Caffeinating Customers

Convenience stores are serving up coffee just as good as Starbucks.

October 16, 2015

TULSA, Okla. -- From pumpkin spice to lattes and everything in between, convenience stores have embraced the coffee culture with high-end and specialty beverages, the Tulsa World reports.

These retailers have long been siphoning away customers from Starbucks and other coffee shops, said Jeff Lenard, NACS spokesman. A recent study commissioned by NACS found that more people drop by convenience stores to pick up a beverage and are more likely to add on a food item to boot.

He praised Starbucks for raising the ceiling on what people would pay for a cup of coffee—and providing gasoline stations with the ability to charge more for good coffee. Lenard pointed to c-stores as evolving into a third space—much like specialty coffeehouses did—as retailers have honed their coffee brands.

“We spend a lot of time trying to understand the direction they’re heading into. … They want the options to order the types of drinks that they want,” said Mike Thornbrugh, spokesman for QuikTrip. He said that the lines between convenience stores and coffee shops have blurred so much that there’s not as stark a difference as in the past.

Kum & Go also uses specialty coffee with new and unusual flavor combinations to provide customers with more reasons to stop. Lenard noted that the competition for customers only continues to grow with stores like Home Depot and Best Buy now offering typical convenience-store items by checkout. “Who isn’t a convenience store?” he asked.

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