By Jeff Lenard, Vice President of NACS Media & Strategic Communications

Ten years ago, we created the NACS Convenience Matters podcast to share interesting stories and insights about the industry, for the industry. It’s now the industry’s longest-running podcast. Here is a look at five of my favorite episodes from the past year—as well as some behind-the-scenes insights that add some perspective.

Chicken Sushi: How Japan is Reshaping Convenience Retailing

Tokyo is cited as the epicenter of great c-store food—and for good reason. In our preview discussion of the Tokyo foodservice scene that we’d see at the 2025 NACS Convenience Summit Asia, NACS Director of Global Mark Wohltmann dropped this nugget: The level of care in food preparation is so great in Tokyo that they actually serve chicken sushi. Yes, that is raw chicken. I was immediately transfixed and vowed to try some when I was in Tokyo for the event a few weeks later. Alas, I didn’t find any, and I did ask around, but maybe not as much as I could have. The Tokyo c-store food scene was still amazing, something that I discussed in a follow-up episode on Tokyo’s unique convenience stores after the Summit. It’s totally worth travelling to Tokyo to experience c-stores there, but you can also now go to your local 7-Eleven to grab an egg salad sando similar to what’s served in Tokyo.

Penny Strain: How Abolishing the Penny Would Affect Retail Transactions

During the second half of the Super Bowl in February 2025, President Trump announced that we would be abolishing the penny. A friend watching the game with us looked at me and said, “It looks like your Monday just got busy with media calls.” She was right. There were lots of questions, and some of them, like “How many more nickels and dimes will be required with rounding?” simply didn’t have much in the way of answers. So, I did the math in one podcast and looked at how eliminating the penny affects retailers. Another podcast, in which Anna Ready Blom discussed the status of the growing penny shortage, was the most downloaded episode of the year. Oh, and my math from that first podcast wasn’t quite correct. Here are the updated numbers. Anyone get the Beatles reference in the subhed?

Gas Station Chicken: How C-Store Fried Chicken Inspired a Mississippi Restaurant

At a family Thanksgiving celebration a few years ago, my brother-in-law mentioned that there was this cool YouTuber named Stafford Shurden who visited gas stations and rated their food. So I reached out to Stafford and talked about his series, suggesting a few places to visit on his upcoming family trip from Mississippi to Florida. We also had him on the podcast, along with someone from a band that had just recorded a great song, “Gas Station Chicken.” Since then, we’ve had Stafford on the podcast multiple times, and even took a road trip with him. Our latest conversation was focused on his new book, “Meet and Three,” which is about his life experiences as a restaurant owner, farmer and convenience store and gas station food connoisseur. And for what it’s worth, the book hit #1 on Amazon under several categories.

Attacks on Snacks: How GLP-1 Usage and Economic Concerns Are Changing Consumer Behavior

At least two broad trends are affecting food consumption: The growing use of GLP-1 drugs that is leading one segment of customers to seek out products with specific attributes, while economic concerns are leading another segment to increasingly seek out value. That was certainly a prevalent theme at the 2025 NACS State of the Industry Summit (register for the 2026 SOI Summit here) and in our podcast discussion with Andreas Düss, CEO of 6 Seeds Consulting. Andreas was suggested as a guest by Michael Klein, who leads USA Rice’s podcast, The Rice Stuff. Michael also had written several feature stories in NACS Magazine, including one on convenience stores in the movies that was a podcast topic as well. In it he talked about what it was like to interview, among other celebrities, Chris Rock.

Clean Clerks: ‘Clerks’ and C-Stores with Kevin Smith & Jason Mewes

Following their NACS Show General Session, Clerks stars Kevin Smith and Jason Mewes sat down with me for a podcast. I asked for 30 minutes of their time. Kevin then looked at me and said, “You have us for as long as you want, man.” That’s a great intro to what turned out to be a very interesting hour-long conversation. Kevin, in particular, is a student of the c-store business and asked some pretty great questions. Part 1 is a bit more about them and part 2 (my favorite) is a bit more about our industry. And don’t worry about playing any salty language: We took out any naughty words that might have been spoken.

Thanks for supporting NACS Convenience Matters over the past decade. Please feel to reach out to me at jlenard@convenience.org if you have suggestions about topics, guests or general comments about the program.