How in-store tech is boosting c-store operations

Now is a great time for c-store technology, said Tyler Grubbs, executive director of digital and store technology at RaceTrac during a panel at the National Retail Federation show in New York City earlier this year.

He noted that the convenience retail industry has long suffered from a lack of tech innovation, but changing attitudes have shifted the paradigm over the past three to four years.

“I think the industry said enough's enough, and really has put their money where their mouth is and invested in partners and technologies to change the paradigm,” he said during the panel on smart technology. 

Recently, Atlanta-based RaceTrac added technology partners across a number of areas, including supply chain, temperature monitoring and forecourt equipment. It also updated its mobile app.

And while the retailer has already made great strides, it continues looking for more technology that addresses needs and improves operations. 

“Our hope is that if we enable the right technology foundation, we are going to be able to scale quickly,” Grubb said. 

Big boost at the fuel pumps

Four years ago, RaceTrac had no way of knowing how many fuel pumps across its footprint were malfunctioning at any given time. Worse, the way they found out was usually from a frustrated guest alerting them. Then someone at that store would need to manually create a service ticket. 

That process “hit the trifecta” of problems — inconveniencing a guest, putting more work on an employee and potentially costing sales. 

RaceTrac tested a number of solutions to address this over the past few years, and eventually adopted technology that provided real-time monitoring of all of its pumps.

The first thing RaceTrac’s leaders learned from that monitoring is that the number of pumps needing attention was usually higher than they thought.

“We thought two and a half to three and a half percent of our pumps were down at any point in time.” said Grubb. “Turns out it was more like six and a half [or] seven.”

In some cases, the new tech can pinpoint exactly what part of the pump isn’t working. In others, it just flags that there is an issue. The system can automatically generate maintenance tickets about 75% of the time, and identifies which problems can be fixed remotely, resulting in fewer maintenance dispatches.

These improvements have not only saved money, but drastically improved pump uptime. 

“We're now at a point where we've got about 0.3% of our pumps down at any point in time,” said Grubb.

Happier workers, happier customers

Grubb also said that a better employee experience can help c-stores address high front-line turnover. Cycling through new hires puts more pressure on managers, who are spending more time training team members than doing their other tasks. This can frustrate managers and eventually “create a death spiral inside that operational environment,” Grubb explained

RaceTrac has integrated training technology that doesn’t rely as much on up-front training, instead “showing [workers] in the moment” what they need to do and how to do it. This ranges from telling them what goes into a specific food order to reminding them of store policies.

“You give it to them right in the moment,” Grubb said. “And then you can build on that over time and then move into more advanced trainings.”

Making their job easier can increase employee satisfaction and retention, as well as improve training and store operations, “which will ultimately translate into a better experience for our guests, so that we can drive loyalty,” Grubbs said.

This new training technology isn’t just aimed at making things less stressful for workers. It’s also about achieving specific benefits like higher accuracy and faster ordering times. 

When implementing any new technology, Grubb said it’s important to establish “clear measures of success” that make it easier to evaluate if a product or program is doing its job.

Getting it right

RaceTrac has also worked to change how team members think about new technology. Grubb said that in the past, team members might suggest a product because it had a specific feature they wanted. Now, they’re sharing their needs with the tech department, which can evaluate options and propose solutions that fit better into the company’s overall plan. 

“[These solutions]  may not be sexy,” said Grubb. “Back loading an invoice is not sexy, but when you do it 3 million times a year at 75 data points an invoice, it's a lot of key-in that you don't have to do anymore.”

He added that focusing on a specific feature for a tech solution doesn't always align with the organization’s needs.

“Really it was our own internal processes that didn't set the tool or the vendor or the capability up for success,” he said.

Some of RaceTrac’s answers remain simpler for now. For instance, Grubb noted that the company’s bean-to-cup coffee machines can’t send specific alerts when something goes wrong, but they do have smart plugs, which record the power spikes when the grinder is in use, offering Grubb and his team some indication of uptime.

“I don't see that [energy spike] for two days, I’ve probably got a problem, right?” Grubb asked 

As RaceTrac expands its technology, Grubb said his ambition is “to turn every action that happens in the store into a structured data point” from the time a customer walks in to the time they walk out. 

“Turn that into a data point, and I know we will find the use cases for it.”

In July, Wawa announced it’s launching machine learning-based forecasting and replenishment technology for fresh foods across its 1,100 convenience stores. 

The Pennsylvania retailer said it’s with Relex Solutions, an AI-driven supply chain and retail planning platform, on the launch. Relex’s forecasting and replenishment systems aim to help Wawa automate manual processes and reduce spoilage, according to the announcement.

The technology should help Wawa optimize its foodservice program — the company’s most popular offering — as it continues its nationwide expansion. The chain plans to expand its footprint to 1,800 convenience stores by 2030. 

Wawa joins other convenience retailers such as Circle K, Kwik Trip and Casey’s General Stores in using Relex’s solutions to improve in-store processes and decision making. The tech vendor’s suite of products generally focuses on helping retailers address high product turnover and inventory management kinks.

Relex’s forecasting and replenishment system will let the retailer maintain high standards of freshness and product availability as it continues to expand its network, Chief Supply Chain Officer Nelson Griffin said in the announcement. Wawa’s assortment features hoagie sandwiches, wraps, burritos, protein bowls, salads and more.  

“Wawa’s commitment to delivering an exceptional customer experience aligns perfectly with our culture and our capabilities,” Relex Chief Revenue Officer Frank Lord said. “This partnership will leverage our joint expertise in convenience stores to yield measurable near-term results.”

Sprint Mart is letting technology carry more of the operational load — and the benefits aren’t just appearing in its customer experience but also its employees’ workdays.

“As we continue to evolve as an organization, we’re looking more towards technology to streamline time efficiency in anything that we do,” Herb Hargraves, chief operating officer for Sprint Mart — which has more than 100 c-stores in Mississippi and Alabama — said in an interview with C-Store Dive.

The company’s IT department identifies areas where processes could be streamlined or automated to improve consumer and worker experiences, then seeks the right answer to those problems. 

Hargraves said that Sprint Mart is “constantly evolving on a technology standpoint” to make its in-store and forecourt experiences more customer friendly.

For example, the retailer upgraded the fuel pumps and in-store payment technology to accept tap-to-pay. Apple Pay has been particularly popular, Hargraves noted. He also said that the transition has cut the number of complaints the company gets about the payments system.

Sprint Mart might add delivery in the future, although if it does, the retailer will take this step carefully. Hargraves said he’s found from past experiences that a poorly run delivery program can hurt the customer experience more than no delivery program at all. 

“I’m planning on learning from those mistakes,” he said. “And making it better here at Sprint Mart.”

For employees, less time spent on repetitive tasks means they can focus on other things, such as training and customer service.

Sprint Mart is testing a cash acceptor by Volumatic at one location. The device is located under the register and operates like the bill acceptor of a smart safe, Hargraves said. 

Employees can slip bills in during their shifts, tapping a fob so the machine knows who added each bill. The device checks the bills for counterfeits and seals them in a bag, making for easier counting. 

“The team leader that works the store loves it because it saves her an hour and a half a day,” Hargraves said. 

While the device doesn’t directly save Sprint Mart money, it gives the team leader more time to focus on coaching, training and mentoring the staff, or even directly serving customers in the store, Hargraves said. 

Sprint Mart is also using technology to simplify beer deliveries. Previously, when a beer delivery arrived, the company had to pay for it on the spot, using money order machines in each store. A recent partnership with invoice processing company Fintech has helped the retailer streamline that system. 

“They have a direct correlation to our banking account, and they can immediately pay that vendor upon delivery through a payment portal, rather than a paper check,” Hargraves said. 

The company automated invoice processing, which Sprint Mart had previously been done manually, a Fintech spokesperson noted. The impact saved about 15 to 25 hours per week across multiple processes.

While upgrades to the payment system help customers, the increased security with all this updated tech protects their personal information, as data breaches have hit the c-store industry in recent years. 

“Upgrades to the pumps, upgrades to the POS system, [are] always happening just to keep customers’ personal information secure,” Hargraves said.

Stinker Stores announced in February that it partnered with data analytics and AI company Inteladata to enhance roller grill operations across all 105 of its stores. 

Inteladata’s AI-powered UpDog roller grill management platform uses camera vision to monitor roller grills and record which items are selling and when. It then uses that data to create actionable plans to improve sales and reduce waste.

Stinker joins other retailers like RaceTrac and Circle K that are using AI-powered solutions to offload certain tasks from employees, from fuel management to online delivery fulfillment.

Stinker will use UpDog’s monitoring analytics to automate inventory management and plan for its assortment of roller grill products. This tool aims to help Stinker ensure products are available when shoppers want them and fewer items get thrown away uneaten.

“With so much focus on AI, especially within the fresh food and dispensed beverage space, we see this strategic partnership as a springboard to turn a broad, hard-to-define term, such as ‘artificial intelligence,’ into ‘actionable intelligence,’ which can quickly and easily grow sales and site-level execution,” said Zach Treinen, senior category manager at Stinker.

Boise, Idaho-based Stinker, which has stores across Colorado, Idaho and Wyoming, has been investing heavily in store development technology over the past couple years. Last summer, it deployed the NCR Voyix Edge system to virtualize its point-of-sale system and allow it to run the latest software on older hardware. Last September, Stinker refreshed its mobile app and opened its largest store to date.

C-store tech development news has been coming thick and fast lately, with EG America, Wesco and Parker’s Kitchen all announcing updates in the past year. The latter two added self-checkout machines to more stores while the former added an AI planning tool. 

Parker’s Kitchen and Wesco reached agreements back in February to bring self-checkout kiosks to dozens more of their convenience stores, according to announcements from both companies.

Parker’s, which operates 94 c-stores across Georgia and South Carolina, has brought NCR Voyix’s kiosks to 62 of its locations with plans for future expansion. Wesco, which has 55 c-stores in Michigan, is bringing Mashgin’s AI-powered machines to 20 of its stores.

While self-checkout has become a staple across the industry, many c-store chains are still experimenting with how the technology can best meet their needs. Parker’s and Wesco both decided to expand their partnerships with NCR and Mashgin, respectively, after trial runs. 

Parker’s noted that NCR’s kiosks have helped customers complete their purchases quickly and independently, and have helped team members monitor and assist several customers at once, especially during peak shopping times.

“Our team members can assist three customers at once, rather than one, resulting in faster checkout times and more efficient service,” said Scott Smith, senior director of IT at Parker’s.

Meanwhile, Wesco said that during its pilot with Mashgin, the kiosks “accelerated nearly half a million transactions at over 10 Wesco locations.” Wesco also said that the kiosks have allowed shoppers to get in and out quicker, freeing up associates to attend to other tasks around the store.

"Our customers have quickly taken to love Mashgin's machines — and we've loved working with them,” said Nancy Westgate-Sytsema, co-president of Wesco. "Both the technology and the team are extremely responsive, exactly what we look for in a technology partner.”

Self-checkout may not be the best option for all convenience retailers. Experts suggest that before implementing the tech, operators must figure out where in their stores the machines would go and how their employees and customers would respond to it.

Coen Markets’ Vice President of Marketing Andrea Neurohr told C-Store Dive last December that the company would roll out food ordering kiosks across its entire convenience store network in early 2025. The retailer, which operates about 50 c-stores across Pennsylvania, Ohio and West Virginia, debuted the kiosks — manufactured by payments company Verifone — at a location in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania.

This continues Coen’s ongoing technology upgrade efforts, which included the overhaul of the retailer’s loyalty program and its website.

In addition to implementing Verifone’s food ordering kiosks, Coen has also installed the payment firm’s self-checkout systems that have the same screen as the kiosks, Neurohr said.

Coen continues to try new technology to improve the checkout experience. The company was one of several convenience retailers that previously offered frictionless checkout technology via Grabango, which ceased operations last October due to a lack of funding. Coen initially launched Grabango’s technology, which automatically tracked what customers picked up and allowed them to pay by scanning the Grabango app before leaving, at two of its Pittsburgh-area c-stores in February 2023.

Verifone’s foodservice kiosk, the K350, features a touchscreen that displays personalized promotions and lets customers search for and order products in real time. The kiosks support a variety of payment methods, including EMV chip cards, contactless payments and mobile wallets. They also connect to WiFi and bluetooth and can integrate with Coen’s existing POS system and loyalty program.

“The ease of use, flow of the user experience, and overall look of these new [Verifone] kiosks will definitely bring Coen and the customer ordering experience to a new level,” Neurohor said.

Coen isn’t the only regional c-store retailer using Verifone’s food ordering kiosks. Dandy Mini Marts, which has more than 60 stores in the New York and Pennsylvania Twin Tiers areas, debuted the technology at an undisclosed number of locations last month.

Wawa has closed 11 stores in its hometown of Philadelphia since 2020. The culprit? Mostly, concerns about crime, according to local reports. 

The share of burglaries that take place at c-stores and gas stations ticked up from 10.4% in 2023 to 10.5% in 2024, according to crime statistics from the Federal Bureau of Investigation. That rate seems to be holding steady so far this year, according to the FBI’s Crime Data Explorer.

Additionally, shoplifting was up 93% in 2023 across all retail sectors compared to 2019 and 73% of retailers reported that shoplifters have become more violent and aggressive, according to a 2024 National Retail Federation report.

To combat the persistent problem of crime and security, convenience store operators are using surveillance, especially video cameras, in multiple ways.

Babir Sultan made an extreme move several years ago to counteract crime in his three Fav Trip convenience stores in Missouri. If shoplifters managed to leave a store without being caught, Sultan said he later posted security videos of them stealing merchandise on YouTube. He said he quickly saw crime go “drastically down.” 

He continues to post them.

Fav Trip stores each have 32 to 35 very high-resolution cameras “in every corner imaginable,” he said. “We try to figure out the blind spots.” 

Breez-In, which operates six stores in Virginia, has cameras inside and outside its locations, including some cameras with 360-degrees visibility. The company also has license plate cameras in the forecourt. These all help it stay on top of multiple types of theft, said David M. Bogese, chief operating officer of the Prince George, Virginia-based company.

It’s important that the cameras be very visible, said Bogese, “to stop the problem before it starts.” And his 360-degree cameras are distinct so draw attention — they’re inside a dome and can scan the entire store.

Prioritizing monitoring

Cameras need to be “an overt presence” for c-stores, said Matt Kelley, senior vice president of business and market development for LiveView Technologies (LVT).

In fact, the remote security technology company’s research shows customers are willing to drive an extra couple miles to visit a convenience store experience they feel is safer. 

“There’s that perception of control that an overt presence provides,” Kelley said. “I like to think of it as adding friction into the bad actor’s activity. They’re going to calculate what’s the likelihood of getting caught. If it’s higher at location A than B, then they’re going to go to Location B.”

Refuel, which has more than 240 stores in five states, uses CCTV systems, public view monitors and LVT surveillance units, which are trailers with a camera, strobe, light and audio. It prioritizes store monitoring in three primary zones: the forecourt, customer-facing sales floor areas and employee-only spaces. 

“Each of these carries its own inherent risks, so we monitor them all closely,” said Wes Pate, Refuel’s vice president, loss prevention and risk management.

It’s not enough to just have the cameras, Kelley said; it’s important to include signage too. 

“If you have a sign saying it’s monitored by security, then they notice the camera,” Kelley added. “If you put up a camera but don’t put up a sign, you’re missing an opportunity.”

Taking an AI approach

While having cameras in the store can record crimes on the premises, or even catch people in the act if someone is monitoring the system, artificial intelligence can automate and enhance the benefits of surveillance systems.

For instance, LVT said its cameras can pick up on loiterers in a store and, after an amount of time, the devices will play an announcement asking them to move along.

The system can escalate its response if the person doesn’t leave, first with a soft blue and white pulsing light, then moving to red, white and blue lights that flash quickly and brightly. Users can also incorporate custom sounds if they prefer.

And while LVT’s cameras don’t use facial recognition, they can use clothing and vehicle recognition to alert store managers about potential criminals.

“People think having [security measures] gives the impression that this is an unsafe area and the inverse is true,” said Kelley. “By having a strong security posture it cleans up the environment and creates a more welcoming perception when you’re coming on site.”

Other technology does use facial recognition. At Fav Trip, Sultan has recently upgraded his surveillance system to incorporate AI technology that can detect suspected criminals if they enter the store a second time. The system alerts the store when these individuals enter, making it easier to catch them.

Retailers do need to be careful with AI technology, however. In 2023, Rite Aid was prohibited from using facial recognition for five years after its system was found to have been storing people’s images without their knowledge and flagging false positives.

In the c-store industry, Jacksons Food Stores was sued when customers said it was using facial recognition in Portland, Oregon, where the technology had been banned. Though the case was later voluntarily dismissed, the suit demonstrated the importance of understanding all applicable local laws and making sure any security system adheres to those strictures. 

Refuel is testing an AI-powered CCTV platform that provides 24/7 monitoring of its cameras systems. If criminal activity happens, it triggers alerts, which are reviewed by a third party and sent to Refuel.

“That has helped us detect internal theft earlier and more frequently — even beyond traditional point-of-sale monitoring,” said Robert Leonard, senior manager of loss prevention and business continuity for Refuel. He noted the company is also exploring how this tool could help identify active threats in real time and potentially integrate with other systems.

H&S Energy Group is adding electronic shelf labels from digital solutions company Aperion to its stores, according to a press release earlier this summer from Aperion’s parent company, Hussmann.

The retailer tested the labels in seven locations in early 2025, and decided to expand the product to all roughly 300 locations. The expansion is expected to complete sometime in 2026.

Electronic shelf labels should help H&S make price updates quicker and help create a better customer experience, according to the announcement. H&S’s electronic shelf labels will allow the company to instantly update pricing on any item remotely. According to Aperion’s brochure, the technology can cut the labor cost of pricing items by up to 90%. The tags can also display additional information, such as whether there’s a deal for the item or when something out-of-stock is expected to be back.

In its release, Hussmann said H&S plans to eventually use the digital tags for inventory management, digital coupons and loyalty program tie-ins, as well. 

"This rollout is a key milestone in our broader digital transformation strategy," said Fidaa Mohrez, senior director of operational systems at H&S Energy Group. "By deploying Aperion’s Electronic Shelf Labels, we're improving pricing accuracy, reducing manual effort, and delivering a more consistent experience for our customers.” 

Mohrez also noted that the digital labels cut down on waste, since paper tags won’t need to be printed out every time a product or price changes.

Since roughly doubling its store count in early 2024 with the acquisition of Andretti Petroleum Group, Orange, California-based H&S has made a number of tech upgrades, including adding car wash subscriptions to its app, adding temperature monitoring to refrigerators, heaters and freezers, and expanding the availability of delivery from its stores.