A Call To Local Action

State associations are on the front line in retailers' hometowns

Swipe fee reform, menu labeling rules, fuel mandates. All these challenges affect retailers large and small on every corner of the United States and when it comes to providing a united front, NACS, the Association for Convenience & Fuel Retailing, does a great job of shouldering the responsibility and rallying the troops.

But what about the hundreds, if not thousands, of proposed rules and regulations that pop up on Main Street, America every day? Whether it is Sunday alcohol sales, local tobacco display ordinances or a proposal to hike cigarette taxes by $1 (think Proposition 29), there are so many more issues that affect the everyday livelihood of retailers across the country than what we see at the national level. And with little spare time leftover from running their businesses, convenience store operators need to rely on their state and local associations to fight the good fight.

"Hardly a day goes by here in Albany [N.Y.] when a bad piece of legislation isn't introduced that would negatively impact convenience stores," explained Jim Calvin, president of the New York Association of Convenience Stores (NYACS). "Whether it has to do with tobacco or lottery or motor fuel or beer or energy drinks, or anything else that we sell, there seems to be no end to the creative ways that state legislators — and to some extent local governments — come up with to make it more difficult for us to do business."

Calvin knows better than most. NYACS has been busy lately keeping up with the goings-on not only in New York's capitol building, but also in the counties and cities that make up the Empire State. For example, the association is part of a coalition of business groups fighting a proposed 45-percent toll hike on the New York Thruway. It has also played a key role in more localized issues like the legal fight over New York City's push for retailers to display graphic tobacco signs at the point-of-sale, a legal fight that NYACS and its allies recently won in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit.

STAND AND BE COUNTED

"Individual retailers, and the retail community collectively through their trade associations, need to be constantly vigilant, and involved and engaged in the decisions that are being made at the state and local levels," Calvin added.

The level of involvement of the New York retail community varies. According to Calvin, there is a relatively small core of highly active retailers that are in a constant state of engagement on government affairs. Then, there is a wider group of retailers who will become involved when there is a specific, major issue that is going to impact them severely and directly, such as bottle bill expansion or a cigarette tax increase.

The third tier is mostly comprised of single-store operators who simply don't have the time to focus on these issues because they are running their businesses, he explained, adding NYACS understands the need to run their business first and it does its best to educate them on the necessity of getting involved.

"I think there is a core group of leaders in our association, and in any association — our legislative committee and board of directors, for example — that is engaged year-round," Calvin said. "The number of retailers that are actively engaged widens when specific issues are widespread or severe consequences pop up such as a cigarette tax increase — something that is immediately and dramatically going to affect sales and customer count and profitability."

James Tudor, president of the Georgia Association of Convenience Stores (GACS), echoed Calvin's sentiment. "There are a number of active retailers who make trips to the state capitol in Atlanta and also some who testify before committees," he explained. "We try to match up retailers who are constituents of committee leaders. It's not just a call to action, but an alignment of constituents with people they can impact."

CLEAR FOCUS

GACS' strategy also includes knowing which battles to fight. "We try to control what issues we address as an association; we don't want any loose cannons. You only get so many bullets, so to speak, so you have to make sure when there is a call for action, it is something that is really important. Don't cry wolf too many times or the response rate goes down," he added.

To help organize its efforts, GACS recently tapped into NACS' grassroots advocacy system, VoterVoice. The national association made the system available to state associations last January, Tudor said, and the new system matches retailers with state officials using both a work and home address.

"We have found this to be a great tool. When you are reaching out to members and asking them to contact officials, you are not sending out a mass e-mail. It matches constituents so that the responses are only from constituents and those are the ones that really mean anything," Tudor continued, adding that to date GACS has a little more than 1,000 Georgia retailers in the system.

GACS did not have to activate the VoterVoice system during the last session of the state legislature; however, the association did use it to reinforce several of the NACS calls for action. Specifically, retailers raised their voices on the rest stop commercialization bill — generating more than 200 responses to Sen. John Hardy Isakson (R-Ga.) and Sen. Saxby Chambliss (R-Ga.).

But Tudor recognizes those efforts cannot — and should not — be duplicated on each issue. "You can't do that on every issue; you run the risk of being a gadfly," he explained. "We try to use the technology now available to do a better targeting."

And while this past state legislative session may have been a quiet one for Georgia convenience store operators, 2011 was "a real milestone year" for the industry when the Georgia General Assembly passed legislation allowing for the local option for Sunday alcohol sales, Tudor noted.

NEW YORK STATE OF MIND

Things may have been relatively quiet in Georgia, but there seems to be no shortage of issues in New York, Calvin explained, with tax fairness and online lottery as two top issues. "We still have an enormous cigarette and motor fuel tax evasion epidemic that is siphoning customers and sales away from convenience stores and drawing them away to Native American enterprises, border states and the black market," he noted. "It is costing our industry billions of dollars a year in sales. It really cripples the ability of mom-and-pop stores to remain viable."

As for the state lottery moving online — Illinois became the first state to offer online lottery earlier this year — Calvin said New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo's administration has been sensitive to the c-store industry's position on the prospective. However, the association can "see the clouds gathering on the issue."

"Lottery, for most of our convenience stores, is not a huge contributor of direct sales and profits. But rather, it drives customers into the stores and we need to keep those customers coming into the store," he said. "If tickets are available online, there is less of a need for those customers to come in the door. Research shows usually when a lottery customer comes in, they buy something else whether it is a newspaper, cup of coffee, a soft drink, snack or foodservice. We need to preserve that traffic driver."

It is one issue NYACS intends to stay in front of, he added. "Ideally, you want to become proactive and try to deal with these things before they reach a crisis stage or get too far out the gate," Calvin said. "Then, it's too hard to put the genie back in the bottle."

ONE-TO-ONE

In Georgia, staying in front of issues includes fostering relationships with local officials all year-round, not just when issues have the industry at the edge of their seats. For example, as part of GACS' advocacy efforts, the association sponsors a reception in Atlanta for the members of the Georgia General Assembly. Last year's event drew more than 300 people, Tudor said.

"This is more of a meet and greet. You do this regardless if you have major issues or not because you want to put a face on your industry," he said, adding GACS aims to have the retailer-legislator connection in the local districts away from the glare of the state capital. "That is where you are going to be most effective. By the time [legislators] come to Atlanta, there are a thousand lobbyists in the state capital and 50 people waiting to see them every day. If we wait until they are in Atlanta to get to know them, then we really haven't done our jobs."

MUTUAL BONDS

C-store operators do not have to go it alone, either. NYACS, for example, finds itself working with associations that represent supermarkets, general merchandise retailers and other allies on an issue-by-issue basis. "We find that very often, [working with others] is the most effective strategy to build a coalition to gain more clout, more resources, more voices, more ideas on particular issues," Calvin said.

It is a sentiment that many leaders on the supply side of the equation have echoed in the past. In "Relationship 101," a feature in the July 23 issue of Convenience Store News, Bob Sears, director, trade and state relations, sales training and compliance for Altria Group Distribution Co., explained that being members of trade associations opens more avenues for the tobacco company to hear from its retail and wholesale partners. To that end, the tobacco company is an active member of the National Association of Tobacco Outlets (NATO) and American Wholesale Marketers Association (AWMA), and Sears sits on the board of AWMA and the NACS Supplier Board.

One notable example of unity in numbers came this spring when California placed Proposition 29 — a new measure that would have imposed an additional $1-per-pack tax on cigarettes and an equivalent tax increase on other tobacco products — on the ballot. More than 3,200 groups and individuals banded together as the "No on 29 Committee" to fight the proposal and they won. Among the members of the coalition were national and state retail associations, police organizations from across the state, local chambers of commerce and small businesses.

"It is not just convenience stores or retailers themselves that can be impacted by an issue. By forging alliances with like-minded groups that would be similarly impacted, it brings more influence to the table," Calvin explained. "If we can team up with other small business organizations, we can show it's not just convenience stores that will be impacted and our message is stronger."

For comments, please contact Melissa Kress, Associate Editor, at [email protected].

"We try to match up retailers who are constituents of committee leaders. It's not just a call to action, but an alignment of constituents with people they can impact."

— James Tudor, Georgia Association of Convenience Stores

"Individual retailers, and the retail community collectively through their trade associations, need to be constantly vigilant, and involved and engaged in the decisions that are being made at the state and local levels."

— Jim Calvin, New York Association of Convenience Stores