Like many other U.S.-based retailers, American convenience store (C-store) and fuel businesses have seen much change and uncertainty in 2025 so far. As fuel prices fluctuate and potential updates to taxes, tariffs, and trade agreements loom overhead, operators are exploring ways to adapt to new threats and opportunities.
These are just a few of the potential disruptions operators will face in the coming months and years. And while staying informed about ongoing regulatory and economic developments, they must also keep their businesses running in the day-to-day.
Today’s convenience store and fuel operators are navigating an uncertain industry landscape. Rather than speculating on unpredictable futures or investing heavily in unproven opportunities, spend your time on targeted, incremental adjustments that deliver immediate, measurable results.
Focus on fine-tuning rather than radical changes so you can maintain flexibility and responsiveness while protecting the core of your business.
While it’s always good to leave room in your budget for updates, investments, and ongoing facility improvements, it’s still crucial to be strategic about where you invest and when.
For instance, Electric Vehicles (EVs) are a popular topic among convenience and fuel professionals across the country. Should you prepare your gas station for EV charging? Will EVs take away from your fuel sales volume? When’s the right time to invest in EVs?
EVs offer an exciting potential change for the industry, but there are still many questions that need to be answered about their long-term impact and the best way to integrate offerings for EV customers into gas stations.
It’s wise to hold off on major investments in EVs and similar disruptive technologies in the near term. Instead, focus on the core of their business while staying aware of ongoing trends, regulatory discussions, and similar insights related to the use of electric vehicles.
Employee turnover is a common challenge for C-store and fuel operators. And as economic changes threaten to affect employment rates and employee tax benefits, now is an opportune time to evaluate and refine your employee retention strategies.
Start at the beginning of the cycle: the hiring process. Where are new job postings shared, and how clearly do they define the store’s expectations for new hires? How are employees vetted and qualified for open positions? Are existing training programs up-to-date and sufficient?
Poll current employees about their onboarding and training experiences, as well as their overall job satisfaction. It may also be helpful to conduct external research into compensation averages in your industry and area, or recent trends in hiring and quit rates.
Prioritizing a positive work culture is another way to boost retention, and it’s a relatively cost-effective endeavor. This is another time when it’s valuable to gather employee feedback – ideally anonymously – about their motivations, satisfaction, and perceptions about culture and morale at your store(s). Then, use these insights to enact change and introduce new policies that benefit your workforce.
Regardless of fluctuating prices or changes to internal processes, customer experience is a central part of managing a successful gas station or convenience store.
Each store’s overall appearance plays a leading role in customer attraction and retention, which means you can always benefit from improving curb appeal by:
Along with general updates and aesthetic improvements, use data from your POS and other business systems to gather detailed customer insights and turn them into tailored promotional materials.
For example, if customers typically purchase a donut along with their morning coffee, you could create an in-store promotion that offers customers a free donut if they upgrade to a large coffee or buy two coffees at once.
In general, integrating customer data into marketing and operational decisions helps ensure that your strategic investments align with your customers’ expectations.
Customer data from your POS and other systems can be extremely valuable for developing in-store ad campaigns and shaping your overall marketing strategy. However, that’s not the only type of data you can and should use to inform your business decisions.
Business intelligence (BI) and analytics solutions are essential for monitoring current conditions like forecourt traffic, inventory turnover, sales performance, and more. These tools combine data from your ERP, POS, and other core software systems and turn them into digestible reports for you and your employees.
For example, you can send daily sales reports to Store Managers so they can immediately see if they’re hitting targets, which products are selling the best, and when the highest number of sales occurs throughout the day.
Managers can use these insights to adjust promotions or staffing, stock up on in-demand products, and more right away – not weeks after the fact.
Ideally, you’ll invest in a BI solution designed specifically for the industry, giving you immediate access to best practice report templates, KPI recommendations, and more.
With the industry’s future still unclear, C-store and fuel operators should prioritize thoughtful incremental changes while keeping their finger on the pulse to ensure they’re prepared for what comes next. Balance innovation with caution to successfully navigate future challenges and embrace new opportunities as they arise.
Trusted partners like ROG Consulting offer in-depth evaluations of your current software systems and processes and then provide actionable recommendations for improvement. At the same time, TARGIT’s specialized BI platform and expert team of consultants give your entire team highly accurate, up-to-date insight into every department and location you manage, so you always have complete visibility into daily performance and internal trends.
To learn more about how C-store and fuel professionals use data to stay agile and drive key business decisions, watch our fireside chat with ROG Consulting and TXB Stores.