The following feature, penned by Leroy Kelsey, NACS director of industry analytics, appears in its entirety in the October issue of NACS Magazine, highlighting “moment of truth” insights from the NACS Convenience Tracking Program and the emergence of dollar stores.

More than 80% of what is sold in convenience stores gets consumed by shoppers within one hour. In fact, 65% of what is sold in convenience stores is at least partially consumed before the shopper even leaves the parking lot! And the immediacy of this consumption occasion has been increasing over the past five to 10 years.

How do we know all this? The NACS Convenience Tracking Program (CTP), a program designed to capture “the moment of truth” in convenience occasions, has conducted more than 110,000 onsite interviews of convenience shoppers. Through our research, we’ve been reminded time and time again that convenience stores are uniquely positioned to take advantage of the increasing demand for—wait for it—convenience.

For decades, convenience stores have benefited from great corners, small package sizes and an emphasis on speed of service, all perfectly aligned with a shopper that is “on-the-go” with little time to spare.

But other channels have taken notice of the convenience industry’s positioning and consistent growth in the marketplace. Grocery, drug, dollar, mass merchandise and entirely new non-traditional channels are now claiming “convenience” as their own. Still, if imitation is the highest form of flattery, the air should be getting a little thin for one small and nimble format that started experimenting with convenience channel core categories four years ago: dollar stores.

In 2012, dollar stores first began exploring the impact of tobacco on their sales, foot traffic and profitability—then expanded their offer to include beer, another core convenience store category accounting for 13% to 16% of total convenience in-store sales.

And the dollar channel’s addition of traditional convenience store offers is not limited to the inside of the store. In October 2013, Dollar General launched a fuel test at one of its larger-format Dollar General Market sites in Hanceville, Alabama. The chain partnered with Gainesville, Georgia-based Mansfield Oil on the pilot. Almost three years later, Dollar General has recently completed the purchase of 41 failed Walmart Express locations and intends to operate existing fueling stations at 37 of these locations.

So what impact has the proliferation of dollar sites and the entrance into core convenience store categories including fuel had on the convenience shopper?

Dollar store purchases of core convenience categories by convenience shoppers doesn’t break north of 2% until we get to non-alcoholic packaged beverages, salty snacks and candy—each garnering purchases from 2.1%, 4.7% and 3.4% of convenience shoppers, respectively. One way to interpret this is that one out of 20 convenience shoppers buy salty snacks from the dollar channel. Convenience shoppers find more national brands and familiar packaging for immediate consumption in salty snacks and candy, in addition to the draw of nostalgic, theater, novelty and value-driven bag candy. But in a business of “penny profit,” the convenience channel cannot afford to share almost 5% of its salty snacks shopper base with dollar.

Overall, the percentage of convenience shoppers who consider dollar a viable channel for purchasing core convenience categories is relatively low—but dollar has an appetite for battle-tested methods to build incremental sales within their existing customer base. Additionally, of the 27,378 sites reported by TDLinx, more than 21,000 are consolidated under two banners (Dollar Tree/Family Dollar and Dollar General). Strategic changes could be executed quickly across the lion’s share of that channel and possibly catch the convenience channel flat-footed if not monitored.

Leroy Kelsey is the NACS director of industry analytics. He can be reached at lkelsey@nacsonline.com or (703) 518-4255. Learn more at nacsonline.com/research.