As CSP expands its Category Manager of the Year awards to the technology and loyalty category, Aaron Brandt takes home the 2024 title. Brandt (pictured below) is enterprise infrastructure manager at Yesway, based in Fort Worth, Texas.
In early 2024, Yesway and Allsup’s launched a new rewards program with technology company Stuzo, where customers can receive 10 points, or Smiles, for every $1 spent in-store and 5 points for each gallon of gas purchased.Previously, Yesway and Allsup’s had their own versions of loyalty programs. The new program spans both chains. It also gives customers the ability to earn and redeem with just their phone number at the register and pumps. Customers will receive a short message service (SMS) text message with the link to their account page, either through mobile browser or app, eliminating the need to remember usernames and passwords.
- Yesway is No. 19 on CSP’s 2024 Top 202 ranking of U.S. convenience-store chains by store count.
There are about 425 Yesway and Allsup’s stores in Texas, New Mexico, South Dakota, Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Wyoming, Oklahoma and Nebraska.
Brandt was one of CSP's seven Category Manager of the Year award winners.
This Q&A has been edited for length and clarity.
What trends are you watching and your category?
Some people love self-checkout; some people hate it. We've seen stores put in self-checkout just to remove them later in the bath of frustration. I've been watching that. It's clean. It's quick. [Customers] can get in and out [with] no frustration--sometimes. On the other hand, on the store’s side, there's at least two more thefts or problems with customer relations where things don’t work, or items come up wrong or the price is not right. I would say I’m a little on the cautionary side. We have a store that’s designed around colleges, and it’s a lot of self-checkouts. We haven’t had any problems, and the kids love it, but it’s hard to track. It’s just that it’s too new.
Can you tell me about Yesway’s mobile app?
We’re kind of influx right now as we’re switching mobile apps. In our current mobile app, we’ve seen problems where there’s load times or customers aren’t getting the discounts they want, or they believe that they’re just earning. So we’ve worked out those bugs. We want to protect our customers’ information. We work really hard to keep that secure. It’s really important that the retail universe looks at some of the tools and the applications they’re using in order to save their customers’ rewards.
The new app is going be seamless on the front end for the customers, but it gives us a lot more control and the ability to monitor any trends.
What are the biggest challenges in your category?
I would say the biggest challenges are keeping our stores up to date and secure, updating prices with trends on fruits, vegetables, deli meats, beer and cigarettes. We're looking to switch to digital tagging, and that way, we can update our price tags at our stores remotely.
What are your goals for 2024?
Streamline our retail, protect our customers data, look at rolling out new stores, new reward systems. Just getting out there and getting out with the customer as much as possible. See what the customer needs.
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