by John Keller | Oct 22, 2013 | Customer News, Fuel Price Optimization, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Industry News
A USA Today article titled “Park, pump and pig out” touts the c-store trend of offering gourmet food. PriceAdvantage customers Parker’s, Rutter’s, and Sheetz are mentioned specifically, and Greg Parker is quoted briefly.
Here’s a clip from the article:
“We currently do $6 million in annual sales,” Parker says. “Our store was actually picked by TripAdvisor last year as the fourth-best restaurant in the city.”
That’s probably because the crab stew consistently wins awards. And the extensive wine list works well with the upscale Southern comfort foods served. Its charming, 6,000-square-foot space doesn’t hurt, either. A renovated automobile dealership from the late 1800s with Mediterranean-style architecture, it is certainly eye-catching, a place where you want to linger.
“Our head chef trained under the tutelage of her grandmother,” Parker says. “We all revere her food.”
I wrote another blog post about how Fuel profit optimization is most powerful when viewed as part of the overall gross profits of the store. In some cases, the advertised fuel price is strategically used as an advertisement to attract customers to the high margin food and store merchandise product offerings. In other cases, it is the quality food that drives traffic to the store, and customers will fuel up after finishing their meal.
No doubt overall store profitability needs to be measured in terms of fuel, merchandise and food. PriceAdvantage working in conjunction with PDI allows you to see the correlation between these three pillars of profitability, determine the market profile of each location with its specific elasticity between product categories, and optimize profits based on the synergy of all strategies working in union.
by John Keller | Sep 13, 2013 | Customer News
When Valero announced their intentions to spin off their retail businesses, the primary reason was to increase shareholder value.
On September 12, the now spun off retail business CST Brands announced their intention to offer cash dividends to stock holders. Initially the dividends are set at $.0625 per share.
After opening at a stock price of $27.50 per share on May 2, CST Brands stock is now trading in the $30 per share range.
CST Brands has been using PriceAdvantage as their retail fuel software at all their US stores since 2012.
by John Keller | Aug 30, 2013 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Industry News
For eight years, CSNews has been recognizing the most innovative convenience store chains in the industry with the annual CSNews design awards. This year these CSNews awards include four PriceAdvantage customers: CST Brands, Cruizers, High’s, and Parker’s.
The CST Brands store in Harris County Texas won Best Interior Design. CST Brands (formerly known as Valero) uses PriceAdvantage as their retail fuel software for all their company-owned stores across the United States. The CST Brands fuel price management solution includes fuel price optimization, an integration with GasBuddy OpenStore, and roundtrip price change confirmation to the VeriFone POS and Skyline electronic price signs.
Cruizers won Honorable Mention for a remodel in Raleigh North Carolina. The Cruizers implementation of PriceAdvantage is in the cloud and includes roundtrip price change confirmation to the Gilbarco Passport POS.
High’s won Best Mid-Budget Remodel for their project completed in Edgewater Maryland. High’s uses PriceAdvantage as their retail fuel software across all their stores with complete price change confirmation to the VeriFone and NCR Radiant POS systems.
Parker’s won Best Fountain Presentation for their store in Garden City Georgia. The Parker’s implementation of PriceAdvantage fuel software is also in the cloud, and includes roundtrip price change confirmation to the VeriFone POS and Skyline electronic price signs. The Parker’s solution also includes an integration to GasBuddy OpenStore.
All four of these PriceAdvantage award winners have their fuel price software solution integrated with PDI.
The PriceAdvantage team is proud to have such industry innovators as partners, and we’d like to offer our congratulations to all of them.
by John Keller | Aug 28, 2013 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Software
The PriceAdvantage team would like to congratulate Parker’s on their grand opening of two new c-stores. These new stores bring the total Parker’s count to 32.
Parker’s rolled out PriceAdvantage with an integration to GasBuddy OpenStore, their VeriFone POS system, and Skyline electronic price signs in January of this year. Since then Parker’s has opened three new stores in just seven short months.
Greg Parker, CEO of Parker Companies said, “Parker’s stores strive to be recognized for quality products at competitive prices and now we can communicate our fuel prices faster and easier in a matter of minutes through PriceAdvantage and OpenStore, both at the store and online.”
Parker’s operates their PriceAdvantage system in the cloud, allowing them to allocate IT resources to other areas.
by John Keller | Jul 23, 2013 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Software
The PriceAdvantage team would like to welcome Vintners Distributors as the latest member of our partner family. Vintners Distributors selected the patented PriceAdvantage fuel price management solution to replace their third party fuels price management and optimization solution that is going away.
The Vintners Distributors fuel software solution will integrate PriceAdvantage with PDI running on the back office, and Gilbarco Passport and VeriFone Sapphire POS systems at the stores, to provide true closed loop fuel price management with confirmation. This implementation will again be a hosted fuel software solution in the cloud.
Vintners Distributors is based in Fremont, California and operates c-stores across the state of California.
by John Keller | Jul 23, 2013 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions
The PriceAdvantage team would like to offer our congratulations to Rutter’s for opening their newest location. The newest store is the largest in the Rutter’s chain, and brings the Rutter’s total store count to 58.
Rutter’s has been a long time PriceAdvantage customer, using the patented fuel pricing technology from Skyline to manage retail fuel price changes from Rutter’s headquarters to the NCR (Radiant) POS, pump, and Skyline electronic price sign. Rutter’s was an early adapter of the PriceAdvantage integration to GasBuddy OpenStore in 2011.
Scott Hartman, CEO and President of Rutter’s was inducted into the PCATS Hall of Fame in March of this year in recognition of his industry thought leadership. We look forward to our ongoing partnership with Rutter’s, and the mutual success and growth it continues to bring.
