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| Alexandria, VA – February
2025 / NewsmakerAlert:
The
c-store industry has been talking about cracking the code on the dinner
daypart for at least 15 years. The August 2010 cover story of NACS Magazine
talked about how stores are well-positioned to have a successful dinner
program—”but it will take years to win customers over, one at a time.”
One
of the takeaways from that 2010 article was that c-store shoppers “won’t
begin to think of convenience
stores for dinner without savvy marketing telling them why they should
change their opinions and expectations of convenience stores.”
 There are some great quotes in that article that still hold water 15 years later. First, dinner is tough for c-stores because it’s not typically a meal on the go like breakfast and lunch. Also, if a customer is coming into the store at 6 a.m. for breakfast, what’s a compelling reason for them to come back in the evening for dinner? For some operators, the dinner daypart isn’t the answer to growing their foodservice offer and boosting foot traffic counts. And that’s fine. Not all stores and growth strategies are created equal. Other retailers, though, have successfully shifted the narrative by offering meal solutions. A customer can take home a fully prepared meal to heat and serve, or they can peruse a mini meat department inside a c-store for a fresh ribeye to take home and grill, as well as buy heat-and-serve sides like mac & cheese, and then perhaps add a bottle of wine. If that doesn’t satisfy the little ones, there’s chicken tenders in the hot case, or a fresh take-and-bake cheese pizza. Variety and choices—that’s convenience. Definition of Foodservice What convenience retailers think of foodservice (prepared onsite, commissary, etc.) and the dinner daypart may not be how their customers are thinking—or rather, the customer perception of what dinner entails. Dinner is a meal where we tend to put forth some effort. Like turning on a stove and using non-disposable utensils. And using a plate. Dinnertime often has a routine, like setting the table, sitting down at a certain time and catching up on everyone’s day. A customer who orders a few slices of pizza or a hot open-faced turkey sandwich from a c-store may only spend at most four to six minutes inside the store. They buy, maybe sit down at in-store seating, but more often leave the store with their food to eat it elsewhere. This may sound inconvenient to some, but for others it’s perfectly convenient. This is how they “use” convenience stores. Is drive-thru the answer? Sure, it can give customers another avenue for purchasing food in addition to other in-store merchandise. It’s not a silver bullet though—70% of QSR sales are through the drive thru. Convenience retailers with a foodservice program offer so much more—a minimum of 500 SKUs of impulse and mission-driven packaged beverages, snacks, confections, beer, wine, fountain drinks—as well as a restroom break, lottery purchase or ATM transaction. When Consumers Eat The concept of three-square meals may be antiquated, or at least blurry. For example, snacking, or “snackstituting,” which is eating snacks for meals, has become more common. Frequency is also shifting. A recent National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) consumer survey found that most c-store customers eat two meals a day and often skip breakfast. The meal consumers are least likely to skip is dinner, and it’s the meal they overwhelmingly prefer to eat at home, especially on weekdays, mostly between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. The potential for dinnertime sales may require a good understanding of shopper behaviors. Do your customers like to cook or loathe it? Is it a family affair or solo effort? Do they have more than 15 to 30 minutes to get a meal on the table for a family of four or more? Do they meal prep on weekends so all they have to do is reheat a plate of food in the microwave? Or is a passable (and enjoyable!) dinner considered a bag of popcorn? A protein-packed bar or beverage? A taquito and a bag of chips? Whatever the choice, c-stores have it. At the end of the day, or at least between 5 p.m. and 7 p.m., dinner means different things to different people. How can your stores serve them? Discover the latest data-driven insights on how foodservice is fueling industry growth and profitability at the convenience retail industry’s premier—and only—data event, the NACS State of the Industry Summit. Company
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