in October— New Design, New to the Industry, New Flavors, Health & Wellness, Green (EcoFriendly), New Services and New Technology Products are considered “new” this year if they’ve been introduced since October 2025. The products featured here also can be seen in the Cool New Products Discovery Center at www.convenience.org/coolnewproducts
GOYA® Plantain Chips are a proven favorite—and now we’re turning up the flavor and formats. Alongside our classic chips, we’re introducing bold Latin-inspired varieties and new formats like resealable tubs and crunchy strips. Made with high-quality plantains, they deliver the authentic taste shoppers crave. Stock up and let the snacking begin.
Contact your GOYA representative or email salesinfo@goya.com Trade.goya.com
Ready to Taste the Ultimate Remix? Welch’s® Fusions™ deliver a taste adventure where two delicious fruits come together in every piece – one flavor on the chewy fruit snack outside and another flavor in the juicy center!
Fusions™ comes in 3 deliciously unique varieties: Original Fruits, NEW Citrus Surge, and NEW Tropical Tornado. They’re made with No Artificial Dyes or Flavors.
Experience the FUSION in Every Bite!™
Mike’s Hot Honey
Mike’s Hot Honey Syrup
The Kick Customers Crave
Infuse your favorite beverages with the signature sweet heat of Mike’s Hot Honey. Crafted with our iconic chili-infused honey, this syrup adds a delicious kick to coffee & tea, frozen drinks, cocktails, & mocktails. Whether it’s specialty coffee drinks, delicious lemonades & iced teas, or healthy smoothies, Mike’s Hot Honey syrup elevates every day beverage offerings. Mike’s Hot Honey is for more than just pepperoni pizza and fried chicken; join the sweet heat craze today. Request a sample and get more info on Mike’s Hot Honey Syrup from our website!
NACS: National Association of Convenience Stores
Talent Insights Dashboard
Industry-Specific HR Data
NACS Research just launched the latest retailer data on HR benchmarks across compensation, turnover, and benefits from 2025 employer-reported numbers. Access an interactive dashboard for data across 39 job titles and every company class size. Download the aggregated data from the Dashboard for your own custom analyses built on convenience-specific benchmarks.
Access the data now at convenience.org/talent.
MONSTER ENERGY COMPANY
ULTRA PUNK PUNCH
ZERO SUGAR FLAVOR UNLEASHED
Ultra Punk Punch delivers energy & full flavor benefits without sugar. Consumers can finally partake in this nostalgic flavor profile without the guilt.
Turn online searches into in-store visits and own your digital footprint
If customers can’t find your store online, they’ll find someone else. THRIVR makes it easy to show up and stand out everywhere they search. Manage your online listings, reviews, and social engagement across 130+ platforms like Google and Yelp from one simple tool. Keep your store’s information accurate, response to reviews, and post content to your different social pages from one place. For retailers who want big‑brand digital power at a small‑store price, THRIVR is the essential tool to grow traffic and customer trust. Get a digital health check and see how your store’s online presence measures up.
Learn more at convenience.org/THRIVR.
NACS
THE TATER THAT’S GREATER
Tater Kegs are shredded potato mixed with delicious flavors. All the best parts of a baked potato in the perfect handheld package. From the freezer, to the fryer, to the customer. Serve them in a variety of different ways and in many different applications. Great for to-go. Tater Kegs have a hold time of up to 4 hours under heat lamps. With all the uncertainties in the world today we should be able to be certain that our food always has great flavor, and Tater Kegs provide that comfort in every bite!
Tater Keg flavors include Bacon Cheddar Chive, Cheese Bomb, Bacon Jalapeno, Buffalo Chicken, Crab Feast, Chorizo Burrito, Breakfast Skillet & The Reuben. Request samples today at www.taterkegs.com!
NACS: National Association of Convenience Stores
Convenience Voices
1 in 3 customers choose a location because of the loyalty program
Shopper insights aren’t just data; they’re your roadmap to staying ahead in a fast-changing market. Confidently position your business to meet customer needs by partnering directly with the NACS Director of Research & Development on a custom shopper insights study. With deep expertise in the convenience industry, the NACS Research team will deliver expert analysis and insights into your most pressing business issue within a month. Learn anything from what motivates purchase decisions – or deters them – to how to create experiences that drive loyalty and repeat visits. Book a consultation and discover how NACS Research can unlock your business challenges or go to convenience.org/KnowShoppers to learn more about the program.
Tater Kegs
Stone Gate Foods
The Ebb and Flow of Gasoline Demand
BY JEFF LENARD
U.S. demand has fallen, but it won’t drop as fast as some predict—and worldwide demand is increasing.
At the time this was written, the conflict in the Middle East led to rapidly escalating oil and gas prices because of supply concerns. It is too early to determine how long supply concerns and elevated prices caused by these concerns will persist—and potentially affect demand.
There’s been a lot of talk lately about fuel demand and where it is going— and with good reason. Case in point, here’s a few news reports:
• “Sooner than you think, your city may be down to its last gas station ” (Inside Climate News)
• “Global demand for gasoline hit an all-time high in 2025, defying early bearish forecasts on the back of rising sales of electric vehicles.” (Bloomberg)
The short- and long-term status of fuel demand will affect everyday life greatly, from when and how drivers come to convenience stores, to how auto manufacturers design their next generation of vehicles, and to how planning commissions design and build new housing developments.
GLOBALLY, GAS DEMAND IS UP
Worldwide demand for gasoline is increasing. Europe leads the way in demand, driven by a few factors. First, regulations. Just like the Trump administration has relaxed regulations affecting zero-emissions vehicles, so have some European countries. In addition, European drivers are increasingly seeking gasoline-powered vehicles instead of diesel-powered models. Finally, oil and gasoline prices have fallen. After a big spike in 2022 when Russia invaded Ukraine, fuel efficiency has become less of a priority for drivers purchasing new vehicles.
IN THE U.S., DEMAND IS DOWN
Demand for gasoline in the United States has declined since it hit a record 9.33 million barrels per day in 2018, but the decline
2025
January
February
March
April 8.910
May 9.057
June 9.262
July 9.150
August 9.226
September 8.974
October 8.888
November 8.680
December 8.759
(Source: U.S. Energy Information Administration)
has been relatively slight. The U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA) projects that in 2026, demand will be 8.86 million barrels per day, a 5% drop in demand from the peak.
The growth of electric vehicles is one reason, but may only account for about 2% of the decline. Of the 298.7 million registered vehicles in the United States, about 6 million are EVs.
A bigger factor in declining demand is the fuel efficiency of new vehicles. The fuel economy for model year 2024 passenger vehicles (the latest year available) increased 0.9 mpg to a record 28 miles per gallon, continuing a long-term increase in fuel efficiency. The Ford F-150, the top-selling vehicle in the country, is about 25% more fuel efficient than it was 10 years ago.
Another factor is hybrid vehicles, which provide higher fuel efficiency. Even with these factors impacting gasoline demand, it will be decades before “your city may be down to its last gas station.”
MILES DRIVEN REMAIN THE SAME
While U.S. gasoline demand has decreased over the past eight years, Americans are traveling about the same number of miles. EIA projects that miles traveled will increase 0.4% to
9.101 trillion miles per day in 2026, an increase that is slightly less than the 0.7% increase in registered vehicles. Overall, the average vehicle will travel approximately 30 miles per day in 2026, or roughly 11,100 miles for the year.
DEMAND VARIES BY SEASON, REGION
Typically, U.S. gasoline demand increases during the first half of the year (beginning in February) and peaks in the warmer months. In 2025, that gasoline pattern largely held, with demand peaking in July and August, during peak vacation travel season. Demand in August 2025 was 8.8% higher than in January 2025.
In early 2026, U.S. gasoline demand was sluggish, based on EIA’s weekly numbers, largely as a result of a lingering bitter cold spell and poor road conditions on the East Coast related to an extremely dense snowfall and ice.
As the weather heats up and the summer drive season nears, we can expect driving to pick up considerably in the Midwest and on the East Coast.
However, there are some long-term changes in gasoline demand based on regions. The West Coast (-10%) and East Coast (-6%), which have the highest concentration of EV ownership, both have seen gasoline demand declines over the past eight years that are greater than the national average. Meanwhile, the Gulf Coast area, which has increased in population, has seen an increase in EV demand (+3%).
FINAL THOUGHTS
Gasoline is a critical component of the c-store business, accounting for roughly 41% of overall industry profits, according to the NACS State of the Industry Report® of 2024 Data (2025 data was not available at press time).
With EIA projecting demand overall in 2025 to decline 0.6%, it will be challenging for the estimated 150,000 fueling outlets in the U.S. to maintain their gallons. The path to winning depends on how they combine their offer at the pump and inside the store.
Jeff
Lenard
is the
NACS vice president of media and strategic communications.
The average vehicle will travel approximately 30 miles per day in 2026.
The Community’s Convenience Store
From
chili dogs to shrimp and egg stew, Charlie’s Saint Street Grocery & Deli
doesn’t mess with the
favorites its customers know and love.
BY AL HEBERT
At the corner of Souvenir Gate and St. Patrick Street in Lafayette, Louisiana, sits one of the oldest neighborhood stores around.
“It started out as Bee’s Grocery in 1947. As a matter of fact, it sits on the first lot in this neighborhood. All of the houses here were built around this store,” said owner Charlie Shank.
Shank bought the store in 2024. “I always wanted a little convenience store,” he said. “I changed it a lot. I spruced it up. But I wanted to keep the character of it.”
One thing Shank didn’t change was the store’s menu options. “Why would I change it? When people buy stores or restaurants and change things, they lose loyal customers,” he said. The
previous owner offered the same menu for 27 years.
The store sells about 1,000 chili dogs a month—a success Shank attributes to the chili recipe that came with the store. It’s such a staple that Shank’s 93-yearold mother comes in each Tuesday for a chili dog.
Some menu items have benefitted from a change in ingredients or
Dating to 1947, Charlie’s Saint Street Grocery & Deli is a community staple with the sales to prove it.
‘We’re Part of All This’
When you pull up to the Charlie’s Saint Street Grocery & Deli, you’ll see people walking in from the neighborhood with their dogs and customers pulling up on bikes.
“There’s something about the store. That’s why I wanted to buy it. People come in and sit, talk and drink coffee. We’re part of all this. They gather here,” owner Charlie Shank said.
“Everybody who works here lives in the neighborhood,” he said. “Everyone knows Mona. She works here and lives a block away. She worked in the store before I bought it.”
“The store doesn’t belong to me, it belongs to this community. It’s not about us—it’s about the neighborhood.”
preparation techniques. “I source our meat straight from a local slaughter house, so it’s fresh ground. I started using NuNu’s Cajun Seasoning and that brought the flavor to a new level—it sets it apart,” Shank said.
The burgers are a great example. Served only on Thursdays, the patties are made with fresh-ground beef and topped with a yeast bun from a bakery down the road. “It’s a true homemade burger. Every ingredient is carefully chosen,” Shank said.
The store often sells out of its plate lunches, especially its meatball stew, which is served on Mondays. While the store serves lunch until 1:30 p.m., the meatball stew is typically gone by 12:15 p.m.
The store has used the same chili recipe for decades, creating a chili dog that customers keep coming back for.
Shank’s wife Kathryn does the cooking. “She stirs the pot just right. Customers say it’s just like their grandmother’s,” he said. She starts by making a dark roux, then she adds the meatballs as well some ground beef to the gravy.
On Tuesdays, the store offers smothered pork chops, smothered sausage or meatloaf plate lunches. “We sell out of the pork chops first,” Shank said. The pork chops are cooked until the meat is just about ready to fall off the bone, but “hasn’t fallen off quite yet.” The chops are served over rice with one or two sides, with options like black eyed peas, veggies, green beans, potato salad or green salad.
The plate lunches cost $10.49 with one side and $10.99 for two sides. “You can’t beat my prices. I could charge more and give more stuff, but people can’t afford it,” Shank said.
A unique menu item from the previous owner is shrimp and egg stew. It’s shrimp in a brown gravy with hardboiled eggs added. People want those eggs, Shank noted. “Customers say, ‘Be sure to put my egg in it.’ Sometimes people order an extra hard-boiled egg,” he said.
Al Hebert (GasStationGourmet. com) is the Gas Station Gourmet, showcasing America’s hidden culinary treasures.
Beer Maintains C-Store Clout
Despite volume softness, c-stores retain No. 1 status for beer sales among brickand-mortar retail.
BY TERRI ALLAN
85.9%
The percentage of c-stores that
(Source: NACS State of the Industry Report® of 2024 Data)
While beer sales have been languishing in convenience stores in recent years, the category remains a significant traffic driver for the channel.
Indeed, beer performs stronger in c-stores—a 43% share of beer sales across channels, according to NIQ— than in any other channel, further buttressing the importance of c-stores to beer marketers and their brands.
“While convenience stores are the largest off-premise channel, everyone has witnessed the impact of a softening beer category,” remarked Rebecca Dye Yonushonis, chief marketing officer at New Belgium Brewing. “Consumers are feeling challenged economically. Household incomes have declined, and a prevailing negative outlook on the economy means consumers are tightening their budgets,” she said.
Moreover, the fast pace of new product introductions has resulted in “an incredibly noisy and competitive category,” Yonushonis added. As a result, beer’s performance in c-stores “reflects a consumer who’s both overwhelmed by choice and more financially conscious.”
CRAFTS, SINGLES AND BUDGET BRANDS DELIVER VARIETY
Beer subcategory performance has been uneven in recent years. However, there are several bright spots.
For example, craft brews have expanded a bit, and Voodoo Ranger has emerged as a leader in the segment. New Belgium Brewing Company, which did not release a new product into c-stores is 2025, instead prioritized support for its Voodoo Ranger Imperial IPA and Voodoo Ranger Juice Force IPA within the channel.
According to Yonushonis, sales of New Belgium’s single-serve offerings increased 4% in 2025. The Voodoo Ranger portfolio comprises four of the top 20 craft singles in c-stores—led by No. 1 Imperial and No. 2 Juice Force— and combined hold a 24% share of craft single sales in the channel, she said.
At New England c-store chain Rusty Lantern, “craft beer remains relevant, particularly when it’s clearly differentiated and locally oriented,” remarked Keri Weekley, senior category manager. In fact, the chain offers its own private-label brew that “creates a clear reason to choose our stores and reinforces a more premium, curated beer image,” while increasing customer loyalty, she said.
NACS heat map data shows that beer purchases in c-stores are largely occasion based with the peak time frame between 4:00 p.m. and 5:00 p.m. on Friday afternoon. This purchasing routine is vital for beer singles, the most frequently purchased beer unit in c-stores. “Singles are essential to the
A 2025 Gallup poll found that just 54% of consumers drink alcoholic beverages— the lowest percentage in Gallup’s 90-year history.
c-store beer category because they sit at the intersection of habitual and impulse purchasing,” remarked Yonushonis.
While about 75% of c-store shoppers come in with a specific item in mind, roughly two-thirds end up buying something they didn’t initially plan on, the New Belgium executive said. Because of that dual behavior, c-store operators should work to both reinforce the habitual trip and spark impulse buys, Yonushonis suggested.
“With singles, it’s critical to stay in stock with familiar favorites and ensure that you have adequate days of supply to avoid any future out-ofstocks, particularly leading up to key selling occasions,” advised Simon Wuestenberg, chief sales officer at Anheuser-Busch. “Once the top sellers are in stock, you can look to add assortment on trending items,” he continued, pointing to A-B craft
brands like Goose Island Beer Hug and Elysian Space Dust.
Other convenience retailers, meanwhile, report that with customers increasingly cost conscious, lowerpriced budget beers are on the rise.
“Economic factors are definitely influencing customers to move to sale or lower-priced offerings,” shared Jason Neuhaus, director of retail at Rainbo Oil’s Kwik Stop chain in Iowa. Similarly, Sean Bumgarner, vice president at Missouri’s Scrivener Oil Co., parent of Signal Food Stores, said, “our economy beer is growing at a faster rate than other types of beer.”
And in Alabama, Brian Young, vice president, Young Oil, added that at his Grub Mart stores, with several locations in college towns, “budget beers are performing better than higherpriced offerings.”
POWERFUL PROMOTIONS
Whether it’s singles or multipacks, effective merchandising and promotions help drive beer sales. Yonushonis suggests “interrupting the shopper” by leveraging grab-and-go merchandising with eye-catching POS, competitive pricing, and secondary placements for incremental purchases. In addition, “endcaps, cold-vault clings, and counteradjacent coolers help put singles front and center,” she said.
Bundling beer with other products is another win-win merchandising tactic.
The cross-merchandising promotions “bring in consumers and drive a lot of lift,” noted Jaime Polisoto, brand director for FIFCO USA’s Seagram’s Escapes and Seagram’s Escapes Spiked. Indeed, bundling beer with food is now “table stakes for c-stores,” the FIFCO executive said.
Digital promotions, where permitted, are on the rise in the beer category. Kwik Stop’s Neuhaus reports that his stores now utilize both scan offers and digital rebates. The scan offers allow
6 Month Outlook: Beer
Jan. 2024–June 2024 vs. Jan. 2025–June 2025
(Source: NACS CSX Database)
the retailer to lower prices and promote in different ways while customers have been “very receptive” to digital rebates once they discover how they work, he said.
At Rusty Lantern, seasonal displays are among the merchandising strategies the chain uses for beer. According to Weekley, the displays are tied to holidays, local events and sports.
This summer’s FIFA World Cup—some of which is taking place in the United States—marks a “key occasion” for retailers to leverage beer promotions, said A-B’s Wuestenberg. “Retailers can capitalize by breaking through with clear and impactful messaging, both to capture consumers’ attention outside of the store and to break through in-store with signage and displays,” he remarked.
WHAT’S NEXT FOR BEER IN C-STORES
Economic uncertainty is just one of several headwinds facing the beer category. With the emergence of wine- and liquor-based ready-to-drink beverages,
along with hemp-derived THC drinks— not to mention the legalization of marijuana in some states—beer is struggling to retain its share of the market.
Bumgarner of Scrivener Oil Co. notes that with the legalization of marijuana in Missouri, “we’ve seen some shifts away from alcohol towards marijuana.”
In many c-stores, slower-performing flavored malt beverages (FMB) are losing ground to a growing wave of wine- and spirits-spiked single-serve cocktails. While c-store operators like the improved margins the emerging products provide, Polisoto said that they may not be right for all drinks customers.
“Now more than ever, consumers still require value and quality,” said Polisoto. “A traditional FMB can offer consumers exactly that. It’s an affordable indulgence versus a wineor spirits-based brand.” For its part, Seagram’s Escapes recently entered a multiyear partnership with professional wrestling promotion company WWE, including the launch of a co-branded Spiked product.
The Power of CSX Data
CSX, the engine behind category metrics and NACS State of the Industry data, provides current and customizable tools for financial and operational reporting and analysis in the convenience industry. Retailers can measure their company by any of the myriad metrics generated via our live database.
Contact Chris Rapanick at (703) 518–4253 or crapanick@convenience. org for a complimentary executive walkthrough.
Happy Hour
Ready-to-drink wine, liquor cocktails gain ground in c-stores.
Wine and liquor have outperformed beer in c-stores in recent years, albeit on a much smaller basis.
Wine cooler/cocktails, such as Gallo’s Beach Juice and Anheuser-Busch’s recently acquired BeatBox, have brought excitement to the c-store wine category. “The curious shopper has gravitated to this style of product due to the lively packaging, inventive flavors and accessible price points,” said Herb Smith, vice president, customer development at Gallo.
Betsy Griffin, vice president, North America strategy at Suntory Global Spirits, said that sales of the company’s full-strength liquor in 200 ml sizes and below increased in 2025, while 375 ml and larger sizes were flat to slightly down. She added that some 2.3 million new buyers “gravitated to small-size spirits” in 2025.
While wine coolers and cocktails have taken off in c-stores, thanks to convenient, single-serve packages, traditional wine has faced some challenges.
Sean Bumgarner, vice president of Scrivener Oil Co., which operates Signal Food Stores in Missouri, said that RTD products are continuing to grow. Some stores are also receiving requests for non-alcoholic mocktails. Leading spirits-based prepared cocktails include top-selling High Noon from Gallo, A-B’s Cutwater, and -196 vodka seltzer from Suntory.
Both Smith and Griffin agreed that RTD packaging options are expanding, including the growing popularity of prepared cocktails as single serves. “We forecast continued strength in spirits-based RTDs as retailers expand package offerings,” the Gallo executive remarked.
Meanwhile, “traditional wine has gotten a little lost in the product mix, specifically in cold boxes,” said Smith, adding, “Some accounts have reduced or removed cold wine, eliminating potential impulse purchases.”
Still, the California wine marketer is investing in its largest brands. “Our partnerships, such as Barefoot and the NFL, Mark West and MLB, and ViBE with Minor League Baseball, will be visible in convenience stores,” Smith said.
Keri Weekley, senior category manager at Rusty Lantern Markets in New England, noted that larger bottles of wine sell less often. “Wine is less of an impulse purchase … customers often buy wine at grocery or liquor stores instead.”
Overall, wine and liquor in c-stores have great potential, Smith suggested. “The role convenience stores play in consumers’ daily lives has dramatically changed,” he said. “Due to economic challenges, consumers make fewer trips.”
But when they do stop for gas or coffee, they find they can get more out of the stop by picking up wine and spirits. Having the right products available—whether they are full bottles, minis, multipacks of prepared cocktails or single serves—can be a huge opportunity for c-stores.
Craft beer remains relevant, particularly when it’s clearly differentiated and locally oriented.
While inflation and new competitive products may be short-term challenges for beer, the overall health and wellness craze among so many consumers is perhaps an even greater long-term concern.
A Gallup poll released last year found that just 54% of consumers drink alcoholic beverages, the lowest percentage in Gallup’s nearly 90-year history. As recently as 2023, the figure stood at 62%. According to the poll, most Americans (53%) believe that moderate drinking—one or two drinks a day—is bad for one’s health.
Rusty Lantern’s Weekley said she is noticing “more moderation in alcohol consumption,” with some customers choosing fewer drinks or alternative beverages.
The use of GLP-1 medications for health and weight loss could also be having an impact on beer.
Retailers say they’re noticing changing habits among their customers when it comes to beer purchases, especially with “younger consumers” who “aren’t drinking as much as past generations,” said Young of Young Oil.
See how European convenience retailers redefine the shopping experience. Reserve your seat today! convenience.org/CSE 16-18 June, 2026 Warsaw, Poland
Rusty Lantern’s Weekley agrees, noting that younger adult customers have become more “selective” with their choices, which limits volume growth for beer. “Older customers are more consistent beer purchasers, especially of mainstream and light beer brands,” she said.
Terri Allan (terri4beer @aol.com) is a freelance writer who specializes in consumer products and retail channels.
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Immediate Consumption for the Win
Convenience stores sell immediate consumption.
According to the 2025 NACS
Convenience Voices study, the majority of items purchased at a c-store will be consumed that same day.
The 2025 survey found that more than half of packaged beverages, candy, salty snacks, cigarettes and other tobacco products (OTP) shoppers planned to immediately consume their items after purchase.
Candy continued to deliver the highest overall impulse purchasing rate and immediate consumption rate within the
c-store channel: 96.2% of all candy shoppers consume their product the day of purchase.
Packaged beverages were the highest immediately consumed product, a nod to the fact that convenience is the channel of choice for satisfying consumer need states for thirst, as well as delivering on product innovation with new flavors, packaging and variety.
Between cigarettes and OTP, cigarette shoppers were slightly more likely to consume their product immediately, with 61.4% immediate consumption compared to 51.2% for OTP.
Immediately
Within an hour Within 2 hours Later today
Sometime tomorrow
Later this week
Sometime this month Don’t know/ Not applicable
Immediate consumption is a key differentiator for the convenience channel. Consumers value the time it takes to shop—typically under four minutes—and the ease of getting in and out of a c-store quickly.
(Source: 2025 NACS Convenience Voices Study)
NACS Convenience Voices studies c-store customers in real time while they are inside stores and on the forecourt. To learn how this program can help your business, visit convenience.org/voices.
