Global Convenience

APCO Service Stations is one of 24 outstanding entries to the Insight Research and NACS hosted 'Best Foodvenience Store in the World' 2026. These stores represent the very best in food-led convenience retail, showcasing how fresh food, foodservice and great customer experience are driving growth across our industry. Opened in July 2025, this site pairs APCO's cafe24-7 foodservice concept with the debut of the Anderson's Supermarket brand, offering roughly 4,200 grocery lines alongside a made-on-site café menu. The jaffle is the signature item, with more than 20,000 sold so far in 2026, and foodservice now makes up 43% of total sales. Now it's your turn to explore the ideas transforming these businesses. Each entry features a dedicated online profile packed with insights, including photos and video, highlighting their Food Service Program, Technology & Operational Excellence, Digital Presence & Influence and Performance View all entries here: https://lnkd.in/eeQBGP9H Key Dates ◽ Now – Judging in progress ◽ 22 October – Shortlist announced ◽ 22 October–5 November – Online Voting ◽ 12 November – Winner announced online and at The Retail Marketeers’ Convenience Leaders Convention, Hamburg Huge thanks to everyone who is participating, our expert panel of judges, Knowledge Partner The Moseley Group and 'Best Foodvenience Store in the World' 2026 sponsor Deliverect. Good luck to APCO, Beverley Eastgate, Christian Benci and all our 2026 entries. #BestFoodvenienceStore #Foodvenience #ConvenienceRetail #FoodToGo #Foodservice #RetailInnovation #CustomerExperience #RetailTrends

Ampol is one of 24 outstanding entries to the Insight Research and NACS hosted 'Best Foodvenience Store in the World' 2026. These stores represent the very best in food-led convenience retail, showcasing how fresh food, foodservice and great customer experience are driving growth across our industry. This $80 million redevelopment on Sydney's M4 Motorway combines Ampol's proprietary Foodary bakery and coffee program with Hungry Jack's, Oporto, Boost Juice, and the brand's first Soul Origin location. The site also features ten AmpCharge EV bays, a trucker lounge, and family and pet amenities, with food now accounting for 71% of combined sales. Now it's your turn to explore the ideas transforming these businesses. Each entry features a dedicated online profile packed with insights, including photos and video, highlighting their Food Service Program, Technology & Operational Excellence, Digital Presence & Influence and Performance View all entries here: https://lnkd.in/eeQBGP9H Key Dates ◽ Now – Judging in progress ◽ 22 October – Shortlist announced ◽ 22 October–5 November – Online Voting ◽ 12 November – Winner announced online and at The Retail Marketeers’ Convenience Leaders Convention, Hamburg Huge thanks to everyone who is participating, our expert panel of judges, Knowledge Partner The Moseley Group and 'Best Foodvenience Store in the World' 2026 sponsor Deliverect. Good luck to Ampol, Joanne Nix and all our 2026 entries. #BestFoodvenienceStore #Foodvenience #ConvenienceRetail #FoodToGo #Foodservice #RetailInnovation #CustomerExperience #RetailTrends

What makes a foodservice offer customers can't resist? 🍽️ On the latest Future of Convenience podcast, Jennifer Dodd, CEO and board advisor of Main Squeeze Juice Co., joins hosts Carolyn Schnare and Harry Milloff, CEO of The Moseley Group. With more than 30 years building and turning around brands including Wendy's, Dunkin', Tim Hortons and the Melting Pot, Jennifer argues that lasting loyalty comes down to authenticity: delivering on the brand promise from the very first bite or sip. Her advice for convenience retailers: ✅ Build around a clear hero product, as Weigel's has with flavoured milk and Casey's with pizza ✅ Don't wait for more space: the right supply chain partners and kitchen tech matter more than square footage ✅ Expect the line between QSR and convenience to keep blurring "Foodvenience is going to be wherever I can get what I want that I expect on the way." Jennifer is also one of our judges for Best Foodvenience Store in the World 2026 and is currently assessing this year's entries. With her depth of experience in what makes a food brand stick, our entrants are in expert hands. The shortlist is revealed on 22 October. 🏆 🎧 Listen now on Spotify, Apple Podcasts and all major platforms: https://lnkd.in/e5zgvuub #FutureOfConvenience #Foodvenience #BestFoodvenienceStore #Foodservice #ConvenienceRetail

Meet the 2026 Entries from 10 countries for our Best Foodvenience Store in the World competition! Ampol Foodary, Australia 🇦🇺 | APCO Service Stations Mt Duneed, Australia 🇦🇺 | Applegreen Dunshaughlin, Ireland 🇮🇪 | bp Aral Autohof Northheim, Germany 🇩🇪 | Chestnut on the Hutch, USA 🇺🇸 | Circle K Kilcullen, Ireland 🇮🇪 | Corrib Oil Company ULC Oil Ballina, Ireland 🇮🇪 | Dash In Concord, USA 🇺🇸 | Esso Onestop, Luxembourg 🇱🇺 | Eurospar Glenwell, UK 🇬🇧 | FreshStop Convenience Stores, South Africa 🇿🇦 | Galp Goody, Portugal 🇵🇹 | Kwikspar Hillcrest, South Africa 🇿🇦 | The Maxol Group Long Mile Road, Ireland 🇮🇪 | Oasis by ADNOC Distribution, UAE 🇦🇪 | Redmonds Centra Gorey, Ireland 🇮🇪 | Rutter's’s #111, USA 🇺🇸 | Sasol N17 Truckstop, South Africa 🇿🇦 | SPINX Market & Eatery, USA 🇺🇸 | The Barbican Centra, Ireland 🇮🇪 | The Hub by ADNOC Distribution, UAE 🇦🇪 | TXB (Texas Born) Spicewood, USA 🇺🇸 | Wrights Centra UCD, Ireland 🇮🇪 | YPF FULL Black Nordelta, Argentina 🇦🇷 | We’re proud to present the 24 entries from 10 countries in this year’s ‘Best Foodvenience Store in the World’ competition. These stores represent the very best in innovation, execution, and leadership across convenience retail foodservice, and we're here to celebrate the teams behind them. See profiles 👇👇 If you want to understand just how far our industry has come in foodservice within convenience retail, set aside time over the coming weeks to explore this global showcase. Each entry includes store videos, photos, and written profiles that tell the story of these retailers. Key dates ✅ Judging is underway. Our expert panel is reviewing/scoring every entry. ✅ 22 October: Shortlist announced and voting opens. Your turn!!! ✅ 5 November: Voting closes. ✅ 12 November: Winners announced online and live at Convenience Leaders Convention, Hamburg. The Best Foodvenience Store in the World 2026 is brought to you by Insight Research and co-hosted by NACS, with knowledge partner The Moseley Group and sponsor Deliverect Harry Milloff Parker Doyle Christian Warning Anthony Wysome Henry Armour Mark Wohltmann Frank Gleeson Joe Heather Zaida Alonso

From a part-time job on a Minneapolis forecourt to NACS Chair, Jared Scheeler has spent his career arguing that scale shouldn't decide who gets a seat at the table. At The Hub Convenience Stores, the five-store chain he co-founded in North Dakota's Bakken region, he's putting that belief into practice. This summer The Hub launched HubPerks, a loyalty app developed with Liquid Barcodes that brings fuel savings, a beverage subscription, digital stamps and tobacco offers to customers across all five sites. It's the kind of programme more often seen at national chains, and it took serious work behind the scenes to connect fuel, POS and other systems. Early signs suggest it's paying off, with app usage up more than 200 times and active members up nearly 20%. A good reminder that being small can be a reason to move faster, not a reason to wait. Read the full story: https://lnkd.in/emvUzRcv Carolyn Schnare, Mats Danielsen #ConvenienceRetail #CustomerLoyalty #RetailTech #GlobalConvenience

Our exclusive new feature interview with Jason Joukhador, General Manager, Merchandise, Supply Chain and Dealer Channel at Ampol reveals an exciting new segmentation strategy to drive foodservice, unstaffed sites and EV charging. This business operates over 1,000 stores in Australia in every single state and territory plus sites in New Zealand through the 2022 acquisition of Z Energy: "It's a big network of stores over a large geography and therefore every site is not quite the same" Joukhador explains. So, Amphol have segmented stores to match the site offer to the relevant customer mission with three key formats. -Highway locations, such as the new Eastern Creek M4 Sydney location pictured, have a premium foodservice proposition. These sites are treated as rest stops. Since the dwell time is longer, customers are looking for great coffee and food-to-go. Ampol is taking a data-led approach to its 1,000+ stores .. tailoring each location to the customer mission. 🚗 Highway sites become food and coffee destinations ⚡ EV charging is built around where demand is emerging 💰 U-GO sites focus on value and speed 🍔 Foodary brings together fresh food, coffee and QSRs 🤖 AI is being embedded across the retail value chain And the numbers suggest the segmentation strategy is already having an impact: U-GO accounted for around 75% of Ampol’s year-on-year fuel-volume growth across its operating sites in Q4 2025 and Q1 2026. The acquisition of EG Australia - adding around 480 company-owned sites - gives Ampol an even bigger canvas to match the right offer, to the right customer, in the right location. It’s a useful reminder that the next phase of convenience retail may be less about creating the perfect store - and more about creating the right store for each mission. The Eastern Creek site, will be another strong contender in our 'Best Foodvenience Store in the World' contest revealed next week. Theo Foukkare AACS (Australian Association of Convenience Stores) Read the full story from Global Convenience here: https://lnkd.in/e7QN7j-w

Q8 España has gone fully digital with loyalty, replacing its Tarjetísima Puntos card with the ClubQ8 app, built with Liquid Barcodes. The interesting part isn't the points. It's what sits behind them: segmentation, automation, gamification and the ability to launch and test campaigns quickly. Q8 now has a live view of customer behaviour across fuel and shop, and can shape offers around it. The weighting is deliberate too, with double points on premium fuel and in-store spend rewarded alongside the fill-up. Loyalty here is being used as a lever to shift behaviour, not just to hand back value. Abdullah Alroumi, retail and marketing manager at Q8 Spain, explains the thinking behind the move in this piece by Carolyn Schnare. Read the full story: https://lnkd.in/e43SAfHi Q8 #Convenience #Loyalty #FuelRetail #Forecourt #RetailTech Mats Danielsen

Pull off the M3 at Junction 6 in County Meath, 39 kilometres from Dublin city centre, and you arrive at Applegreen’s newest site in the Irish market at Dunshaughlin. This site is one of many strong contenders for this year’s Global Convenience ‘Best Foodvenience Store in the World’ competition we’ll be sharing with you soon, but given the recent spike on EV sales in Ireland .. 29% in August, we wanted to flag up the great work Applegreen Fast Charge is doing - we do like the Astro Turf!! It opened in September 2025 on one of the busiest routes in the country, and it was never designed to be somewhere you simply stop. Inside you will find Ireland’s first Taco Bell, Applegreen’s own Crafted Kitchen & Deli, Burger King, Braeburn Café and Marks and Spencer Food, alongside eight EV chargers delivering up to 350kW. In its first year this impressive roadside destination has served close to 900,000 transactions we understand. Truly a destination.. Joe Barrett, Seamus Stapleton (FCA), Eugene Moore.

“Act quickly, but don't wait. For action, there's really no wrong decision." That's Joe Boyle, CEO of FreshStop Convenience Stores, on leading through disruption, from civil unrest to flooding. He has taken the business from a produce counter inside a South African grocery chain to more than 340 stores across South Africa and Namibia, with Zimbabwe next. Joe joins Carolyn Schnare and co-host Harry Milloff, CEO, The Moseley Group on this week's Future of Convenience podcast to explain how FreshStop built its food and drink programme from the ground up and what they learnt from QSRs. Coffee came first. Moving from a push button machine to a full barista bar changed how customers saw the stores, and FreshStop now runs 130 barista counters alongside its own fried and rotisserie chicken brands. "I've seen people getting out of their cars and the baristas making a coffee before they get into the shop." Next is a smash burger concept and butchery counter in a small town outside Cape Town, and a Best Foodvenience Store in the World entry built around it. "The key around that is making sure that we bring to those little towns a great offer with a great community." Listen to the conversation here: https://lnkd.in/eTeWD9JB

On World EV Day, Håkon Stiksrud, VP of Global eMobility at Circle K gives Global Convenience a candid update on where the charger rollout stands and what is holding it back. -He is blunt that hardware alone will not decide the outcome. Customers select locations out of habit, so a single failed charge loses them for good, which is why uptime sits alongside working fuel pumps and coffee machines as a company-wide metric. It also explains why 90 to 95% of Circle K's European chargers are branded and operated in-house. -The bigger constraint is not chargers at all. Grid connections are, in his words, one of the key obstacles to the transition, with the Netherlands the most challenged market and the problem spreading. Battery storage and load management help, but building the large hubs customers prefer remains difficult. In the interview: ✅ Why Scandinavia still leads and where Central Europe is picking up. ✅ The IONNA partnership and Circle K's cautious read on North America Charger power past 400kW, and why real-world speeds lag the spec sheet. ✅ Why sites with store + amenities out-perform standalone charge parks. Sinead Moriarty Read on GC here: https://lnkd.in/dgkqmUV4