Finding What Works, What Doesn't & Moving Forward
ARLINGTON, Texas — Varish Goyal wears many hats in the convenience store industry. He is chairman of the Conexxus board of directors and an officer on the NACS board of directors, serving as a vice chairman at large. At the heart of it all, as CEO of Loop Neighborhood Markets, he is a convenience retailer.
Headquartered in Fremont, Calif., Loop Neighborhood Markets opened its first store in Santa Clara, Calif., in June 2013 and now has more than 50 locations throughout the Bay Area, Sacramento and southern California in its network.
[Read more: Shaping the Future of Convenience Through Technology]
In January, Goyal attended a NACS Executive Committee meeting and as part of a strategy session, attendees were tasked with answering three questions:
- What is a new transformative initiative that you've been working on?
- What is a past initiative that has failed?
- Where do you go for leadership and original thinking?
Taking the stage at the 2024 Conexxus Annual Conference on April 30, Goyal shared his answers and pointed to an upgraded mobile app as the chain's transformative initiative.
The Good
Loop Neighborhood Markets' loyalty program has more than 1 million members, but only about half of them are active users. Additionally, its mobile app usage was very low, according to Goyal. The solution was to unveil a new app to improve engagement, increase usage, push out offers to customers, and include subscription services for its car wash program and dispensed beverages club.
Loop Neighborhood Markets also wanted to improve employee engagement. In addition to customer-facing elements, the revamped app allows employees to see their benefits and stay up-to-date on company news.
"The difference with this new app was that you can sign up, register with the app without being a member of our platform, a difference from the prior version we had," Goyal explained. "That allows our consumers, hopefully, to start engagement and then we can push them toward becoming fully engaged as members of our loyalty platform."
So far, the new app has been performing well for the convenience retailer, and the chief executive noted that it has "caused a lot of excitement within the organization for our staff and employees that talk about it."
The Not So Good
Not all initiatives work as well, though. "There's a long list of ones that have failed and, as many of you know in technology, that's actually the easiest thing to find. The hardest decision is to pick away one," Goyal said.
In early January 2020, Loop Neighborhood Markets partnered with AiFi to open an autonomous store in Campbell, Calif. The c-store, located in the heart of Silicon Valley, was based on AiFi's modular NanoStore template, stocking 150 SKUs. Open 24 hours a day, the Loop store featured walk-in/walk-out shopping with instant receipts when customers exited the store, as Convenience Store News previously reported.
According to the CEO, the first store "worked beautifully," but when the retailer brought it into a live store, it did not work. Why? Because customers had to download an app and register on the app to be able to scan to enter the store. The numerous steps took away from the fast, convenient element of a convenience store experience, Goyal pointed out.
"For our consumers, that is a nonstarter. They're not going to do that," he said. "They're in a store, they're in our markets for a reason: speed and convenience. They don't want to have to stand in front of a terminal and go through that process."
Additionally, planogram compliance was difficult. Instead of the shelf sensors used at the autonomous store, the live store relied on cameras to detect which items a customer added to their basket. Products were not always in the right spot, or supply chain issues led to changes in inventory, which resulted in customers being charged incorrectly — something they did not immediately realize because receipts took roughly an hour to be delivered to them.
"An interesting thing that we learned in the process was a lot of the stuff that we worked on, while it was great on paper, the consumer experience was one that we needed to spend a lot more time and a lot more focus on," Goyal said.
Moving Forward
As for the third question — where to get original ideas to bring your company to the next level — Goyal highlighted several options: podcasts, books, study groups and conferences such as Conexxus.
Following Goyal, morning keynote speaker Juan Bendana, author of "The Confidence Cycle: How to Unlock the Most Confident Version of Yourself," explained that if you want to change how you perform, you have to change the image of yourself.
"Am I enough is a tough question to answer," he said.
Bendana offered three tips to inspire confidence:
- Generate energy
- Build and inspire courage
- Take action
"Confidence comes down to acting like the person you want to be in the future, now," he advised.
The 2024 Conexxus Annual Conference took place April 28 through May 2 at Live! By Loews Arlington. The 2025 Conexxus Annual Conference will move to the beginning of the year when it comes to Tucson, Ariz., at the end of January.
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