In this month’s NACS Magazine column “The Big Question,” we spoke with Elizabeth Hoffer, vice president foodservice, Weigel’s.
How is Weigel’s innovating its foodservice program for success now and in the future?
One thing we’ve done in terms of the menu itself is to go after Gen Z and Millennial customers more. They’re very passionate about social issues and so are we. For our chicken program, we chose to partner with a company called Springer Mountain Farms. They’re well-known in our area for high-quality, top-end chicken. They have humanely treated, no antibiotics, no hormones, 100% vegetarian no-animal-byproduct feed, grown-in-the-U.S.A. chickens.
It says volumes that a c-store can have that chicken. And we love that we are able to talk about that on our digital menus, that we have got this really good product that nobody else can say they’ve got.
We’ve spent the last year actually paring down our menu. The food team said, instead of trying to be everything for everybody, let’s decide what we want to be really good at. And we decided we want to be really good at pizza and really, really good at chicken.
We pared down our SKUs and went from having around 60 SKUs to now in the 25 range for lunch and dinner. The best part is we saw double-digit growth in sales. And it’s because when you think about innovation, that’s great, but it’s got to be executed. We must think about our operations partner who has to make those things happen. If you can streamline and pick a couple of avenues to innovate within, I think it’s more successful.
To continue reading, check out the March 2024 issue of NACS Magazine.