ATLANTA – Involvement in the community can be a key to the success of a convenience store. NACS has developed tools to help c-store retailers show their value to the community, which will be discussed Wednesday morning at the NACS Show education session “Overcoming NIMBY.”

NIMBY stands for “not in my backyard,” which is often the rallying cry for those trying to stop projects in their neighborhoods, such as construction of a new store. NACS has combined two core issues—nutrition and concern about NIMBY—into its reFresh program because they are related, said Jeff Lenard, moderator of the session.

“With reFresh, the idea is to talk about what we do in stores with healthy items, plus celebrating the role c-stores play in communities,” said Lenard, NACS vice president of strategic industry initiatives. “NIMBY as a topic can feel defensive because it means that to overcome that NIMBY sentiment you need to break down barriers. That can feel confrontational. We feel that communications can help break down those barriers. How can you tell your story about what you do in the community so it does not come to NIMBY?”

NACS has developed a Site Approval Toolkit to help retailers manage the process for approval of projects by city planners or homeowners associations. Speakers at the session will discuss how to anticipate NIMBY concerns and prepare to address them to expedite the opening of a store. Topics covered will include expressing the positive attributes of the store and how to use industry data to state your case.

“We will hear about their personal experience about what works or doesn’t work when talking to homeowners associations or zoning commissions,” Lenard said. “They will share some real-world perspective on how the process can be managed as smoothly as possible.”

One of the greatest challenges is that those who will benefit most from the opening of a new store do not attend city zoning meetings, where projects must gain support.

“The consumers who most like convenience stores are younger, such as millennials, but they do not go to zoning meetings,” Lenard said. “Those who do go to zoning meetings may be older and don’t frequent our stores so their perceptions of convenience stores may be from a decade or more ago, when they were different. So, it is critical to tell your positive story and figuratively bring your store to them.”