2025 Category Excellence in Overall Partnership: Chevron ExtraMile & Mars Wrigley
The 2024 collaboration between Chevron ExtraMile and Mars Wrigley reversed course on a historically inconsistent partnership that previously resulted in missed opportunities. After two years of hard work, tough conversations and extreme persistence, the companies successfully changed course, resulting in ExtraMile's category trends pacing more than three times better than the market last year. They focused on two key areas: executing new confectionery secondary display racks above ice cream bunkers, and planogram excellence via category captaincy.
Tight store layouts along the West Coast pushed Mars Wrigley to get creative in selling ideas for space creation and SKU growth. The company developed the ice cream bunker rack as a solution to expand future consumption candy space in small formats, and conducted a third-party retail audit — going into 930 of ExtraMile's 1,000 stores — to compile and analyze the necessary data for planning.
On the ExtraMile side, Center Store Category Manager Dave Weiss worked diligently to secure internal approval for the ice cream bunker rack. His efforts included getting approval to conduct the third-party survey, gaining franchise acceptance and approval, conducting a live demonstration, identifying a third party for shipping and installment, and more. ExtraMile executed 423 ice cream bunker racks across the chain, resulting in 12.3% fruity growth year to date vs. previous year.
In the area of planogram excellence, Mars Wrigley and ExtraMile collaborated to completely remerchandise all 150-plus planograms, along with optimizing assortment for all brands, pack types and subcategories. At the recommendation of Mars Wrigley, ExtraMile moved from its previous strike zone merchandising approach to shopper-based merchandising. The result was strong confectionery sales that outpaced the West Convenience Region.
Click here for the full winners' list for the 2025 Convenience Store News Category Excellence Awards.