Your customers are acting like squirrels.

Pumpkin flavor has infiltrated everything from cereal to ice cream to oral care. But there’s one difference between people and squirrels: The rodent doesn’t particularly care for pumpkins, according to the Chicago Academy of Sciences website, www.projectsquirrel.org. They eat them because “they are there,” the CAS says. If corn is in short supply, pumpkins serve as a quick and convenient option for squirrels as they prepare to store food for winter.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are making inroads in the minds of consumers who are eager to “go green” in their vehicle choice and leave a smaller carbon footprint. In the c-store industry, retailers are wrestling with how to become a part of this up-and-coming market, while they wait for EV charging technology to catch up with the speedy convenience-shopping occasion.

Grocery isn’t a top seller in convenience stores, but it has the potential to generate more in sales due to the category’s basket-boosting tendencies.

The majority of c-store transactions contain only one item (54%); 25% contain two, 11% three and 9% four or more items, according to data from Pittsburgh-based research firm Management Science Associates (MSA).

Knowing that males are emerging as primary shoppers, Westside Market in New York City took a bold but winning merchandising approach: It crafted a “man aisle” stocked with specialty foods to appeal to male shoppers.

Unfortunately, the makeup of a modern restaurant kitchen sometimes has less to do with the latest technology and more to do with high real-estate costs and government regulations. These factors are putting pressure on operators to create back-of-house areas that inhabit smaller footprints and are more environmentally conscious. At the same time, operators are looking to cut energy and labor costs.

You can learn a lot about a foodservice program by simply looking inside the kitchen. How committed is the retailer? How does its program compare to the competition? And what investments should the retailer make to further evolve it?

“Fresh is key in convenience-store foodservice,” says Rachel Kalt, senior strategist with The Culinary Edge, a food and restaurant consulting firm in San Francisco. “Demonstrating freshness is becoming table stakes, so if concepts want to remain competitive, they should consider how to do so in their stores.”

Gaubert Oil is following the pack. Not the convenience-store pack, mind you—the restaurant one.

The Thibodaux, La.-based convenience retailer is bringing restaurant-quality food to several of its Go-Bears stores with its new Go-Bears Southern Eatery. And if the response to the first site is any indication, customers are going to be thrilled about it.

What will become of the old, reliable “three for $5” promotion that has been Monster’s calling card all these years? It’s a staple in many stores, and some retailers speculate it’s probably going to be slightly modified—upward.

Lots of product segments have their ebbs and flows, their bouts with droughts. But when was the last time the energy-drink segment slumped?