NACS Convenience Summit Europe Heads to Berlin

ALEXANDRIA, Va.–The 2020 NACS Convenience Summit Europe will be held 2-4 June in Berlin, Germany, a thriving city where convenience and petrol retail leaders can explore innovation and vertical retailing in a dynamic retail environment.

“No other convenience industry event brings together retailers from Europe and across the globe in such an intimate and open setting,” said Mark Wohltmann, director of NACS Europe. “We’re excited to bring this event to Berlin next year, where attendees can expect to meet industry leaders and engage in conversations that can help grow their business and career.”

After more than two decades of hosting a joint event in London, plus intimate store tours in an additional city, the NACS event will shift to a single rotating location beginning in 2020, allowing attendees to immerse themselves in a different city’s retail landscape each year, and gain new ideas and perspectives from European and global speakers and build strategic relationships with leading global retailers.

Why Berlin? Berlin has a vast selection of shops that meet on-the-go shopper needs, from supermarkets to corner convenience stores (Spätis) to beverage markets. Retailers like Bio Company operate a self-service convenience store in Kreuzberg, where customers from nearby offices can quickly and easily stock up on healthy and organic foods. In the past decade, traditional petrol retailers such as Aral, Shell, Orlen and Total have focused more on the convenience and prepared food categories of their business, adding more fresh food to-go to satisfy busy commuters and shoppers alike, and look to the Berlin market for their latest global or regional flagship projects. Elsewhere, at the Highstreets shoppers can find a new convenience idea interpreted at Original Unverpackt, a German food retailer in Berlin-Kreuzberg, which is one of the first supermarkets without disposable packaging. The retailer triggered a worldwide movement and introduced the zero-waste lifestyle in Germany.

The Berlin retail market also offers great examples of hard discounters such as Aldi and Lidl, which in recent years have initiated aggressive growth strategies in countries such as the United States, France and the United Kingdom (NACS Convenience Summit Europe delegates will be able to see Aldi’s latest supermarket format). REWE Group is also influential in German retail and winner of the 2017 NACS Insight Convenience Retail Sustainability Award for its leadership in developing and implementing sustainable strategies and making sustainability a core aspect of the company’s mission.

The 2020 event format will continue to deliver thought-provoking presentations and expert-guided retail tours that offer value to European retailers. For example, this year’s event, which took place June 5-7 in London, explored emerging strategic industry issues, including electric vehicles to plastic-free retail formats, to new payment systems that remove friction and build the customer experience.

The event will also continue to feature the NACS European Convenience Retail Awards Gala and Dinner, recognizing outstanding achievements in the European retail community across four key areas. The program is a high point for attendees, who gather to celebrate industry success and innovation. See NACS Daily for coverage of the 2019 winners, including the 2019 NACS International Convenience Retailer of the Year.

The NACS Convenience Summit Europe brings together convenience and fuel retailing industry professionals from around the world for knowledge, connections and networking, and the opportunity to discover and discuss new ideas from expert-led retail store tours. To learn more about the 2020 event and be informed when registration is open, visit conveniencesummit.com.

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