Advice

Convenience Store Operational Success

The survey results tell you that location is the #1 determinate of success in a convenience store. By far!

The name says it all, almost! Convenience (Store) …ease, handiness, expediency…….the dictionary says:

Convenience
  Frame2

When you read these definitions, you can discern much of what customers are looking for in a convenience store.

  • Lets look at #1……Quality of being convenient;

Key words= Easy and Useful

  1. Easy to see & find
    1. Visible from the street
    2. Well signed and lit (at night)
  2. Easy to get to and use:
    1. On the way to or from
      1. Your side of the street
      2. Your side of the light (thru the light, on the right)
    2. Nearby (closest to where you are)
  3. Easy to get in and out of:
    1. Parking availability & direction
    2. Fuel islands
    3. Doors easy to find and use
    4. Ingress & Egress marked well
  4. Easy to shop once the customer arrives
    1. Coolers and gondolas signed
    2. Isleways uncluttered
    3. Bright & safe in appearance
    4. Clean…everything
    5. Customer service at the customers disposal
    6. A “can do” attitude
  5. Easy to shop, pay and get on their way.
  6. Useful:
    1. Offerings that the customer expects
    2. Offerings that the customers want and will produce profit

 

  • #2 Promotes Someone’s Personal Comfort

Key words: Circumstances that promote someone’s personal comfort

    1. Greeting as the someone enters
    2. Response to the someone’s needs/wants
      • Help with locating a product
      • Service with an urgency
    3. Prompt and accurate checkout
    4. A sincere “THANKYOU! Come again.”

The overall function of a convenience store is to be there (location)when someone has wants and to supply those wants in a way the customer appreciates. If we do this, the customers will return and we will make a profit.

 

 

 

 

The bourgeois prefers comfort, convenience, and a pleasant temperature…….
Herman Hesse

So do the regular convenience store customers.

 

 

 

So you have a good location and you now want to maximize the potential of the convenience store. Start with:

PEOPLE!!!

It all begins with (and often ends due to) the on site management.

 

The store GM (general manager) is the heart, mind, leader and driver of the operations. Everything from:

  • Who works there to
    1. How they talk to
    2. How they work to
    3. How they follow policy and procedure to the all important,
    4. How they treat the customers
  • What is ultimately stocked
  • How we must price the items:
    1. For adequate profitability
    2. For customer value
  • The cleanliness of the:
    1. Lot, pumps, fuel islands, signs
    2. Rest rooms
    3. Floors, gondolas, floors, walls, windows, product
  • The maintenance of lights, equipment, etc.
  • The profitability of the store
    1. What we can afford to pay employees
    2. What ROI the stakeholders realize

The store GM, without question, is the key to a successful convenience store. S/he cannot do it alone. I am saying that s/he is key because he or she, hires, trains, leads and manages the staff, revenue and expenses of the store operation.

The GM:

  1. Inspires people and accelerates the performance
  2. Is impotent and relatively ineffective
  3. Depresses and retards the performance

 

 

 

What must a GM do to inspire people and accelerates their performance?

  1. Hire the best people that can be found..
    1. People who:
      1. Want/need to work.
      2. Understand what we do in a convenience store
      3. Are willing to do what is required
      4. Have some good record of work
        1. Length of service
        2. Referrences (always check them)
      5. Demonstrate a positive attitude
      6. Have the skills to do the job(s)
      7. You feel you can be “happy” around
      8. You feel you can “grow”
    2. Honest, Dependable, Pleasant, “In-Motion” people
  2. Train the people to perform like we need them to perform
    1. Day 1 is a working day
      1. Orientation to rules and procedures by management only
      2. No grace periods, no shortcuts
    2. Be more formal and demanding in the beginning
      1. Familiarity will erode authority soon enough
      2. Humor and sarcasm is misleading and confusing
    3. The effort invested here will greatly impact your future
  3. If you want people to “respect, inspect what you expect”
    1. Employees must respect the management, ownership and each other.
    2. Respect is earned not legislated. The new employee will be looking for things you do that either build or erode respect.
    3. The most appreciated quality of a manager is consistency!
    4. Set expectations to the finest degree possible
    5. Speak and teach actions versus attitudes or emotions. Actions reveal attitudes and emotions.
    6. Inspect performance for:
      1. Compliments
      2. Correction
      3. Confirmation
  4. Be engaged in every aspect of the business. Not as the classic hated manager who looks over everyone’s shoulder and has to find what is wrong with everyone. Be the not so casual observer who appears to be a relaxed casual observer transmits a confidence in his team.

Convenience Store Success

 

Chapter 1

Is this the right business for you and your personality

 

Chapter 2

Buy or build

Where

How

 

Chapter 3

Your operational policies and procedures

Your business plan

 

Chapter 4

Your team

Management/leadership

Customer Service Staff

Recruiting, interviewing, selection

Training/development, management, appraisal

Chapter 5

4 P’s of Marketing

Product, Placement, Pricing & Promotion

Chapter 6

What you do everyday

 

Chapter 7

How you measure success

 

Chapter 8

Keeping up with competition

 

Chapter 9

Innovation

 

Chapter 10

When you are ready to sell

Preparation starts day 1

How you package it and negotiate the deal

 

Chapter 1

Is this the right business for you?

 

Virtually everyone has been in a convenience store from time to time. It seems like a pretty simply business. Heck, the newest Americans own and run them, how hard can it be?

Not hard at all if you aren’t concerned with maximizing your business potential and I mean long term profits.

On the other hand, if you buy a store as an investment to pay long term returns, it is as challenging as any business and more challenging than some.

You might wonder, why and what ways?

Once you own a convenience store (and we’ll talk about the selection process in a future chapter) your success is limited somewhat by your location, the population, the economy, and a number of other factors outside of your control.

The things that are in your control are many and varied and squeezing the blood out of that turnip is not only a skill and but a load of disciplined hard work.. Let me try to tell you some of the reasons why.

The business consists of many transactions of small dollar amounts with pennies to quarters of profit each.

Fuel, cigarettes, beer, sweets and salty snacks (perhaps greasy food)

Blue collar crowd, employees and customers

Turnover-on the way up or down

Training must be ongoing. Once trained they are apt to be stolen away by non-training stores.

Long operating hours with a lot of little things that go awray.

Many distractions of the urgent not necessarily the important.

It is a people business

Employees

Customers

Jack of all trades, Shell answer man, least competent in the place.

Trashman, plungerman, buyer, inv. Controller, payroll clerk, sales clerk, janitor, mopper, window washer, accountant, banker, security guard, councelor, auditor, PR man,

Managing & training entry level workers.

Few are stable long term

Empathy, solutions, help when needed , JUDGE

Limited travel, regular customers, among the real people who work, a chance to be a personality, develop people, help people, be better than the competition, build value, earn a good living, be in control of your future.

Chapter 3

The business plan

Policies and procedures

 

The Business Plan

You need to have a written business plan for the convenience store. Few single store operators take the time to do so. This plan lays out:

  1. What you plan to do and
  2. How you are going to do it.

It is a roadmap for your journey. Staying with that analogy, there will be detours along the way and perhaps even breakdowns which delay your arrival. Even so, you must know where you are going or you simply meander about in a stop and go tactical strategy based on reaction to the distractions of the urgent. You get to the end of the day, week, month and year wondering where the time went.

My business plan usually is based on:

  • Who will be the GM
  • The businesses performance and potential
  • Historical Volume, Profit, Expenses
  • Demographical information
  • Future Value versus investment
      1. In income
      2. In equity
  • Identifying the required investment
  • To purchase the store

Total Cost (Appraisals, Phase 1 or 2, etc + asking price

Any repairs or upgrades required

  • How the financing will be obtained
  • What needs to be done to open for business
  • Who will do what when
    1. Short term
      1. Licenses
      2. Credit apps
    2. Long term
      1. Upgrades
      2. Financing
      3. Selling

Policies & Procedures

Once again few single store operators have published policies and procedures. I have for a couple of reasons:

  1. They help me to define how I want to operate the business and address many issues before they occur. This is actually a tactical component of the execution of the business plan.
  2. Once written and published, the Policies and procedures are a documented instruction manual for your employees. If every employee reads and acknowledges the policy and procedures, then there is little room for “I didn’t know I couldn’t give my brother free food.” or “No one said I had to show up on time.”or “When can I take paid vacation?”

You must be consistent in the execution and enforcement of these “rules and directions” for store employees and operations if they are to be living help aids.

Great operations require a dedication to DISIPLIN

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