Perfecting Product Presentation For Convenience Store And Gas Retailers

Students have been back at school for a few weeks now, but it is not too late to take advantage of the increased foot traffic from nearby schools and boost your sales as a convenience store or gas station owner. Typically, convenience and gas retailers are smaller spaces and comprise of hundreds of different products and offerings, all vying for the customer’s attention. To maximize sales, you need to optimize your product presentation and layout. Let’s go over some tips for getting the most out of your glass door commercial refrigerators or fridge displays and capitalizing on the back-to-school rush.

How to brand commercial refrigerators

On their own, high-quality refrigerated merchandisers like ours look professional, robust, and sleek, but they can be taken a step further through refrigeration branding. Commercial coolers can be branded with colors, graphics, and lighting to promote the products within. Minus Forty offer several options which can meet the needs of any convenience store owner, and we strive to do whatever we can to help you increase your sales numbers through commercial refrigerator branding. Some of the options we offer are:

• Full, backlit graphics at the top of the refrigeration unit
• Full height glass doors, allowing maximum visibility
• LED lighting for interiors, to highlight products
• Commercial coolers and freezers which stand freely or on countertops, with different sizing options
• Different color options

The science behind branding

Color choice matters a lot more than most people think. When it comes to branding your commercial refrigerators, have your primary demographic in mind. For younger children, vibrant primary and secondary colours draw their attention, whereas teenagers gravitate towards more complex shades and patterns. Older teenagers can prefer darker shades or high contrast displays using heavy blacks.

LED lighting also plays a large role in commercial cooler branding. In a glass door fridge, where customers are granted a clear view of the products within, LED lighting brightens the appearance of your products and eliminates shadows, making them stand out more in contrast to unlit displays. Bright, clear lighting incentivizes customer purchases by securing their attention amongst a sea of product offerings.

Best practices for commercial merchandisers in convenience stores and gas retailers

It is often the case that, due to their size and power draw, most commercial refrigeration units are placed along peripheral walls inside convenience stores. This works well, but depending on the layout of your space, can result in decreased visibility for your products. Commercial refrigerators placed as endcaps of product aisles, or on countertops near the point-of-sale will be more effective in promoting your chosen products, as they will be more visible to customers.

Ideally, the first thing customers see as they enter your convenience store should be an attractive, well-lit, eye-catching glass door fridge, stocked with the products you are trying to push. Then, towards the end of a customer’s visit at the point-of-sale, they should be presented with countertop coolers offering snacks and other small items to encourage last-second impulse purchases.

As always, commercial refrigerators should be kept as close to fully stocked as possible, and the products you want to sell the most should be placed at eye level to ensure maximum visibility. Ensure cooler interiors are regularly cleaned and preventative maintenance is regularly performed to keep your commercial refrigeration units running smoothly

How to: promote back-to-school offerings

Proper product presentation is only half the battle when it comes to preparing your convenience store and gas retail business to take advantage of the back-to-school season. You can further incentivize your customers through seasonal items and promotions.

Your convenience store should be adorned with displays which educate customers about current deals and promotions. If you are targeting students specifically, state this clearly, with promotions centred around students and the back-to-school season. This could be ready-to-go meals targeted at students between classes or on their lunch break, or caffeinated beverages to help them make it through their long study sessions. Decorate your commercial refrigerators with stickers inside their glass door displays, which could promote sales or discounts specifically for customers who are students.

Consider promotion through cross-selling, where instead of offering, say, two cans of cola for the price of one, promote a free can of cola with every purchase of chips and a chocolate bar. This encourages customers to consider multiple items instead of just one and can lead to further purchases.

Set yourself apart with unique products

Every convenience store sells snacks, food, and other essentials. You could choose to set yourself apart by offering more unique products such as shakes and smoothies by f’real. Minus Forty and f’real have partnered to create an integrated sales solution for their incredibly popular shakes and smoothies. This self-serve blender bar combines freezer storage with self-serve blending, allowing customers to pick and choose their favourite flavours while being guided by a brightly lit LCD touchscreen.

Blending Bars by f’real stand out through their high-quality backlit displays, catching the eye of customers as they walk through your convenience store. The f’real Bar can be stocked with signature milkshakes, smoothies and protein shakes. Using f’real’s ingenious Blending Bar, customers will have a cool, refreshing beverage in their hand in seconds.

They are popular on college campuses throughout North America and serve to set your store apart from other competitors.

See you at NACS as Due North

This year’s NACS tradeshow, taking place from October 1-4, 2022, is the perfect place to learn about convenience and fuel retailing commercial refrigeration solutions.  It’s a great time to network with your peers, meet exciting vendors and explore new technologies, like our SmartConnect IoT solution that will help you streamline your business, and the PicoCooler and Breeze systems that will delight your customers when it comes to payment options. Minus Forty is now a Due North brand, drop by our new Due North booth #5763 to find out how we reimagine retail refrigeration. Learn how we can solve your hot-button refrigeration technology and marketing issues and learn more about f’real self-serve blending bars.