Convenience store operators are constantly striving to create a great and consistent experience at their stores that keep customers coming back time and time again. But often, c-store operators struggle to execute.
A recent survey led by Zenput and foodservice industry research firm Technomic looked into the barriers standing between c-store operators and operational excellence. According to the survey of 151 c-store operators, the main barriers to operations execution are rooted in store-level execution of procedures and rising labor costs.
And these barriers are resulting in a lack of compliance in critical areas of the operation. Only 1 out of 4 c-store operators felt their stores were “very effectively” complying with operating procedures and key initiatives rolled out by the operations team at headquarters.
Another key finding from the survey found that operators report that their field employees are spending too much time on low-value tasks such as preparing reports to submit to HQ and following up with stores to ensure issues are resolved.
On average, field employees spend a combined 18 hours on these two activities. That means that 45% of a field mployees’ workweek is spent on low-value tasks —time they could spend instead on training employees, interacting with customers, and executing new initiatives.
To solve for this, many operators are turning to automation to improve their team’s productivity. And for those that already utilize automation at least somewhat, the results are promising: 98% report that their experience with automation has been a positive one.
The survey found that, across the board, operators who embrace automation to a great extent report much higher success rates.
Want to see the full findings? Download our 2020 Convenience Store Ops Report here!
Subscribe to our blog
You are now subscribed!
