"Couche Tard" is a French phrase that means "goes to bed late”. It looks like the Canadian convenience store operator bearing that name not just goes to bed late, but does not sleep at all. While it persists at its effort of buying the assets of 7-Eleven – which controls over 12,500 stores in USA alone – the never-sleeping Canadian c-store mogul just made a deal to buy 20 Hutch’s c-stores from Hutchinson Oil company, gaining access to Oklahoma and Kansas, marking the company’s 47th and 48th states of operation.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are a normal, constant process in the business world, and they have a significant impact not only on the parties directly involved in the transaction, but on the related industry players, as well. For all those small and independent convenience store operators, having a big gorilla on their home turf is an unnerving experience. We heard many tales of major operators offering drastically lowered “promotional” prices that are hard for smaller competitors to afford, especially over any extended period of time.

What should a small operator do, under these circumstances? Up the game and play it like the big guys do. With Ticon’s suite of analytic tools, it became very possible and affordable to have access to store location analysis with all the vital data on traffic fluctuation, target audience demographics (for trade area as well as for traffic flow), visitor rate variations, and all other bits of information that help the operator to achieve maximum efficiency and raise the profit margins.

It’s like having a full department of traffic engineers and data analysts working for you – only without the cost the big companies have to pay for this luxury. Contact us today to strengthen your competitive position, optimize the store operations, and achieve maximum profitability.