Quantum Newsprint hosted by Bill Sjoblom

Rutters: The Journey to World-Class Foodservice

There is a great cover story article in this month's Convenience Store News about our client Rutters based in York, PA.  The typical Rutters store has 25% of it's floor space dedicated to food service.  In order to emphasis freshness, all food service areas are designed so that you can watch your sandwich or meal being prepared.  And all orders are prepared in four minutes or less!

The Rutters journey into food service has been a long and varied one.  In the 1940's Rutters offered hand dipped ice cream at it's dairy stores.  In the late 60's and early 70's they started offering roller grill items and sandwiches - made to order and pre-made.  In the 80's and 90's Rutters owned and operated a chain of six full size restaurants - but those were sold off by 2000.  In the 90's the chain introduced higher end coffees and coffee drinks and added up to 12 heads for fountain drinks.  At one point Rutters even tried branded fast food including Pizza Hut and Little Caesars.

Over the last seven years, Rutters has focused on it's own proprietary foodservice brand Famous Express.  The latest innovation is a wok program and they have added a high-speed oven and fryers.  And one unlikely hit is the fried pickle!

We are fortunate to work with such an innovative company like Rutters!  Thanks to all of you that continue to provide great service to this client!

It's Hip to be Square at Family Express!

A little over a year ago we started service to Family Express, a family owned chain of about 50 c-stores in Northeast Indiana.  In May of 2011 CSP Magazine published a great article about the chain Hip to be Square.  The headline was referring to the fact that Family Express makes it's doughnuts square -- even though it costs about a penny more for the special mold and assembly set-up to produce square doughnuts. 

Why?

Because it is a differentiator for Family Express and it represents a culture that goes against the grain in many ways.  The result is a company that is passionate about it's customers and service.  they routinely review more than 50 applicants to make one hire because they are looking for people who are interested in building relationships with customers. 

And it is paying off.  Despite the downturn in 2008 the last three years have been it's most profitable with results that put Family Express in the top 3% to 5% of all c-store chains.

Matt from Valparaiso provides most of our service to the Family Express chain.  Thanks Matt for building our relationship with Family Express!

What's New In Your Stores?

Last week I visited a Byrne Dairy location in Syracuse, New York and I was surprised by all the new and interesting products I found.

Did you know you can still buy milk in glass jugs?  And it is 10 cents cheaper than plastic!  I also found some wine ice cream - check it out at Dizzy Scoop Wine Ice Cream.  Byrne Dairy also believes in flavored coffee.  They had 18 carafes of coffee featuring the following flavors in addition to regular and decaf: Blueberry, Dubliner Creme, Chocolate Raspberry, Sweet Treat, French Vanilla, Hazelnut Decaf and Regular, French Roast, and Colombian!

You can also pick up a half gallon of pickled eggs or pickled sausage for $12.99.  But my favorite of all was the 5 pound gummy bear (see picture below).  For those of you watching your calories, that's 51 servings @ 120 calories per serving = 6,120 calories!

I am curious.  What interesting products have you found in your stores recently? 

A Subway gift card to the best three products!

Sheetz Emphasizes Wellness

One of our best clients, Sheetz has been emphasizing employee wellness for the past five years.  They recently opened a brand new 10,500 square feet wellness center in Claysburg, PA.  The center will feature a fitness center and a education center.  The benefits to Sheetz are reduced health care costs and more focused and happier employees. 

We recently rolled out our new Healthy Ways program with IWS.  If you are on our health insurnace have you and your spouse signed up?  What are your thoughts so far?

Alliance Energy Grows Business With Quantum

We are pleased to announce that Alliance Energy based in Waltham, MA has chosen QS to provide audit service to 24 additional sites starting in March.  Connie in our Hartford division has been providing great service to five sites and we are getting more business mainly because of her efforts!  Thanks, Connie!

Alliance Energy has 120 corporate locations on the East Coast so there is an opportunity to continue to grow our relationship.  Thanks to Deb also who closed the sale!

Mountaineer Mart Picks Quantum

In January we started service to sixteen Mountaineer Mart locations in West Virginia.  The company is based in Buchanon, WV and we will be providing service primarily out of our newest division, Morgantown, WV!  This QS division will also be providing service to Parmar - another new client.

This client stopped by our booth at NACS in Chicago last year and Randy Burke closed the sale!  Congratulations, Randy!

Quantum Grows in Roanoke!

We just completed the sale to a new client in Roanoke, Virginia, Quik-e Food Stores.  They have twelve locations around the Roanoke area.  Congratulations to Deb who completed this sale with the help of our great team in Roanoke!

The Roll Your Own Debate

Even if you are not a smoker you probably have heard about roll-your-own (RYO) cigarette machines manufactured and rented to retailers by a Cincinnati based company.  During 2008, the first year the machine was offered, only 10 of them were in operation.  There are now 1700 machines and a huge controversy has erupted. 

Why?

In 2009 the SCHIP taxes on roll your own tobacco resulted in a 2400% increase from $1.01 per pound to $24.78 per pound.  Meanwhile, pipe tobacco merely doubled from $1.09 to $2.83 per pound.  This resulted in some tobacco manufacturers allegedly labeling RYO tobacco as pipe tobacco - thus avoiding the huge tax increases. 

There is also an effort by some states to classify owners of RYO machines as "manufacturers" so they would then be subject to manufacturing regulations.

What's at stake?

In Pennsylvania a RYO carton of cigarettes from one of these machines using tobacco labeled as "pipe tobacco" might cost $18 a carton.  A carton using cigarette tobacco would cost about $27 and the lowest generic manufactured cigarette is roughly $55.  Since April 2009 it is estimated that the federal treasury has lost more than 1 billion in taxes and expects to lose more than 1 billion in 2012 alone!

Most convenience chains have resisted offering RYO cigarette machines because of the uncertainty of the governments response to this problem.  Some speculate that the government could demand retroactive payment for taxes which could be a huge problem because the tax was never collected from the consumer. 

Have you seen or heard about any of these RYO cigarette machines?  What do you think?

QS Grows With Par Mar Stores

QS recently added a new account - Par Mar Stores!  This new client has 51 locations in Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky.  They will be serviced by our Columbus, Pittsburgh and Charleston divisions. Here is an interesting story from their web site about how Par Mar actually got into the c-store business:

Par Mar Stores can trace its roots to Par Mar Oil Company which was established in 1967 as a full line petroleum jobber by Joseph G. Grow of Parkersburg, WV and James L. Hollister of Marietta, Ohio. In search of a name, Mr. Grow and Mr. Hollister decided on Par Mar, Par for Parkersburg, WV and Mar for Marietta, OH.

At the onset Par Mar Oil Company began business with 3 full time employees serving commercial, industrial and consumer accounts with oils, greases, gasoline, diesel fuels, heating oils, and various other petroleum products. Par Mar's initial petroleum affiliation was Amoco Oil Co. which led to the dealer sector of the business. This division grew to service 55 independent dealers with the Amoco Brand.

In 1979, Par Mar opened its first convenience store on Ohio State Rt. 7 South, now Par Mar #7. Mr. James L. Hollister (J.L.) then the president of Par Mar had left town for a few days on a business trip. His oldest son, William C. (Bill) had long tried to convince his father to enter the convenience store/gasoline business. J.L. wanted no part of it and steadfastly refused each and every attempt by Bill to proceed. Bill felt with J.L. out of town the opportunity and timing was right. With a loan of $11,500.00 Bill secured from a local bank, Par Mar Stores was actually born overnight, initially doing business as Par Mar Shop N Save. To J.L.'s shock and surprise upon his return it was too late to turn back, thus the convenience store division began.

A special thanks to Nora for her persistence in marketing to this chain! 

Do You Love Slushies?

What do Play-Doh, super glue, the slinky, Velcro and slush drinks have in common?  They were all invented, more or less, by accident.  Here is some more interesting facts from NACS Magazine about The Slushie Success Story.

How were frozen carbonated beverages first invented?  A broken soda fountain at a Dairy Queen in Coffeyville, Kansas was the catalyst one day in the late 1950's.  The owner transferred his room temperature soft drink bottles to the freezer so he could still serve his customers cold drinks.  Instead he ended up creating slush beverages his customers loved!

• Icee sells 500 million drinks a year
• The first flavor ever sold was Cola
• 7-Eleven has sold more than 6 billion Slurpees since 1965
• The Slurpee capital of the world is Winnipeg in Canada.  In the dead of winter at minus 20 degrees, MACS convenience stores still sells more slushies than they do coffee!
• Icee's top-selling flavors are cherry, blue raspberry and coke