Category: Business

Dive Brief: Kum & Go has partnered with cleaning technology company ICE Cobotics to deploy floor-cleaning robots across its entire store network, according to an emailed announcement. The rollout features ICE Cobotics’ battery-operated Cobi 18 autonomous floor scrubbers, which run for 90 minutes at a time and can clean 5,000-7,000 square feet per hour. Des […]

Convenience Store loyalty programs are ubiquitous and for good reason. Since it costs eleven times more to get a new customer through the door than to get an existing customer to return, they make sense for operators from both a fiscal and an operational perspective. But that ubiquity and a significant shift to online shopping […]

You’ve likely heard that device automation is the way forward for innovative retailers, but you may be asking yourself why. While device automation has numerous benefits, one of the most advantageous — especially in this economy — is OpEx reduction. By leaning into device automation, you can lower operating costs, deliver faster improvements, reduce downtime […]

Technology has been growing exponentially for years, doubling by various measures every two years. Industry experts predict digital transformation activities to exceed 3,700B by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 23.6 percent. Given this growth rate, business leaders must continuously improve leadership talent, strategic partnerships, and organizational capabilities. Broad interest in digital transformation as a […]

Dive Brief: Murphy USA plans to build at least 500 new c-stores over the next decade as the company continues to prioritize “organic growth,” Andrew Clyde, president and CEO, said during the company’s earnings call Thursday. The El Dorado, Arkansas-based retailer opened 36 new stores and completed 32 raze-and-rebuilds last year, and expects up to […]

Dive Brief: Shoppers have shown increasingly high expectations for c-stores in categories like affordability and customer experience over the last three years, according to the 2022 NACS Convenience Voices survey. While about two thirds of respondents said location is their biggest factor in picking a convenience store to shop at — about the same as […]

Dive Brief: Amazon has halted the rollout of its Amazon Fresh grocery stores as the company figures out how to better differentiate them and improve their economics, CEO Andy Jassy said during the e-commerce company’s fourth quarter earnings call Thursday. Chief Financial Officer Brian Olsavsky said during the call that Amazon recorded a $720 million […]

Companies across all industries have embarked on sustainability initiatives to help reduce their carbon footprint, resource utilization, and overall environmental impact. While many CIOs recognize the urgency of climate change and the need to protect and preserve our planet, they’re also rightfully concerned about the cost of implementing sustainability programs and the impact they might […]

As part of The Startup Magazine’s Female Founder Interview series, we interviewed Martha Razo, author of the book, Business Diva: Stories of Women Leading in Business. Ms. Razo, CEO of Guero Pallets, Inc. and owner of Solix Business Services, both Chicago businesses, created this book to share the stories of women taking their futures and lives into […]

Dive Brief: Sheetz is officially rescinding its “smile policy” — which disqualified people with poor dental hygiene from working at its stores — “effective immediately,” Stephanie Doliveira, executive vice president of people and culture at Sheetz, said in an emailed statement.  Doliveira noted that “through employee feedback,” Sheetz learned and agreed that the policy didn’t […]