Charting the Journey to Foodservice Excellence
TAMPA, Fla. — As the convenience store foodservice industry matures, it's not difficult to identify multiple retailers that offer gold star programs that serve as both inspiration and sources of useful insights. A decade ago, it is unlikely that Murphy USA Inc. would have been among them — but everything changed when it buckled down to make serious investments in food and beverage.
The company's journey from "a pretty basic gas station foodservice program" to the Gold Medal Foodservice Innovator to Watch in Convenience Store News' 2024 Foodservice Innovators Awards started with asking questions, according to Shawn Barnes, director of foodservice for El Dorado, Ark.-based Murphy USA Inc./QuickChek.
"The first thing it looked like was me sitting in the office by myself. It is COVID and there was no department," Barnes recalled during a fireside chat with CSNews Editorial Director Emeritus Don Longo during the 2024 Convenience Foodservice Exchange event, held this spring. "We were asking a lot of questions. What did we want to be? What did we want this brand to stand for?"
[Read more: Capitalizing on the Opportunity in Dispensed Beverages]
Barnes' c-store industry experience began in various operations and merchandising roles at 7-Eleven Inc. before he became director of new restaurant opening planning at the chicken chain Raising Cane's. When he returned to c-stores to build up Murphy USA's foodservice offering starting in 2020, he determined that everything begins with building a good team.
After bringing on "two of the best category managers we could find," Barnes said he and his colleagues determined what worked for Murphy USA and what didn't. Then, in early 2021, the company acquired Whitehouse Station, N.J.-based QuickChek, which was already known for its high-quality food and beverage program and strong customer following.
"The formats couldn't be more different," Barnes recalled, explaining that the deal brought exponential growth to the "small but mighty" food and beverage team at Murphy USA, "not just by count of employees, but real expertise from space planning."
Building From the Ground Up
Today, while Murphy USA branded stores still differ from QuickChek locations in layout and menu, the company has significantly benefited from QuickChek's foodservice expertise and its own "laser-focused" initiative.
"We've gone from a program that was largely fountain and roller grill, one size fits all across the country, to eliminating products and platforms that weren't working," Barnes said. "We made things more efficient and fit for purpose."
Post-acquisition, Murphy USA has leaned into offering best-in-class frozen dispensed beverages with exclusive, cobranded frozen drinks, while also working to evolve its cold case through higher-quality selections and different meal occasions, with a particular emphasis on snacking to meet the needs of customers who come to Murphy USA for a quick fuel or tobacco occasion.
[Read more: CSN EXCLUSIVE: Murphy USA Invests in Foodservice Success]
In what many might consider a surprising move, the company eliminated its roller grill. "It was one of the first things we got rid of," Barnes said. "What our customers wanted — competing in the space to try and steal share in roller grill — it just wasn't for us."
The company is now investing in proactive innovation on the QuickChek side through initiatives such as demand planning and enhanced suggested selling.
"When customers come into the made-to-order program at QuickChek, we're now better at suggesting things to round up that basket form to really fill all of their needs when it comes to culinary," Barnes said.
QuickChek's sponsorship of the New York Giants as its official sub partner has yielded successful results, as has technology that supports the use of quality ingredients.
"When you're doing things like daily delivered fresh bread and fresh mozzarella, those enhancements in innovation with computer assisted ordering and demand planning really help us control the waste, stay in stock, maximize the sales, but also get ultra-tight on the production and the ordering, the forecasting," the foodservice executive said.
One of the company's best assets for improvement is its customer base, Barnes pointed out. "We've got a great, loyal customer base who's not afraid to tell us and we're not afraid to ask them."
While technology and new offerings have contributed to the company's recent foodservice success, Barnes observed that even very basic and practical improvements can make a significant difference if they were previously overlooked.
"Even though we're primarily freeze-and-thaw on the Murphy USA side for our grab and go, there's an organization that has to be done. We weren't any good at that," he said. "How you label underneath the counter, some of these things that we take for granted — we're going forward being much more thoughtful on how we put out our condiment stations in the front. [...] We moved the customer away from the wall where you're dispensing the liquid to help that churn and go faster. In our higher dayparts, we've introduced queuing blocks. There's a lot of learnings at this point, from an operational perspective, that we've really been able to put in place that are going to serve as the building blocks."
In the long term, Barnes expects his team's expertise and creativity to benefit all of the company's stores, regardless of how much they differ.
"The truth of the matter is with this team and how they collaborate, we call ourselves an enterprise food and beverage team. We have one team, one company, two brands. So we're leveraging that," he said.
The ninth-annual Convenience Foodservice Exchange event, held May 2-3, was an exclusive networking and experience-focused conference that gave attendees actionable knowledge and research to strengthen their foodservice business.
Sponsors of the 2024 Convenience Foodservice Exchange included gold sponsors Ferrero Foodservice, Hunt Brothers Pizza LLC, The J.M. Smucker Co., Krispy Krunchy Chicken, LSI Industries, Southern Visions LLP, Stuffed Foods and Sugar Foods Corp.; silver sponsors Steritech and Supplyit By Jera Concepts; and Innovation Zone sponsors Bite Inc., Shiftsmart and Upshop.
Editor's note: As of July 2024, Barnes is now head of dispensed beverages, North America at Circle K Stores Inc.
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