Joe's Journal

If you had asked Darlene, our favorite local c-store manager, a few years ago “What does it mean to “go green”?” her reply would have included the words “leprechauns”, “selling those green beers for all that green money”, and “some Saint named Patrick”.  In today’s environmentally conscious world, however, “going green” has become not only both the responsible and trendy choice, but an economically savvy one at that. Nowadays, going green can actually save you green!

While companies like CMI can save you the cost of paper (and for the planet – the cost of a tree), the big industry buzz is how energy efficiency (from energy efficient refrigeration and HVAC to energy efficient light bulbs) can save you significant long term dollars. In fact, according to EnergyStar.gov, 38% of energy use in grocery & convenience stores can be attributed to refrigeration.  The report goes on to list some practical, no-cost tips on how to save on your refrigeration energy use. Examples would be:

• Check temperature settings - If settings are lower than necessary, chances are you are wasting energy. The most common recommended settings are between -14 degrees and -8 degrees Fahrenheit for freezers and between 35 degrees and 38 degrees Fahrenheit for refrigerators.
• Clean cooling coils – Dirt accumulation impairs proper heat transfer and lowers the efficiency and capacity of refrigerators.
• Check door seals - Tight seals and properly closing doors prevent warm air from entering the unit, which reduces cooling energy and prevents frost buildup. Use this rule of thumb: If you can easily slide a dollar bill into the seal, have the seal adjusted.
• Keep doors shut - Repeated fluctuations in temperature will damage food quality and will cost money.
• Maintain equipment - Perform any scheduled maintenance on the units and keep evaporator coils clean and free of ice build-up.

Simple steps like these are easy ways to get your stores thinking (and saving) green.

Yes, by some, the green movement may be seen as threat as more energy efficiency cars may, in theory, decrease the volumes of gasoline sold at the pump. However, in the long run, our industry will adjust as we have proven to be nimble enough to take on any challenge.  Convenience stores will still be the place to go to fuel your vehicle…be it with gasoline, diesel,  E-85 fuel, electric, biodiesel, green beer or whatever else the future holds for powering our modes of transportation.

One thing, however, will never change.  Darlene, our Irish lass wannabe, will still wear green on St. Patrick’s Day and peddle her green beers.  Her customers will still shop in her store…if only to see that friendly smile and hear her latest words of wisdom. Rumor has it, today she will be blessing customers with this old Irish prayer as they stop in for their pre-package corned beef sandwiches:

May the wind be always at your back.
May the sun shine warm upon your face,
The rains fall soft upon your fields.
And until we meet again,
May God hold you in the palm of his hand.”

Have a great Patty’s Day!

I recently saw a tagline to an advertisement that read “Tough Times Call for Proven Solutions.”

The ad went on to point out the areas of businesses where you need to optimize your workforce to gain the most productivity.  The bullet points are: Staffing, Quality, Cost, Service, Performance, Sales and ROI.

Over the last several years, as c-store operators become more sophisticated, the survivors have been those companies who invested in the technology to most efficiently tie in the bullet items above.  They can operate quickly and more accurately than ever before, thus increasing their customer service levels since staff would be free to attentively serve customers instead of being bogged down with paperwork.

The best practice tools are available today, not just from CMIsolutions, but by an entire industry of POS vendors, grocery distributors and oil companies.  We work with thousands of stores each day to help our clients succeed. If you are on the sidelines, the urgency to get in the game has never been greater.

The c-store industry has been a cash cow for bankruptcy attorneys.  Ever wonder why?

Darlene was really worked up during the drive home hour yesterday. Normally her tirades are limited to a particular vendor who is notorious for showing up during lunch hours or a less than stellar employee who went MIA again. Yesterday’s issue de jour involved changing over her POS controllers for PCI compliance and, to make sure nothing got mucked up, she was planning to spend the night with the POS vendors.

Yes, our favorite supervisor, and self-diagnosed control freak, was planning on spending the next 12 hours at the store just to be sure all went well with the equipment jocks.

To prepare for the long night ahead, Darlene had reached for the new $3.99 twin pack of “Stacker2 6-HourPower” shots just before I had arrived. Anticipating the long 12 hours ahead, you guessed it, she downed both 6-hr shots at once. The tag line on the bottle says “Feel it Fast, Energy that Lasts, No Crash”. They aren’t lying. It’s true. Darlene was as jittery as Tiger Woods leaving a voice mail for his bimbo(s) while ducking his golf-club wielding wife.

What lessons did we learn this week, folks?

1. You don’t have to work 24/7 when you trust and surround yourself with reliable equipment vendors and sound software solution providers (like CMIsolutions…cough, cough.).

2. Sometimes a 5 hour energy boost just won’t cut it. However, don’t be gluttonous. One shot at a time, people. One shot at a time.

3. Keep your golf clubs locked up with your fire arms.

Thanks to all of those who responded to our last blog: THINK PINK! at NACS. October is not only about NACS and a shaky economy, but also about creating awareness for a disease that affects millions of people worldwide each year: breast cancer. We heard from several of you regarding your participation in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure.

• CMI’s marketing manager, Stephanie Flury, ran along with 14,000 others in Charlotte, NC on October 3rd.
• Jan Underwood, controller of Davis Oil in Georgia notes she will be running in Macon, GA on October 24th.
• Jerri Smith, of PF&E, will be running in Austin, TX on November 1st. Jerri has been running in this event for 10 years! She and a group in her office wear PINK to work every Friday during October as a way to raise awareness.

This is just a small sample of how the Petroleum Distributing and Retail industry employees, retailers and suppliers always step up to back a worthy cause no matter the economic climate.

Again, kudos to all of the runners involved in the cause. See you at NACS next week and remember to THINK PINK!

After I finished my workout on Monday evening, I went to my gym’s snack bar to pick up my usual dose of Muscle Milk. Of course, they were out.  Luckily, my favorite convenience store was on my way home and I knew that they would always be stocked.  As I headed toward the cooler, the store manager, Darlene, (obviously not used to seeing me in shorts) let out a catcall.  We started talking about fitness and she mentioned that she has spent the last six weeks training (and fundraising) for the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5k coming up this Saturday.  Not only has Darlene involved herself in such a worthy cause, she also recruited her sister and two co-workers to join as well!

As October officially kicks into full swing today, we at CMI are getting pretty darn excited about what this month will bring. Many of you, like Darlene, will be participating in fundraising and public awareness activities for Breast Cancer Awareness month. We at CMI are doing our part as well.

We all have been affected by breast cancer either directly or indirectly…most likely more than once.  This year CMI’s NACS theme is to THINK PINK!. We have purchased pink wristbands for distribution at NACS and they will be given to the first 1,000 visitors at our booth #3857 located in the technology pavilion. Stop by and pick up your wristband in honor of your mother, grandmother, sister, daughter, spouse, friend, co-worker, neighbor, and 1.3 million others diagnosed annually.

If any of your employees are walking, running, or otherwise participating in Breast Cancer Awareness this month and will not be able to visit us at NACS, let us know and we will mail them a wristband as we salute their effort to help find a cure!

I never know what to expect when I walk into my favorite convenience store. Take last week, for instance. I enter in and Darlene is hunched over the counter grasping a freshly scratched lottery ticket. Her eyes closed in prayer, she laments about losing another $10 to the State of North Carolina

“Darlene,” I said. “You’re supposed to sell the tickets, not scratch the tickets!”

Laughing, she replied that a customer hit a winning $300 game card the day before and she was just trying her luck at winning the Mustang Fever $100,000 grand prize.

Speaking of the lottery, I asked if she had installed the latest version of CMI’s PriceBook Manager with lottery reconciliation.  I wanted to see if she had any questions or suggestions for enhancements. Darlene’s eyes lit up like the sparkling headlights of her fantasy ‘Stang as she praised how easy it was for her to now track lottery sales, end games, and activate new games. She loved how the store can now keep track of its lottery inventory in just a few minutes each day and how the online help screens and FAQs were really helpful in her understanding the system.

To those of you with the latest CMI upgrade, please take advantage of the lottery reconciliation enhancements recently made. You will hit the jackpot in time and efficiency!

We just received a “tweet” from our local c-store manager, Darlene, to let us know about her July 4^th promos that are kicking in this week. No, Darlene isn’t practicing her karaoke version of “Rockin’ Robin”. She has catapulted her store into the Social Media Marketing Age and utilizing the website, Twitter, to inform her customers of the latest goings on at her store.

D’s tweets range anywhere from the latest promos and discounts to new product shipments. Because setting promotional pricing and date ranges in her PriceBook Manager software is so simple, Darlene can have her promos ready to roll and be speeding along the information superhighway to update her Twitter account faster than Bernie Madoff ‘s cellmate can say “wanna’ back rub”.

CMI clients such as Darlene, may also find Chapter 8 in the training manual helpful when setting promotional pricing. It covers Zone and Store pricing, depending on your particular needs. The changes are easy to do, just remember to record the expiration date of the price change so your pricebook will automatically revert to the regular pricing after the promo period.

Happy 4^th of July everyone! Let freedom (as well as your cash registers!) ring!

When marketing a business, it is oftentimes easy to get caught up in the high-level hierarchy that comes with trying to simultaneously obtain new customers while, at the same time, retaining the old.  We become consumed with finding that newest cash cow product or finally striking gold with that magic number price point. The thought for this week questions “Are you effectively communicating your new discoveries to your customers?”

A fellow CMI employee and “Darlene” from the convenience store down the street are quickly becoming BFFs.  Here is the story my co-worker recounted to me last week:

“I went in today for my regular chips and sandwich lunch purchase and, as I was checking out, Darlene let me in on their combo promotion. She told me that if I purchased a fountain drink, I would receive combo pricing.  After verifying that they had fountain Coke products (and not just Pepsi…ick!), I said why not and filled up.  So, now, with the combo pricing my total came to $3.50ish. Typically, without the combo pricing, just my chips and sandwich would have been over $4!  Here is my insight:

1)     Luckily, Darlene was nice enough and had time (as opposed to being buried under a pile of paperwork), to fill me in on these discounts.

2)     While it’s always an adventure to converse with Dear Dee, I probably would have been making this combo purchase weeks/months ago (and possibly more frequently) if there had been signage or a banner advertising their “value meals”.

Regardless, I’m definitely psyched about the promotion (however old it is) and am solidified as a repeat customer.”

As the price of fuel climbs in the coming months (and, come on, folks, you really didn’t think the oil companies were going to play nice all summer did you?), are you doing what is necessary to keep your customers  coming back to your store every day?

Proper signage and advertising are a must, but, more so, are your cashiers giving your customers a verbal invitation to partake in your “rope them in” promotions? After all, the allure of the c-store is that you can get “In-N-Out”, fairly “Quck & Easy”, and make it a “SpeeDee Stop”.  Your customers may be in such a hurry that they pay no attention to the bright red banner perched about the hot dog rotisserie. It never hurts to give a heads up and, in the end, it could be the start of a beautiful relationship between your store and customer.

Employee turnover is one of, if not THE, biggest concern of c-store owners today. The cost of hiring, training, and then losing an employee (either by employer or employee choice) has always been a challenge in the retail industry.

Since this is a subject many consider more important than the swine flu, the credit crunch, or the Yankees dropping three to the Red Sox last weekend, we turn to our store manager Darlene for the answers.

Darlene knows she wants an employee who exhibits the following qualities:

1. Honest (No history of stealing)
2. Strong  Work Ethic (An employee who will come to work as scheduled, and will work well with fellow employees, and do what is necessary to increase store sales)
3. Has the ability to Multi-Task  (Must be able to be polite with customers, assertive with vendors, be computer literate, and be able to handle pump controllers, lottery sales, bottle deposits, verify age of buyers, and so on…)

There are other areas Darlene attempts to check as well (i.e. substance abuse, Workman Comp claims, and ability to work in a stressful environment).

“In short, the same qualities you would want of an Air Traffic Controller, but at a slightly lower wage,” jokes Darlene.

How does Darlene find solid employees?  The best way is from the referrals of other quality associates within the store’s chain. The c-store clerks do have a network that was established long before Facebook and Twitter and, if they find out an employer will treat them well, the best ones will gravitate to that c-store chain.  Darlene is always on the lookout for good talent. In addition, if an employee refers a clerk who stays on board for over 90 days, both the referring employee and new employee each receives a $100 store gift card.

How are you getting the best employees?  Share your experiences with us so we can pass along to our network of c-store operators?  We will keep your name anonymous.

This is a very important concern in our industry and every suggestion is worth sharing.

I was reading an article this week regarding the sales crunch that many businesses put themselves under during the last quarter of the year as a means to make up for the first three quarters. Think that will business as usual for 2009?

Last weekend, we watched as Phil and Tiger attempted to make up for the first three days of missed opportunities with incredible drives and putts during the first 16 holes on day four just to fall short of their goal as Masters champions.

On Monday, we here at CMI reviewed the status of clients who have not fully implemented pricebook at their stores and of prospective clients who have not yet committed to implementing a retail accounting system at all. Waiting for the 4^th quarter to make up for lost sales is akin to not putting yourself in a competitive position on the first three days of The Masters.  However, failing to win a green jacket pales in comparison to a failing business.

The first quarter of the year has just passed.  Are you waiting for the 4^th quarter to automate your accounting and store processes with a sound pricebook and inventory management system? As the great Yogi Berra once said, “90% of putts that are short don’t go in.”  Begin making an effort now to ensure your business does not fall short for 2009.