Food and beverage purchases at convenience stores have certainly grown over the years. According to Technomic’s Q1 2024 C-Store Consumer Market Brief, 54% of customers enter c-stores nearly every time they were fueling or recharging their cars, with 70% purchasing foodservice beverage items and 62% purchasing foodservice food items. For retailers, building a foodservice program that offers both food and beverages can be just the right solution that c-store retailers need to boost revenue and increase foot traffic.
Meeting the demand for all-day foodservice purchases
According to Technomic’s Q1 2024 C-Store Consumer Market Brief, convenience is the top reason consumers purchase prepared foods and beverages at c-stores. Overall, most consumers make foodservice snack purchases during lunchtime hours, while 55% of consumers purchase items from c-stores during midafternoon, 26% make midmorning snack purchases, 12% make purchases in the early evening and 6% late at night.
Popular c-store foodservice purchases
Convenience store retailers can benefit from a foodservice program that provides quality food and beverage options that meet consumers’ needs.
According to Technomic’s Q3 2023 C-Store Consumer Market Brief, 52% of consumers consider easy to eat on-the-go meals to be one of the most important convenience store foodservice snack attributes.
As for beverages—including coffee, tea and lemonade—the C-Store Consumer Market Brief states that consumers stop at c-stores while they are commuting or traveling, and purchase beverages because they have less time to make their own at home.
Benefits of offering a comprehensive foodservice program
McLane provides a range of retail foodservice offerings—including grab-and-go items for all dayparts. McLane Fresh, the brand’s convenience-specific foodservice program, is designed to make it easy for retailers to provide the high quality, fresh food and beverage options customers want, while eliminating the pain points and barriers to entry common to c-store foodservice programs.
McLane’s food and beverage program delivers robust offerings from beverages to pizza, sandwiches and snacks.
The CupZa! beverage program sources the finest coffee beans and other ingredients to deliver on-trend items, from cold brew and nitro coffee to bright and refreshing teas and lemonades. LTO’s are easy with Shott—a collection of 100% natural syrups from New Zealand that make do-it-yourself flavor infusions easy. On the hot side, CupZa! features the latest in bean-to-cup technology, allowing customers to enjoy the freshest product without the need for a barista.
The hot and cold grab-and-go program, known as Central Eats, is unique in providing truly fresh cold sandwiches that have never been frozen, with an industry-leading seven-day refrigerated shelf life. Retailers often round out their grab-and-go shelves with additional Central Eats offerings like pepperoni snack cups, fresh crisp salads, wraps, parfaits and freshly cut fruit.
Pizza is popular among Americans and the Prendisimo pizza program provides a delicious freezer-to-oven solution that is ready for the hot case in minutes. Hearty slices are served up in either six-count or eight-count. Another lucrative option is to sell retail-ready whole pizzas right from the freezer case. Merchandising for the inside and outside of the store is available from the pump to the cooler door.
McLane Fresh also provides retailers with turnkey equipment bundles that include everything they need to get started, eliminating hurdles and reducing the amount of training needed to get staff up to speed. No highly skilled workers are needed to operate these programs or their equipment, so retailers don’t need to worry about adding on labor costs when expanding their foodservice program.
Offering a fully-built foodservice program not only keeps customers satisfied, but it’s a great way to boost the bottom line all day long.
For more information about McLane’s foodservice program, visit mclanefresh.com.
This post is sponsored by McLane Company, Inc.