Sitting in a Marriott hotel lounge during a February out-of-town trip, I looked up with amusement to see a robot shuttling a tray of food to the bartender from the hotel’s kitchen. Naturally I snapped a photo. It was the first time I’d seen a robot server in a foodservice setting. Judging by how far the kitchen was located from the hotel’s lounge, its use surely saves many human steps each shift. Likewise, I encountered a more humanistic model at a Virginia hospital, where its role consisted of shuttling supplies from one part of the building to another.

Our cover story this month is all about ways convenience retailers like TXB Stores and Yesway are designing new builds and retrofitting legacy c-stores to make efficient use of labor. Although neither retailer is putting robots to work inside their stores just yet, they are focused on driving efficiencies that save employees’ time while encouraging customer wayfinding.

“It’s about making the employee’s life a little easier,” Kevin Smartt, TXB CEO, says.

It’s about making the employee’s life a little easier."

How managers set scheduling for their employees is another way to maximize labor efficiencies while also honoring their employees’ lives away from the job. Jared Scheeler, CEO of The Hub Convenience Stores, shares how his stores use flexible scheduling and nontraditional labor pools in “Shifting to Flexibility” to attract and retain team members.

Digital ordering is another way to streamline operations by freeing up both staff and customers’ time when it comes to foodservice orders, as we explore in “Digital Advantage.” Says Andrew Robbins, CEO of Paytronix, “Digital ordering is clearly a must-have for anyone doing food ordering, and it’s emerging quickly for center-store items.”

What would March be without our now-annual ranking of the top 100 U.S. convenience retail chains based on store count? 7-Eleven remains the leader by sheer size at more than 12,800 stores. Other chains are fast-growing. See who’s in the running by NACS region in “The Top 100.”

Spring is nearly here, my friends!