In a desire to be a very food-forward convenience-store chain, Dash In convenience stores over the last five-plus years has spent a lot of time redeveloping its existing network.
“Now every location includes grills, fryers, vector ovens,” said Blackie Wills (pictured second from left), president and CEO of The Wills Group, which runs Dash In. “We have a pretty expansive, prepared foodservice menu. We overhauled at the beginning of last year and are in the process of integrating new menus in all the existing stores and should have it wrapped up by end of the year.”
Wills was speaking on Finding Your Greatness earlier this month at CSP’s 2024 Outlook Leadership conference in Rancho Palos Verdes, California.
Loyalty programs, branding and more also were subjects discussed by Wills and two other experts, Jennifer Bach (far right) of MFA Oil Co. and Rob Chumley (second from right) of Murphy USA. The event was moderated by Mitch Morrison (far left), vice president, retailer relations and event content director of Informa Connect Foodservice, which owns CSP.
“We’ve been on a journey over last 10 years to transform both the brand and company,” Wills said of the La Plata, Maryland-based company. “We’ve done a variety of things in the last year: We’ve launched a new prototype, overhauled the company menu and visual identity, have a new tech stack and loyalty program. A lot of work has been done to bring this vision to life.”
Regarding the company’s 60-location Splash In car wash business, Wills said, “We think we have a competitive advantage where we can co-locate a car wash with fuel and convenience. Our goal is 125 car washes by end of decade. That model is becoming a bigger piece of our business.”
Break Time
At MFA Oil Co., Columbia Missouri, which operates the Break Time chain, they have created a tier-based system “where you have to qualify for a tier to get certain rewards from us,” said Jennifer Bach, vice president of Break Time operations. “There’s the entry-level tier if you visit us once or twice, then you move up into different tiers. The top tier is 20 visits per month.”
Most customers look for fuel rewards, followed by coffee and fountain rewards, Bach said, adding, “You have to re-qualify each month to remain in the tier you were in to get those rewards.”
Break Time has had a loyalty program for about seven years but wanted to do something “a little different than what was common out in the market at that point,” she said.
MFA Oil Co. “has done a lot through acquisitions,” Bach said. “We have lots of different store sizes based on the markets we’re going into, and we try to keep our concepts the same in different size stores. We have a food offering that we’re getting heavily involved in and we’re doing our breakfast sandwich that’s proprietary to us, and we have that in the majority of our stores that we’re offering food in.”
The chain tries to play off the word “time” because, “As everybody knows, the convenience-store business is trying to save people time,” Bach said.
Murphy Oil
At Murphy USA, Rob Chumley, senior vice president and chief digital officer, said there are about 1,600 Murphy USA stores and about 150 QuickCheks.
Under the El Dorado, Arkansas-based Murphy USA umbrella, he said, there are three distinct formats that operate differently.
“We have 750 kiosks, then we have small walk-ins, and we have large walk-ins,” Chumley said.
Morrison pointed out that Murphy USA stores are very traditional and do not have a robust made-to-order food program. “Yet it works very well,” he said. “I’m curious why that is.”
Chumley said, “At Murphy USA, we have about 2 million transactions per day. I call those missions, and the customer largely has already decided what that mission is. What I mean by that is a customer has never walked up to a Murphy USA kiosk and been disappointed that they couldn’t get a made-to-order burrito from inside that tiny hut, so they’ve already decided the mission that Murphy is going to fulfill for them.
“I believe loyalty is an outcome you get for providing meaningful value to your customers and, in return, they give you loyalty.”
“If they wanted that made-to-order burrito, they would go to one of our competitors. So, we have focused in on our low-cost operating model and really doubled down on fuel and tobacco, and we don’t make apologies for not being curious about food and not having made-to-order food. There are more than enough missions that can be solved for our customers.”
Turning to loyalty, Chumley said, “Loyalty was never the goal. I believe loyalty is an outcome you get for providing meaningful value to your customers and, in return, they give you loyalty.
“We never had targets in terms of ‘get this many number signed up.’ While we look at it, I don’t really care how many people are signed up as long as I can see we’re demonstrably changing their behavior in a profitable way.”
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