There is a chance the roll-your-own/make-your-own ­RYO/MYO‑ tobacco segment gets overlooked in your store. Industrywide, it accounts for approximately 1% of tobacco sales. Some might even say it doesn’t offer the glitz and glamour of other new tobacco products, such as e-vapor.

But it’s a mistake to overlook this segment, says former retailer Andrea Myers, director of business development for Republic Tobacco Co., Glenview, Ill.

There are energy bars, fruit bars and granola bars, and nut bars, protein bars and candy bars. But a meat bar?

It exists.

While most meat bars are available now at retail locations such as Whole Foods, these bars, which tout natural ingredients and lots of protein, are poised to take the channel by storm.

Imagine you, a Kit Kat lover, are faced with the ultimate tease. Which would you choose: The honeycomb and cookie dough Kit Kat flavors? Or, for the more adventurous, soy sauce, apple vinegar, watermelon and salt and sake Kit Kats?

Here’s the rub: It doesn’t matter. They’re not yet available stateside.

They are diminutive yet influential. Before there were millennials impacting consumer packaged goods (CPGs) trends, there were “the kids.”

You know them—you might have a couple. Children’s influence on CPGs and retailer strategies is significant. From the weekly shopping list to impulse purchases at checkout, little ones greatly influence what their parents buy. 

Whether their food comes from mall food courts, airports, stadiums, vending machines or workplaces, consumers now expect fresh, quality meals.

As the channel antes up with made-to-order foodservice programs, one way to differentiate the c-store offer is to implement a rotating menu concept featuring local restaurants.

Market baskets are experiencing a slight dip. And lower retail prices of several foods, including salad, orange juice, shredded cheddar and ground chuck, are at fault, according to the American Farm Bureau Federation’s Spring Picnic Marketbasket Survey.

What’s the one word that captures the shift in the foodservice industry? Transparency.

Nothing says accountability quite like an open kitchen. And as more convenience stores look to compete with their restaurant counterparts through made-to-order foodservice programs, the question of whether to open some or all of production to consumers’ prying eyes looms large.

Seventy percent of convenience-store shoppers enter a store with an intent to buy a beverage, but only ­43% of those have a specific brand in mind when they enter the store, according to an Over the Shoulder/Egg Strategy Research study.

The opportunity? “There are a lot of impulsive people making their way through the store,” said Sam Brewster, manager of shopper insights for Dr Pepper Snapple Group, Plano, Texas, during CSP’s Cold Vault Summit as he discussed the results of the study.

It might seem counterintuitive, but thinking small and tapping into more modest, niche marketing strategies can yield big results for food and beverage companies.

Of the billions of dollars in recent food industry sales growth, just a fraction flowed from large-size consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies, with the true growth orchestrated by midsize and smaller manufacturers, according to research from Nielsen.

“The largest CPGs may have large sales but exhibit slow growth,” said Dennis Moore, Nielsen’s executive vice president of analytics.