This summer has been quite a busy time for us here at CMI! In addition to all of the work we have been doing to expand our online and in-house educational offerings, we are thrilled to announce that we have been invited by the Pacific Oil Conference (POC) to lead a seminar entitled “Inventory Management: [...]

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 [...]

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, [...]

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 [...]

It never fails. During this time of year — when the trees are just starting bloom, the days are ever so slightly longer, and we have that rogue week or two of perfect 70 degree weather — I come down with what my father used to call “beach fever”. Apparently, I am not the only [...]

In our last article we discussed the importance of not forgetting the fundamentals of store appearance and basic store marketing. While you can get buried in data and the day-to-day store challenges, we must keep the basic fundamental processes in place. One of the fundamentals is being certain you are aware of competitive fuel pricing.  [...]

Recent studies predict that c-store operators can expect to continue with moderate sales growth in 2009 with inside sales increasing anywhere from 3% to 5%.  Sounds like a decent organic growth, right? However, given higher product and inventory carrying costs, this sales growth will equate to no real bottom line growth and, in fact, actually [...]