By Frank Beard

Many convenience store customers are dashboard diners. As mentioned in the May 2017 issue of NACS Magazine, the majority of those who purchase a sandwich or meal (56%) will eat it in the car. At night, nearly 3-in-4 (73%) plan to do the same.

This raises an important question: Do your stores offer car-friendly products and packaging?

Customers are looking for it. A recent survey of more than 3,500 GasBuddy users asked about the foodservice attributes that they look for when traveling. The number one response (63.3%) was “convenient/easy to hold.”

Driving with greasy fingers, struggling to find a place to set our food, setting down a pizza tray only to discover that grease has soaked through and left a mark on the car—it’s frustrating. Even worse: products that spill or slide about can become a dangerous distraction.

The good news is that some convenience stores and companies have already made car-friendly packaging a priority. When considering your options, here are four strategies that work:

1. Use the cup holder
Scrambled eggs are especially messy when they spill. Fortunately for QuikTrip’s customers, the breakfast bowls are sold in car-friendly snap-top containers that fit easily in cup holders. For those who grab and go on their morning commutes, this makes it easy to safely enjoy a few bites at each stoplight.

Stewart’s Shops uses the same strategy with its Car Cups. Rather than forcing customers to fumble with bags of mixed nuts, trail mix, and cheese and meats, they’re placed inside snap-top containers that fit in the cup holders.

2. Attach it to a beverage
Snacktops, an exhibitor at the 2016 NACS Show, produced a variety of food couplers, such as plastic trays that snap onto the tops of standard can and cup sizes. When placed in a cup holder, these offer dashboard diners a far more secure and convenient experience. No longer do customers have to fumble with a donut bag or look for a place to set the hot dog tray. And by enabling two products to be carried with one hand, Snacktops’ couplers have the potential to increase sales. A test conducted by Snacktops found that 31% of customers purchased an additional item.

3. Product-specific packaging
Hard-boiled eggs can be messy, but Kramer Farms has found a solution with Eggs on the Run. I recently purchased one at a Hy-Vee. Rather than tearing open a bag and hoping the odorous liquid doesn’t spill, Eggs on the Run utilize firm plastic trays with peel-away tops. Each one is packaged with a small fork, knife, napkin, and salt and pepper. This enables customers to consume the eggs without ever touching one.

4. Embrace old-fashioned ingenuity
At Kent Couch’s Stop and Go in Bend, Oregon—the East Bend location of Growler Guys—he noticed a problem: customers frequently stopped to purchase chicken fingers, but then they took them to the car and found it difficult to consume their food. To help customers eat on the go, Kent devised a simple fix: place the chicken fingers on wooden skewers. By constructing a holder for the skewers underneath the heat lamp, he can line up rows of car-friendly, grab-and-go chicken fingers. This strategy also enabled him to introduce various sauces that would have previously been too messy for the car.

Frank Beard is a regular NACS Daily contributor who has traveled to more than 1,000 convenience stores in 24 states. He raised awareness of the industry's healthful food options with his "30 Days of Gas Station Food" experiment, and he's an analyst/evangelist for convenience store and retail trends at GasBuddy. Follow Frank on Twitter here.