What Do C-Stores Need to Know About Cryptocurrency?

for Boosting Summer Beverage Sales

With new products continually hitting the market, cooler and storage space at a premium and supply disruptions limiting shipment sizes, c-stores need to satisfy the wide-ranging palates of thirsty customers.

Thomas Mulloy • Senior Editor

Summer means hot weather and thirsty customers looking to cool down and enjoy the season. It’s prime time to move non-alcoholic beverages while those seasonal customers are in the c-store. These are our top tips for boosting summer beverage sales.

1. STOCK VARIETY

Today’s customers want options. To position your store as a destination for non-alcoholic beverages, ensuring a strong variety of beverages is key.

“The biggest thing we’ve been doing in the stores is basically expanding our variety,” said Brent Mouton, president of Louisiana-based Hit-n-Run’s seven store chain. “Whether that’s extending the walk-in cooler or bringing in additional coolers, just to get a better variety of product out there, that’s worked well for us.”

2. USE DISCOUNTS & PROMOTIONS

Discounts have always been a proven way to accelerate sales, whether introducing your own discounts or partnering with beverage makers on promotions. Afterall, vendors want to move product as much as you do.

“They’re doing two-fers mostly,” Mouton said of the beverage vendors he works with. “And then a mix of hot prices, where (the vendors) lower the cost a little, and we lower the retail. Each of us makes a little less, but it’s a reward for the customer.”

Joseph Bickham, president of Fuel City, with seven stores in the Dallas-Ft. Worth Metroplex, is taking a similar approach at his locations.

“The most effective, and the things that we’ve done most consistently, are running promotions for energy drinks and other beverages, doing two-fer and three-fer deals,” Bickham said.

Fuel City will cross-promote beverages with food and other items to give the consumer a nudge toward increasing their basket ring.

Beverage Sales Flowing Upward in Q2

Overall, all non-alcoholic packaged beverage Q2 dollar sales are up 24% vs. Q2 2020, with good news across the board. Soft drinks continue to garner the highest share, though other beverage segments are gaining. All categories are growing double digits, led by energy beverages, sport drinks and value-add water. The most purchased categories that piggyback on one or more beverage items are cigarettes, candy and potato chips. (Note: ‘% of times purchased only within category’ metric identifies the amount of transaction that only contained items within the segment.)

Category

Soft Drinks Energy Beverages Fruit Drinks Sport Drinks

Water

$ % Chg $ Shr of Category Chg Unit % Chg Units Per Store Per Week Chg % of Times Purchased Only Within Category

Top Purchase #1

Top Purchase #2

Top Purchase #3

11.5% 29.6 -3.3 7.8% 9.9 26.8% 19.0 0.4 22.5% 11.4 22.7% 14.0 -0.2 18.3% 10.6 43.0% 8.2 1.1 36.8% 10.6

43.6% 5.9 0.8 42.3% 9.6 32.7% 36.6% 27.0% 25.7%

31.0% Cigarettes Fruit Drinks Confection Cigarettes Soft Drinks Fruit Drinks Soft Drinks Confection Potato Chip Soft Drinks Confection Energy Beverages Soft Drinks Fruit Drinks Sport Drinks

Fruit Juice

23.2% 4.5 0.0 25.3% 3.4 26.9% Soft Drinks Fruit Drinks Confection

Value-Add Water

62.4% 4.3 1.0 53.8% 7.9 26.9% Soft Drinks Fruit Drinks Confection

Liquid Tea RTD Coffee A/O

26.5% 4.2 0.1 21.5% 5.1 42.1% 2.7 0.3 36.4% 2.7 20.5% 7.6 -0.2 19.6% 0.5 26.3% 26.5% 28.0% Soft Drinks Fruit Drinks Cigarettes Cigarettes Soft Drinks Energy Beverages

Total Non-Alcoholic Packaged Beverages 24.1% 19.7% Cigarettes Confection Potato Chip

Source: National Retail Solutions (NRS) scan data of 10,250 stores selling non-alcoholic beverages. All change mesasures are same store sales (6,120 stores) 4/1/21 - 7/1/21 vs 4/1/20 - 7/1/20.

3. ENCOURAGE SAMPLING

Sampling products is another way to entice customers to buy. When a vendor is looking to promote a new product, Mouton asks for a couple of extra cases to use for samples so customers can try the product and hopefully like it enough to buy it.

“That also seems to work because a lot of times some people are just set in their ways,” Mouton explained. “They’re not going to try anything new. They know what they like. It gives that customer an opportunity, if you will, without having to pay anything, to try new things.”

Hit-n-Run will maximize the opportunity by combining the free product with customer appreciation days and even arrange to have a vendor representative set up a tasting table and give product away.

4. MAKE SIGNAGE STRATEGIC

Signage is an essential tool in marketing to customers. Don’t hesitate to ask beverage reps to provide promotional signs and displays. Vendors are usually eager to provide materials to help move product.

“At least, the vendors that we deal with here locally, any support that we need, whether its indoor signage, outdoor signage, whatever, they don’t tell us no,” Mouton said.

5. VALUE YOUR SPACE

The most important space in the store for summer sales is the cooler. But with so many varieties of beverages and new products continually hitting the market, the challenge is finding the right mix.

“Typically, when you bring in something new, something’s got to go,” Mouton said. “You can’t just keep ploughing new stuff into the cooler.”

Many new products are made by the same companies who supply the tried-and-true movers. When something that isn’t moving is taking space from those solid sellers, the vendor is losing sales, too. Re-evaluating the product mix regularly is crucial. Fuel City has had to get creative in finding storage for backstock, especially in light of supply disruptions, Bickham said. One solution has been to rent a trailer for use as a temporary stock room. Fuel City put it at a central location and used it to supply stores running out of fast-moving product.

“Right now, during this summer and with everything going on,” Bickham said, “I think that’s one of the biggest challenges — making sure that we keep product on the shelf.” CSD

WHAT THE RANSOMWARE ATTACKS MEAN FOR CONVENIENCE RETAILERS

With ransomware attacks on the rise, c-store retailers need to stay vigilant and improve data security.

Frank Beard • Director of Safe Shop and Special Projects

There’s no denying it: Ransomware is a growing industry.

Ransomware attacks have increased 41% since the beginning of 2021, and 93% year over year since last June per cybersecurity firm Check Point. The list of victims includes not only the Colonial Pipeline, but also prominent local businesses such as a community college in my hometown, Des Moines, Iowa.

In a recent and particularly notable attack, a Russian ransomware group reportedly exploited vulnerabilities in IT management software company Kaseya’s VSA remote management platform and used it to propagate ransomware to their customers. The attack raised questions about what happens when a company’s trusted vendors are compromised. More than 1,000 businesses and more than 1 million computers were affected, The Verge reported.

“This is the new form of modern warfare,” said Gray Taylor, executive director of Conexxus, the member-driven technology organization dedicated to the development and implementation of standards, technologies innovation and advocacy for the c-store and petroleum market. “The takeaway is we as an industry, we as an economy, have a poor understanding of the risk assessment — the nuts and bolts — of data security.”

HISTORY OF RANSOMWARE

If you grew up on the internet like me in the 1990s and early 2000s, then you’re no stranger to the concept of ransomware. I remember a fear that lax security or a visit to a sketchy website might lead to a locked computer and demands for payment — or at least the threats of such actions. The AIDS Trojan is generally credited as the first ransomware attack. It was released back in 1989 through floppy disks, and targets were directed to send $189 dollars to a P.O. box in Panama to restore access to their systems. Ransomware has, of course, evolved considerably since then.

The early 2000s witnessed the growth of ransomware with notable examples such as GPCoder and Trojan.Cryzip — the former using weak encryption and being spread by email attachments claiming