2024 Was a Year of Cautious Optimism for the C-Store Industry  

In a recent NACS webinar, NACS Research unpacked how to use NACS State of the Industry data. 

July 02, 2025

2024 was a year of cautious optimism for the c-store industry. The labor force participation rate remained steady while unemployment stayed low, and the gap between job openings and hiring continued to narrow and turnover rates continued to improve.

Want to know how your store compared to the rest of the industry last year? The NACS State of the Industry (SOI) Report® of 2024 Data is now available to purchase, and NACS Research experts recently held a webinar to walk through what all of this data means.

“The SOI report is a tool. It can help you make your business more efficient. These numbers can help you make strategic plans going forward,” said Chris Rapanick, managing director of research at NACS during The Story Behind the Stats: Key Findings from the NACS State of the Industry Report of 2024 Data webinar.

One of the major themes discussed was the importance of foodservice to the profitability and survivability of stores moving forward. Foodservice sales are the primary differentiator of the top performers in the industry. The top decile saw a 7.5% increase in year-over-year foodservice sales.

The State of the Industry Report® will help you:

  • Understand the industry big picture with data and analysis on economic, market and shopper dynamics.
  • Maximize effectiveness and profitability with access to aggregate financial, operational and category data from more than 27,000 convenience stores across the United States.
  • Benchmark against top performers in the industry and determine key drivers to their success.

“NACS has been doing this research for 50 years. We have a very unique relationship with the retailers who participate in the SOI survey. There are other folks outside of NACS that try to get this data, but none of them get the amount of data which we get,” Rapanick said.

During a Q&A session at the end of the webinar, one attendee asked: What percentage of credit cards were used last year compared to this year?

“Credit card use has certainly been growing over the last 10 years. It has become the currency of choice for consumers—80.5% of transacted dollars were conducted with credit cards compared to 78.3% in 2023,” Rapanick answered.

A recording of the full webinar is available here.