VIDEO: Meeting of the Minds Across the Atlantic

UNITED KINGDOM -- "One of the best things you can do in this business is to put one retailer face to face with another -- a real meeting of minds across the Atlantic," said Dan Munford, managing director of Insight Research. The newest video from Retail Vision, Insight's television platform, does just that as it features a conversation between Chet Cadieux, CEO of Tulsa, Okla.-based QuikTrip Corp. and Noel Dunne, owner of three Centra stores in Ireland.

In the video, filmed at Dunne's Centra store in Dublin, Cadieux is impressed by the food-to-go offer and freshly made sandwiches available. "One of the most interesting things is how much inventiveness there is in the food over here," Cadieux observed.

Dunne noted that the offer is driven by the store's transient customer base and large multicultural area. As a result, the Centra stores have added pizza, Mexican wraps, and ciabatta and Panini sandwiches. Everything is changed out seamlessly by daypart, from breakfast to lunchtime to evening menus, said Dunne.

Cadieux and Dunne go on to discuss operational challenges, management tools to optimize the inventory, and in-store service. They agreed on the importance of offering speed and convenience to their customers, and Cadieux spoke about how QuikTrip maximizes impulse sales.

Cadieux expressed his admiration for retailers such as Marks & Spencer that manage a huge amount of complexity across their store portfolios. In contrast, QuikTrip stores are identical, so replication is straightforward, he said.

Both retailers agreed on the importance of getting the basics right. For Dunne, that means doing "ordinary things extraordinarily well."

For more Retail Vision videos from Insight Research, go to the Retail Vision website.