Creating a new menu, a new menu category or even a new menu item can be a daunting task. Where should you start?
Rachel Saddler, senior manager of foodservice innovation at Tri Star Energy (Nashville, Tennessee), begins with the customer—“what they want and how we can meet that need quickly and consistently. From there, it’s about balancing craveability, operational fit and profitability,” she said.
When creating a new category, Philip Santini, senior director of food service and bar strategy for Rutters (York, Pennsylvania), asks himself what Rutter’s is trying to achieve or solve with the new products. New items, he said, are usually related to a trend and daypart-related and tend to be geared toward the younger consumer. “Generally speaking, we’re aligning with the next generation of c-store customer,” he said. A new item takes six to eight months to develop, with planning taking up the most time, he said.
When Michelle Weckstein, SPHR, SHRM-SCP, CCACM, director of food and beverage brands, joined Southwest Georgia Oil Co. seven years ago, prepared foods were limited. The chain is known for its fresh, Southern-style food and its Eat’s Southern Cookin’ proprietary brand. Her goal was to expand the offerings and bring consistency to the chain. She kept the top three SKUs in each category (such as ready-to-eat, heat and eat, and snacks) and everything else was new.
Now the Bainbridge, Georgia-based company, which has 82 stores operated under the banners of SunStop and SunStop Market, offers cold grab-and-go as well. “We’ve really upped our game with fresh produce,” Weckstein said. She eliminated salads because customers weren’t buying them, but she found they were interested in fruit cups.
Sandwiches made with King’s Hawaiian rolls have really taken off for breakfast and lunch, she said, but there are many items the chain has rejected because they’re not familiar enough to the customer base. “We are really focused on brand perception, so we try to have products that correlate back to that,” she said, “and if we can’t, we typically walk away from it.”
Southwest Georgia Oil has also started mixing fountain drinks and slushies together for some unusual combinations, which can be “unique, and it’ll get people’s attention,” Weckstein said. Customers can create these themselves or read suggestions posted nearby.
EG America (Westborough, Mass-achusetts) is revamping its entire foodservice strategy “in terms of offering, positioning, communication and making food a higher priority,” said Mendy Meriwether, vice president of food, beverage and QSR for the company, which includes the Cumberland Farms banner.
“Consumer and market insights are critically important, and understanding the consumer and the trends—health and wellness or indulgence,” she said. She also looks at whether a menu item fits EG America’s brand promise and could lead to a new consumer or an additional trip from a consumer who’s already loyal.
To get started, EG America took its bestselling sausage, cheese and egg breakfast sandwich (made with fresh eggs) and bundled it with coffee for $3, “and it totally transformed that category,” she said.
EG America is now working on its express case, which offers items such as yogurt cups, cheese and charcuterie platters, and sandwiches. The express case is the first thing customers see when they enter stores, “and it screams fresh, grab-and-go and portability,” Meriwether said. This could bring a lot to the perception of the prepared-foods business, she said. EG America revamped this case in May, working on product quality and packaging, and it upgraded the assortment based on trends. It now offers 90 products, some of which were previously top performers; a lot are new. Creating a new product takes at least six months from idea generation to being sold.
“The most important thing to consider for a convenience store menu is: Who is your core and target customer, and what do they want from you?” said Mike Kostyo, vice president of foodservice consultancy Menu Matters, Arlington, Vermont. “It’s very easy to get sidetracked in decisions about staffing, pricing, equipment, marketing and build-outs, and forget to center your consumer in every decision. C-stores need to think through the occasions they visit you for or that you’d like them to visit you for.”
Researching New Menu Items
Tri Star relies heavily on market research—industry trends, what’s selling in quick-service restaurants, and customer feedback—for a sense of emerging flavors, concepts and customer behavior. It also works closely with suppliers and manufacturers, “who bring insights on emerging flavors, formats and innovations,” said Saddler. “This helps us stay ahead of what customers want while ensuring we can execute it well operationally.”
Southwest Georgia Oil pays attention to what’s happening in casual-dining restaurants and big-box frozen-food aisles. “This gives us insight of what’s coming up next so we can get ahead of our competitors and QSRs and create our own versions,” said Weckstein.
It’s important to look for gaps in the market, said Maeve Webster, president of Menu Matters. Examine what is not available in your stores and your competitors’ to create “an ownable, differentiated space,” she said.
Other Considerations
When developing new menu items, it comes down to more than what your customers want or recent trends.
Prep time, equipment and labor are top of mind for Tri Star, and the menu must be efficient to execute during peak hours without compromising quality. “We also consider storage space, product shelf life and whether the ingredients are easy to source consistently,” Saddler said.
She’s also mindful of cross-utilization of ingredients “to optimize inventory, reduce waste and streamline preparation, making it easier to deliver quality consistently without unnecessary complexity.”
Rutter’s might consider buying new equipment if it thinks a new menu item might be a massive hit. But if it did, it would also look into what else that piece of equipment could do, Santini pointed out.
Space in a convenience store is “sacred,” said Meriwether, so equipment “needs to prove its worth in terms of space.” When it comes to ingredients, they need to be used in multiple menu items to prove their value in the space they require and also to avoid spoilage. “Cross-utilization is critical,” she said.
Other things to consider, she said, are “speed of service, batch-building and training—can the product be made the same way, every day? That can determine whether or not that platform or product goes to commercialization.”
When Love’s Travel Stops (Oklahoma City, Oklahoma) considers a new piece of equipment, it looks at what else it could lead to. It could “unlock a whole new menu category,” said Greg Ekman, director of Fresh Kitchen strategy and growth.
Love’s also tries to build simplicity into its menus to make them fast and easy to produce. For example, if it were to offer seven tacos, they might all be made the same way, just with different proteins. “We try to build in simplicity because the more you do that, the more proficient you’re going to be,” Ekman said.
Weckstein eliminates potential menu items if they’re going to be cost prohibitive for customers, too labor intensive or require ingredients not used in other prepared food items.
“We have our core proteins and try to come up with creative things—the sauces, for example—that we can add without bringing in multiple items,” she said. “At least half the ingredients need to be already in our kitchens.”
Menu Size
Sizing the menu correctly is critical, especially when you’re trying to attract consumers who are busy and on the go.
“The ideal menu size strikes a balance between variety and efficiency. It should offer enough options to meet customer needs and preferences but be simple enough to ensure consistency, speed and quality,” Saddler said.
Rutter’s doesn’t want an enormous menu, so if it’s adding an item, something else might have to go. This happened with its two roast beef sandwiches, which weren’t moving as much as sandwiches with other deli meats. “But we didn’t want to alienate ourselves from the person coming to Rutter’s for roast beef,” Santini said, so the chain created a roast beef menu to run twice a year “so we can create some loyalty around it and people can look forward to it coming back.”
Southwest Georgia Oil streamlines its menu annually to keep it under control. “If a guest looks at a menu with too many choices, they shut down and buy a bag of chips and a fountain drink,” Weckstein said.
EG America likes its entire menu to fit on one menu board. “If a customer can’t remember what’s on the menu, chances are you’re not making that much of an impact in your menu development,” said Meriwether. She does suggest using customization to expand a menu and “to give that level of surprise and delight.”
Longer menus tend to lead to more ingredients, which is not a good scenario for a convenience store, said Webster. But she does feel beverage menus can be longer without becoming overwhelming.
Pickup and Delivery
Fifty-six percent of consumers consider convenience stores a viable option for prepared foods when compared with fast food restaurants, according to a report from Intouch Insight in Ottawa, Ontario.
Pickup and delivery rates vary significantly from one convenience store to another. For Rutter’s, which started delivery last year, it’s big business.
It’s important to take delivery into account when developing menus, said Santini. The chain knows French fries never travel well (though it continues to offer them due to customer demand), so it’s always looking into ways to improve their quality for takeout and delivery. And Rutter’s has adjusted the prep for some items. For example, placing cheese on a chicken sandwich before the sauce goes on can keep the sogginess down.
Because consumers want their food soon after they’ve ordered it, said Kostyo, it’s important not to offer labor-intensive menu items that will require a wait. Factoring in hold times is essential, too, or else you’ll lose customers. “This is where good technology can really help with AI-enabled demand planning,” he said.
Offering LTOs
When developing a menu, LTOs can be a great testing ground for gauging customer reaction. Rutter’s upped its LTO game in the third quarter of this year and launched 11 items. This menu, said Santini, “is really centered around the greatest impacts we can have with a menu item.” The chain takes professional photos of the items, which are featured on pumps and screens in-store, and also shoots some commercials.
You can learn a lot from running LTOs, Santini said. For example, a spicy chicken sandwich LTO was popular but not quite right, so it was tweaked before being added to the permanent menu.
For Southwest Georgia Oil, an item is almost always (90% of the time) featured as an LTO before it’s put on the menu. Typically, it runs 60-day cycles and evaluates the item’s movement. “If it’s a winner, it will be a winner quickly,” said Weckstein, “and it’s easy to tell what’s not going to move.” If an item does well in some locations but not all, it remains an LTO, though the 60 days might extend to six months.
Kwik Trip, La Crosse, Wisconsin, has an LTO calendar and features these temporary menu items in categories such as coffee, bakery, doughnuts and the hot food line. There are usually eight LTOs at any given time. Any with superlative sales will be kept on the permanent menu, but some are better as seasonal specials, such as the pumpkin cake doughnut. The idea with LTOs, said Selia Kleine, Kwik Trip’s director of foodservice, “is to try new things, get some excitement out there.”
Test Kitchens
Rutter’s has a test kitchen that it operates “loosely” out of two of its larger stores and uses store staff to make the new menu items. Then staff and executives will taste an item and give feedback before it can go onto a menu.
Next, it tests the item in some stores, including stores with varying demographics. If an item is more complicated operationally, Rutter’s tests it in a larger segment of stores “to get broader feedback and identify opportunities to fine-tune the recipe or standard operating procedures,” said Chad White, food service category manager. “For simpler add-ons or easy-to-execute items, we may only test in a few locations.”
Southwest Georgia Oil tries a new product in its own test kitchen, then tests the item in two prototype stores in Tallahassee, Florida. Both stores have a demographic range that represents the chain’s entire customer base.
“The kitchen teams at these locations have good culinary skills. They implement our recipes and production processes and provide constructive feedback based on their real kitchen experience,” said Weckstein. “We use their input and the feedback from our customers to perfect our rollouts before we go companywide.”
Kwik Trip has a test kitchen at its corporate office, where a chef tests everything from hold times to cooking menu items with different types of equipment.
EG America has a culinary center and commissary at its headquarters, as well as an on-site store, so menu items can be prepared and tested easily. Staff at this location taste the food and provide feedback. There are also a handful of stores nearby “that we use as concept stores to test things,” said Meriwether. “It’s a nice opportunity to validate some of the things we’re working through and to iron out the kinks before they get commercialized.”