As the popular saying goes, “Come for the food, stay for the pie”. In the convenience store industry, though, customers come for the gas (or maybe diesel), and stay for a pizza pie.

Foodservice continues to be the driving force in the c-store environment, and the key revenue center, too. All the operators carefully watch what food categories attract the greatest number of customers, as well as their dollars. So far, the usual suspects make the list: hot coffee drinks, fresh bakery, chicken, roller grill, pizza, sandwiches and burritos. The customers are showing strong drive by value, demanding fresh, high-quality items at affordable prices.

While coffee and chicken are always popular, there are interesting changes in the profile of the pizza eaters among the c-store visitors. Sales of pizza slices, for example, grow much slower, at 6.7%, than the whole pies that saw a 15.65% growth over a year. The buyers, predominantly millennials, consume pizza for lunch (38%) and for dinner (45%).

You can find more statistical data on food popularity online, but the key takeaway here is in the fact that more and more, people are coming to your store for food – not just snacks and java. They want variety, but they also want whatever they consider to be their comfort food – which can be all sorts of things, depending on the demographics to your trade area.

For a neighborhood restaurant demographic analysis is not too hard. It’s much harder, though, to do it right for the store site selection when it comes to a roadside c-store, because most of your customers drive by your place and stop when they feel hungry. Their true demographic breakdown used to be hard to establish reliably - until Ticon developed a new tool that we aptly called “Traffic Flow Demographics”.

With this tool, you can have the most accurate representation of your true trade area, which is defined by all the points of origin of your daily visitors. Armed by our proprietary AI-powered models, we can share these insights with you, quickly and affordably.

Do not postpone – call us today to gain much needed knowledge of your true trade area.