BEND, Ore. – When NACS visited Kent Couch, owner of the Stop and Go Mini Mart in Bend, Oregon, for the 2013 installment of Ideas 2 Go, we were treated to a store that delivers exceptional service beginning at the pump, where crisply dressed attendants fill up cars, check the oil and give a dog a bone (literally). Inside the store, the beer cave sells as much beer as the big-box competition in town—and that doesn’t even include the Growler Guys program, with 36 different beers on tap, as well as kombucha and sodas.
And some may recall a certain convenience store owner who took off from his store’s parking lot in a lawn chair rigged with helium-filled balloons, and traveled more than 200 miles across Oregon to Idaho.
Although Couch has owned the convenience store for nearly two decades, he hasn’t backed off from innovating. The Atlantic recently interviewed Couch to find out how he got into the convenience and fuel retailing industry and what his aspirations are for the store.
Couch told the news source that he began in retail at a grocery store, working his way from the bottom up to a store manager. And by accident, Couch found the convenience store world, which he says is “a lot more entertaining and challenging than the grocery world” in that it “moves a lot faster, and you can make changes [to the service and store offerings] and adjust a lot quicker than in the grocery business. It's a much faster-paced business, which suits my personality.”
Coming from grocery to convenience stores, Couch realized the two are different animals, and he needed to get up to speed quickly. He attended his first NACS Show in the late 1990s and came home with new ideas for running his store.
“I’ve never forgotten what I learned at that first conference. The speaker said that we have to set ourselves apart from our competitors. From then on, that's what I decided to do: Make myself look different than my competitors, and give people a reason to come to me. Make myself a destination, instead of just simply a convenience store on a corner,” he told The Atlantic.
Over the years, through new offers, customer service and ideas for growth, Couch recognizes that as a whole the industry has been faced with challenges, including perception. “I believe the average consumer looks down on a convenience store. …Even the media: Nothing good happens at convenience stores. People get shot; people get robbed. That's not the way it has to be; convenience stores today are serving people on the [go]. Convenience stores have become a meal replacement for some people, and we have to meet them in a hurry.”
The good news is that collectively this misperception is changing, through NACS and industry entrepreneurs such as Couch who strive to become a destination for customers on-the-go.
“Stores are getting bigger, more sophisticated, and offering a lot more services,” he said. “It’s not just somebody standing behind a counter, smacking their gums and saying, ‘What can I get you?’ Now, we've raised the level up. Our workers greet people by name. They have respect for people. I think that's the key.”
Read the full interview at TheAtlantic.com.