After a record year of fuel profits, changes in export policy and facility vulnerabilities, what is in store for fuel marketers the remainder of this year and the start of 2020? OPIS Global Head of Energy Analysis Tom Kloza, known for forecasting the 2015 crude collapse, gives us his unique, candid and irreverent predictions for what is ahead.

Do your customers love you? Are they loyal? And what are you doing to differentiate your customer experience? Our 15th annual Intouch-CSP Insight Mystery Shop is expanding beyond execution into emotion, exploring the ways leading chains are creating a memorable consumer experience. Offering exclusive analysis of 10 leading chains, Intouch Insight CEO Cameron Watt shares what customers say they want from convenience stores—and who is delivering on their demands. The Intouch-CSP Customer Experience Award will be handed out to this year’s mystery shop winner.

Stop repeating those hackneyed marketing clichés: Best of breed, state-of-the-art, one-stop shop, silver bullet.  Marketing our stores is hard and often messy. It means creating a purpose and telling that story through your architecture, merchandising and customer engagement. Sounds simple? Well, consider that most convenience chains run diverse retail networks where stores vary in size, age, scale, and customer demographics. Clearly, crafting a clear message takes more than just some catchy buzzwords.

Helping to clear the cobwebs of clichés and craft a clear-eyed retail strategy, Outlook is excited to share some of the best marketers in our industry. 

Foodborne pathogens pose a risk to both consumers and retail food operators. These pathogens enter establishments via different vectors, and controlling these vectors is critical for reducing risk for contamination. While basic hygiene is foundational for pathogen control, heightened consumer expectations and awareness necessitates adoption of new and improved control measures. This presentation will cover key components of an ideal food safety system within a retail food establishment, including technologies available to operators.

Digital orders are estimated to be about a quarter of all restaurant orders. This is both an opportunity and a threat for convenience chains. In this session, learn how to capitalize on the opportunity by getting to know your guests and offering them the ultimate level of convenience – placing orders and receiving goods without leaving the couch. This action-oriented session will cover the existential reality of ordering and delivery and how to use individual customer data to drive transactions.

Join Stuzo and leading Convenience and Fuel Retail executives for a thought provoking panel discussion on the current state of digital innovation, modern digital infrastructure to empower the enterprise to evolve and compete, and the digital storefront modalities that retailers see as most transformative.

With unemployment at an all-time low, Fuel/Convenience store brands continue to struggle to find and employ top talent. Once you find them, you need to retain your top employees in order to deliver a consistent customer experience and elevate your brand. In today's digital and social environments, teams communicate and engage differently. You need to evolve in order to meet their expectations. The break room has gone digital! Come find out how you can enhance communication and engagement with your front-line work force and retain your best employees.

Convenience stores are required to meet myriad consumer demands today: The need for speed now co-exists with the desire for stay-a-while amenities. Learn how consumers are seeking to satisfy both need states and hear from leading operators how media, seating and other features elevate the patron experience and increase the location’s relevance for the consumer.

According to the NACS, industry merchants spent $11 billion on credit card fees in 2018. Credit card companies, well aware of the high cost of customer acquisition, used a significant share of those revenues to fund branded rewards programs – building cardholder loyalty and continued spending to enhance profit margins.


Notably, none of those fees enhanced customer loyalty for the merchants who paid them.


Recognizing merchants’ continuing drive to reduce processing fees, this session will reveal new strategies to leverage payment mechanisms that dramatically reduce transaction costs – while concurrently helping to grow customer loyalty. These strategies enable merchants to:


•Mitigate interchange fees and redirect a share of the savings to boost loyalty programs – and enhance margins


• Leverage private label payments – both gift and debit – to create a cohesive payment experience that’s easy, engaging, even fun for customers


• Create a simple, cohesive mobile experience for consumer, including mobile payment and order-ahead

The continued growth and transformation of the lottery industry, as well as the state by state adoption of online sports betting represents a unique opportunity for retailers to drive traffic to their stores and source incremental revenue. InComm presents the potential of this opportunity to brick and mortar retailers and a suite of products in development to enhance both the lottery and sports betting player experience while strengthening the connection between retailer and consumer.  

Food Service is projected to grow by 3.6%* in 2019 and technology will play a vital role in helping C-Stores realize this opportunity.  Join this session to learn how the largest, global restaurant chains grow revenue and increase customer LTV by analyzing consumer behavior, establishing 1:1 customer relationships and incentivizing purchasing behavior via automated marketing tools and sophisticated use of AI & machine learning.  On behalf of 170 customers (Pizza Hut, Denny’s, Del Taco, etc.) and 75,000 locations under management, Punchh and Kelly Roddy, former President, Schlotzskys, look forward to sharing best practices to help C Stores grow their Food Service business.  

* Source: Technomic    

Sign up to tour the Biltmore house—including the archives and unrestored rooms—and learn how estate staff care for America’s largest home. Following the tour, enjoy a delectable wine and chocolate tasting.

1:00pm - 1:15pm - Check-in 

1:15pm - Departure 

1:30pm - 2:30pm - Tour

2:30pm - 3:30pm - Chocolate and red wine tasting

3:30pm - Departure 

3:45pm - Arrival to Omni Grove Park 

Learn from floral design experts how they create the must-see fresh floral arrangements for the Biltmore house and pick up some techniques to impress family and friends at your next event.

1:00pm - 1:15pm - Check-in 

1:15pm - Departure 

1:30pm - 3:30pm - Workshop

3:30pm - Departure 

3:45pm - Arrival to Omni Grove Park 

The CBD (cannabidiol) market is surging, moving out of the shadows and into mainstream retail. Big-name drug retailers CVS and Walgreens have announced they will carry the nonintoxicating CBD products, and industry analysts predict the market could hit $22 billion in sales by 2022.

Is CBD a new category for convenience, and will it help shore up declines in tobacco and fuel? Learn answers to those questions as we explore the legal and regulatory hurdles and hear what it will take to develop this new category in your stores. In an exclusive fireside chat, Bonnie Herzog, managing director of equity research for Wells Fargo, and Cátia Kossovsky, Chair Corporate and Securities Practice, Hoban Law Group, a law firm versant in the area of CBD and cannabis, explore CBD's potential in the brick-and-mortar space.

During the session, we'll cover the following:

•              What exactly is CBD?

•              What are the market opportunities?

•              What is the likely regulatory landscape? 

In this session, we will get to know more about the USO of North Carolina. Founded in 1941, they are the lead organization charged with supporting military servicemen and servicewomen in the state of North Carolina. Eleven percent of U.S. active-duty military forces call North Carolina home. With seven major military installations, North Carolina has the fourth-largest demographic of active- and reserve-duty components in the country.

The USO of North Carolina is an independent 501(C)(3) organization chartered by USO Arlington as a self-sustaining separate operating entity. USO of North Carolina is wholly reliant on funding from private grants, donations, corporate gifts and sponsorships, and fundraisers. It receives no direct funding from the national USO or from the government.

Join us to hear more about this incredible organization and how you can align your brand with this cause.

Join Outlook Leadership and its spotlight charity, USO of North Carolina, in packing “A Touch of Home Kits” for military members who are being deployed. What better way to extend your reach than to provide support to our nation’s military? We will pack various snacks and personal items in bags, along with notes written by you. All participants will fold small flags that fit into the pockets of service members’ uniforms when they are in the fields and act as a constant reminder that their country is with them and that they are connected to home. This fun event requires no prior experience and will change the way you think about snacks and what flags mean to our warriors when they are away from home. Our goal is make 1,000 kits. These kits are critical elements of building morale and letting our military know how much we appreciate their sacrifice. Please join us.

The convenience-store sector continues to experience a period of rapid consolidation. National and regional operators, foreign strategic buyers and institutional private-equity investors, among others, have had a voracious appetite to grow through acquisition and investment in the space. The evolution of the modern convenience store has come full circle as valuations have reached heightened levels even at a time when industry operators face numerous headwinds, unprecedented competition and potential disruption by Amazon and others. In this timely and informative panel discussion, senior investment bankers will moderate a panel of top industry consolidators as they discuss the current cycle of convenience-store M&A and the future opportunities and challenges facing those looking to invest capital in the industry.