g So Instead of serving you a slice of pie on a plate, we put it in a cup so you can eat it while you’re driving down the road. We also make a pulled pork sandwich topped with my wife’s coleslaw recipe from back home in Louisiana. People come here just to taste the food we’ve made.” Cowan has a real knack for food and “customers love it,” says Shea. “Farmers come in for their morning coff ee. Truck drivers stop by for lunch. Workers from the area gather here in the late afternoon. Families meet for dinner at night after a game.” Variety, Customization The Cenex network is not alone in expanding its food off ering, says Mitch Morrison, vice president and retail executive platform director for CSP , a leading convenience store industry publication. “We’re starting to see more c-store operators move into made-to-order fresh foods, including ethnic foods such as Thai and Indian that have interesting fl avors people are seeking from restaurants. Some stores are off ering sushi — not made on-site, but brought in fresh daily,” he says. “If you look back 10 years, the big focus was increasing shelf life. Now it’s the opposite,” says Morrison. “Made-to-order foods and fresher packaged foods delivered from wholesalers do mean more waste. Managers can’t apply traditional c-store selling metrics to their foodservice operations because they have to factor in a certain amount of waste.” Another area that has exploded is do-it-yourself food customization. Some c-store beverage bars > Foodservice accounted for 20.8% of in-store sales and 33.7% of gross profit for c-stores in NA 2015 CS fu , nd th e TAST PORTU P O Y a ss ociati on for conven e a i e nc STRO COMPET G N The 154,000+ U.S. c-stores ring up $575 billion in annual sales S o u rce: N AC S el re t ail in g N IT Y ce ur : Y Your CHS Connection N I T IO 21