Last week, as we prepared for the flip of the calendar, many people found themselves cleaning out such things from files and desktops to dead-wood employees and head football coaches. Ahh…the hope of a fresh start the New Year might bring! Our son had the same idea. He came home from college a couple of [...]
Today’s blog post kicks off our 5 Steps to Successful Inventory Management series which, as mentioned last week, we have been asked to present live at the 2010 Pacific Oil Conference (POC) in September. If you will recall, we listed the 5 steps in our previous posting: Ordering Process, Communication, Receiving Inventory, Invoice Audit, and [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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 [...]
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. [...]
We just received a “tweet” from our local c-store manager, Darlene, to let us know about her July 4th 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 [...]
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 [...]
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, [...]
