If you drop by Oak Street Station in Inwood, Iowa, you’re bound to run into one of the Van Regenmorters. Father Peter Van Regenmorter, son Brent and daughter-in-law Lisa, and son Chad and daughter-in-law Jody have owned and operated the convenience store and automotive service center since 2002.
“Brent manages the tire and service center; Lisa handles more on the shop side, while I handle more of the convenience store, and Chad does the farming on the family farm,” said Jody. “Our hope is that the next generation—our children—will come into the fold at some point and work in the farm and business.”
A Growing Business
Oak Street Station began life as a small tire and service station. “From the beginning, we had a very small little convenience area with a few snacks, candy and beverages,” Jody said. When the business outgrew its original facility, the family decided it was time to expand into a full-service convenience store along with the automotive center. The station moved to its current location in 2015. “We’re right on the corner of a U.S. highway, which has allowed us to add a truck stop component, too,” she said. “It’s also a great location for our small local community.”
The Van Regenmorters purchased the land for the new location a couple of years before breaking ground on the facility. “We wanted to take our time and make sure we would be providing the right opportunities and amenities,” Jody said.
Much of that research involved talking to customers and asking truckers what they would like if they had a stop in town. With nearby farms generating livestock truck traffic, adding amenities geared toward truckers took top priority. “We saw there was a need for truckers to have a place to stop, and we put a lot of thought into making sure our location was easily accessible with longer driveways and parking spaces for semis,” Jody said.
For a small independent convenience store, we have a robust foodservice program.
Thereís a laundry facility and showers, as well as a trucker’s lounge, but it’s not open 24 hours like traditional truck stops. “We’re not located on the interstate, so we don’t get a lot of long-haul truckers coming through,” she said. “We have more short haulers who go home at night, so being open around the clock didn’t make sense for us.”
Cooking Up Business
With the relocation, Oak Street Station could focus on developing a hot food menu. “We have a vast menu with specialties like hot beef tips and gravy, lasagna and fish dinners,” Jody said. “For a small independent convenience store, we have a robust foodservice program.”
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Ideas 2 Go showcases how retailers today are operating the convenience store of tomorrow. To see videos of the c-stores we profiled in 2019 and earlier, go to www.convenience.org/ideas2go.
For a small independent convenience store, Oak Street Station offers a robust menu with specialties like hot beef tips and gravy, lasagna and fish dinners, and everything is made in house. Oak Street Station offers online ordering with curbside pickup, although most customers order online and head inside the store to pick up their meal, along with other drinks and snacks.
Also on the menu are sandwiches, such as the popular Philly cheesesteak, barbecue pork and chicken-bacon-Swiss. Most of the menu items are available in warmers, but the store also stocks sandwiches in the cold grab-and-go case. “Everything’s made in-house,” she said. “We made sure we had a substantial kitchen area with the new building so we could maximize our foodservice output.”
Sales have continued to grow in foodservice, although the pandemic did slow things down last year. “We had to put in plexiglass screens and repackaged food items typically sold in pastry and warming cases into individual packages,” Jody said.
Like many convenience stores, Oak Street Station now offers online ordering of its foodservice menu with curbside pickup, although most customers order online and head inside the store to pick up their meal, along with other drinks and snacks. “We were able to add the online order aspect within about a week, as it was pretty easy to put it in place,” she said. “Online ordering has been popular with our customers.”
The most important part of Oak Street Station’s success has been its diversification. “The tire center and the convenience store and the truck stop and the grocery store all feed off each other,” Jody said. “Sometimes, people are scared to try new things, but we’ve learned that sometimes you have to take the risk.”
For example, when the new store opened, Oak Street Station had a roller grill. “Nine out of 10 convenience stores have one, but we found out it’s not something people gravitated toward,” she said. “We kept that for 18 months, then brought in something new because our customers preferred the specialty sandwiches to hot dogs.”
Overall, Jody hopes that customers leave satisfied with their visit. “We want our biggest takeaway for customers to be a good customer interaction in a very clean facility,” she said.
Bright Ideas
Before the pandemic, Oak Street Station had an eight-foot section for traditional grocery items. However, by mid-summer, the need for more room to stock groceries became apparent. The store transformed an indoor seating area into about 30 feet of shelving for dry goods, and put in an additional six freezer doors and six cooler doors. “We relocated our dining tables to a different area of the convenience store to make more room for the groceries,” said co-owner Jody Van Regenmorter.
“Because of the pandemic, people didn’t want to travel far for their grocery essentials, so we wanted to offer more, including fresh meat and fresh produce,” she said. “Before, we couldn’t offer those items.” The new section, which debuted in late fall, has gluten-free products and healthier food products, too. “We’ll continue to tweak it going forward as we see how people’s needs change, but it’s been a good change to make,” she said.