The average consumer spends a total of three minutes in a convenience store—so you need to capture their attention before they even walk in the door. “Customers’ attention spans are short,” said Lee Hawkinson, head of facility and concept design at Circle K.

Increasing and optimizing your foodservice sales starts with first and foremost thinking about the customer journey in both the store overall and in the foodservice section, said Hawkinson and other presenters at the NACS Show session “Innovating Your Foodservice With Equipment and Packaging” on Tuesday.

“Really think through the customer journey in the store—it should be well-lit, clean, well-stocked, and easy to navigate, because consumers have so many choices,” said Hawkinson. He noted that no matter what size the store is across the company’s portfolio, Circle K always follows the same design principles when presenting its foodservice offering. The goal is to make the foodservice area easy to recognize and inviting and give the customer a quick way to see what products are available. “People eat with their eyes,” added Andrew Spink, research and development chef at Gate Petroleum Company.

Those qualities extend to the outside of the store too—the forecourt needs to be clean, well-lit, and inviting to convert fuel customers to foodservice customers.

Spink noted that having an open kitchen concept has enhanced Gate Petroleum’s foodservice category because it builds trust with the consumer who can see that the food is fresh.

“At one of our stores, I took down a whole wall that separated our kitchen and evolved it to be an open-concept kitchen. When you’re standing in front of it, you can see everything that we are doing,” Spink said. “I believe it’s crucial for the customer to see us hand-crack eggs, make fresh bacon, bake fresh cookies, and just be constantly cooking. It builds that relationship with customers and lets them know that we're not trying to hide anything, and everything that we do is fresh. That also encourages impulse buys.”

This concept is also critical in packaging—with some particular foods such as pizza, Spink found that choosing a packaging option with a window to showcase the food resulted in more sales.

“But we found that a burger, for example, is less important for a customer to see, so we have those in foil wraps,” he said.

Both retailers noted that the functionality of the packaging is at the top of the decision-making hierarchy and is more important than branding or having logos on packaging. “You should ask yourself what’s most important: How does it merchandise the product? Does it have a window, and does the food need to be seen by the consumer? How does the package fit inside the merchandiser itself? Is it portable enough for the type of product that you're offering to the customer? The answer to those questions are the first decisions you should make,” said Hawkinson.