As with any business, convenience retail comes with a lot of paperwork, which annoyed Robert Robinson, owner and operator of The Roseville Station in Roseville, California. It took him away from what he loved doing—serving customers. The frustration of having to track down paperwork to show inspectors the store’s compliance with state and local codes spurred him to create an app that would handle recordkeeping for him.

“Three and a half years ago, I designed an app for employees to stay on task as well as enter when they did certain things, like clean the bathroom,” he said. “The app tracks everything we used to note on paper, and I can easily pull the reports whenever we have an inspection.”

The QuickTask app also contains instructions on how to complete tasks, as well as how to scan NFC tags and take photos for verification. “The app really puts us a step ahead of our competitors because it acts like an assistant manager who never clocks out,” Robinson said.

He even connected the app to a TV screen in the store that shows updates. “The customers seem to appreciate seeing how hard our employees work to keep the store clean and inviting,” Robinson said.

With the app, he’s able to spend more time doing what he enjoys—interacting with customers at the store he purchased in May 2006.

For Robinson, the store offered a second career. “I was about to retire from engineering and wanted something closer to my home,” he said. “This site, built in 1998, didn’t seem to be doing well, so I asked the owner about buying the property outright.”

Soon Robinson found himself its owner. The store sat on about two acres of land, along with an attached Burger King and a car wash.

Continue reading “How One Retailer Created ‘An App for That’” in the October 2025 issue of NACS Magazine.