High-larious notes from the National Association of Convenience Stores show in Orlando:
Think 33 football fields. Every product you have encountered in a convenience store — sodas, beer, candy, bandannas — is blown into a full-size booth. The top 10 in-store product categories are 1) cigarettes, 2) food service, 3) packaged beverages, 4) beer, 5) candy, 6) salty snacks, 7) fluid milk products, 8) general merchandise, 9) packaged sweet snacks, and 10) "other tobacco." Slurpees, Chilly Willies, Miller Lite, single-dose packets of Tylenol, Durex condoms, microwave burritos — they're all here. And there are abundant free samples for everyone…
Like most other industries, the convenience-store business boasts its own esoteric trade magazines, with names like Professional Candy Buyer and Convenience Store News. In its latest issue, Professional Candy Buyer names Cassondra Melton of Wal-Mart "Buyer of the Year." One of her suppliers provides a testimonial: "Cassondra has a passion for the growth of confectionary and its total consumption."
Convenience Store News' lineup of columns includes Petro View, Security Beat, and Smoking Section, along with featured "shopper panel" research on the "salty snacks" category: 41 percent of salty snack purchases by teens are "planned" and 59 percent are "impulse." Slightly less impulsive adults clock in at 51 percent and 47 percent, respectively. Of those demographics most likely to purchase a meal at a convenience store, teen males lead the way at 53 percent, followed by 13- to 14-year-olds (52 percent), and both adults and teens in the Northeast (36 and 62 percent, respectively). I am suddenly feeling a bit more reflective about my own consumption habits — my desire for a bag of chips at 1 a.m. has been quantified and analyzed…
I leave the show floor, but not before a pack of caffeinated Jolt gum is thrust at me by a hyperactive girl screaming, "Chew more! Do more!" The American will to consume more and produce more personified in a stick of gum. I grab it.
