The consumers have spoken: 53% believe that freshly made foods at a convenience store chain is of equal or higher quality than traditional fast food. This number jumps to 71% when eliminating those consumers who say they never eat at either types of businesses.
Men, younger aged adults, urban dwellers, and those employed as skilled craft workers or laborers are all more likely to pick C-Store freshly prepared foods in the quality bake-off.
Today’s C-Stores are no longer the place for frozen sugar drinks, questionable hot dogs, and microwaved pockets of food, and consumers have certainly caught on.
This is not great news for the leading QSR chains, who have been in a near-constant state of menu and marketing tinkering to reclaim market share from this sector and the hot fast-casual sector. Based on data from market research firm The NPD Group, traditional QSR traffic has been sluggish, reporting little growth over the last four years. NPD also reports that food-focused C-Stores continue to make their mark with a diverse and sophisticated merchandising mix and engagement in multiple foodservice occasions. As a result, those food-forward C-Stores have gained share from traditional fast food operators across multiple dayparts.
Our full, in-depth analysis of this trend is now featured by Convenience Store News.
Read the complete article online here.
