If there’s a ceiling on fresh food sales and innovation at c-stores, the industry has yet to see it.
C-store foodservice sales surged 28.5% over the past year, as operators have upped their food and beverage game, Marie Molde, food industry expert at MenuData.ai, said during a recent webinar hosted by The Food Institute.
While it’s been easy to assume that customers choose c-store foodservice because it’s cheap, Molde said that’s “really not the case anymore.” She noted that 66% of consumers surveyed by MenuData.ai say convenience stores match restaurants on offering fresh, quality food.
However, only 46% of consumers say the c-stores they visit compare favorably with restaurants, indicating there’s still plenty of room for convenience operators to improve.
While c-stores have heightened their foodservice game, they are contending with high price sensitivity and declining store trips. Still, retailers can take advantage of some major trends that Molde and Jason Gunn, foodservice and technology “spirit guide” with J.W. Gunn & Associates, see taking off in c-stores to try to boost sales.
Familiar foods, new formats
C-stores are well positioned to capitalize on one major trend: Pairing something familiar with something unexpected, Molde said in the webinar.
For instance, Buffalo chicken is a flavor traditionally paired with wings or sandwiches. Some top convenience stores are already adapting the flavor to more form factors, Molde said. 7-Eleven has a Buffalo Chicken Roller, for example, while Rutter’s offers a Buffalo fried chicken fettuccine alfredo.
Another mashup is putting macaroni and cheese on sandwiches and other items. Sheetz has mac and cheese bites, fried bites that turn macaroni and cheese into a hand-held, portable item, Molde said.
Brisket is also being tested in a number of new formats and dayparts. One example is Sheetz’s brisket street tacos and Buc-ee’s brisket and egg taco, among other breakfast dishes.
The rise of Spam
Protein is trending in general and Spam can be worked into a menu easier than other types of proteins, Molde explained.
“It can be an entree or a snack like a hand roll. It scratches the protein itch and brings a lot of flavors,” she said in an interview.
In 2021, Rutter’s pioneered a limited-time menu of items that use Hormel’s Spam and the chain often adds new Spam-centric options to the lineup, such as a Spam and cheese sandwich, breakfast taco and breakfast burrito.
Spam-forward options also include Kwik Trip’s Spamwich breakfast sandwich, which launched in July. Hormel’s Spam Dog, which debuted in May, is a perfect fit for c-stores roller grills, Gunn opined in the webinar.
Hot honey is still hot
While “hot honey” is considered a mature trend in traditional foodservice, c-stores are not fully capitalizing on it. Only two of the 11 c-store chains that MenuData.ai researched utilize hot honey.
Additionally, 18 to 34-year-olds surveyed by MenuData.ai preferred a hot honey chicken sandwich over a classic chicken sandwich.
“Hot honey checks a lot of the boxes we want to check when we’re thinking about flavor and innovation,” Molde said in the webinar.
Still, some operators are onto this trend. Among the c-stores highlighting hot honey dishes is Racetrac, which added a hot honey chicken and waffle sandwich earlier this year.
7-Eleven’s seven new proprietary sauces include two plays on honey: Honey, Please, a honey mustard, and Sweet Like That, a honey garlic sauce.
Chef brands and collabs reign
Collaborations with well-known chefs are becoming more common at c-stores across the U.S.
“Chef partnerships are smart; people are choosing c-stores for quality food. They believe in c-stores and their ability to provide fresh, favorable food,” Molde emphasized in an interview.
Partnering with a chef communicates that fresh, quality food is the company’s focus and customers are not going to get “a bland item sitting under a heat lamp all morning,” she added.
One notable example is Guy Fieri's Flavortown line, which debuted in 2025 in 10 states and expanded to Circle K stores in Arizona and Nevada earlier this year. Among the offerings are a mac n’ cheese burger, sweet heat fried chicken and waffle sandwich, cheeseburger burrito, O.G. Hot Italian sandwich and jalapeno potato nuggets.
Meanwhile, Sheetz worked with TV host and food personality Adam Richman and chefs Christian Alquiza and Ian Fujimoto on “Fuel Stop Feast,” a miniseries in which two chefs compete to create new meals from Sheetz menu items.
The episodes introduce three limited-time menu items: The Lumberjack Breakfast Sandwich, , the Pizza Bagel Bunz Burger and Tater Bomb Nachos.
To bring a chef’s expertise to a broader array of a retailer’s food program, operators like Rutter’s and Leo’s Market and Eatery are tapping professional chefs, often trained at top culinary schools, to better compete with restaurants.
Reinventing pizza
Pizza is driving consumers to c-stores. Papa Johns CEO Todd Penegor highlighted the growing competition from convenience retail. The top item consumers say they go to c-stores for is pizza, and they are expecting a more premium offering, said Molde.
Because of this, improving an operator's pizza offer can help grow sales.
Casey’s General Stores, which is already well-known for its pizza, rolled out a new pan pizza crust in October. The retailer said it spent around two years developing the offering, which is square with a “fluffy” crust and edge-to-edge toppings.
Casey’s said it decided to add pan pizza in part because it found consumers in many of its markets did not have easy access to the crust type.
7-Eleven’s newly reworked pizza crust has a crispy, bubbly exterior and airy interior, the retailer said. Molde said that should result in a more elevated experience for customers.
“7-Eleven has really made a concentrated effort in recent years to be a food-forward c-store operation, and I think this new pizza launch and what they’re doing with their food program is evidence of that,” Molde said in the webinar.
