Loyalty in Focus: Convergence Across Apps, Social, and Consumer Experience

CTVG September 2025 Meeting Transcript

Meeting Facilitator

• Ed Collupy, Principal, Collupy System Solutions LLC

CTVG Member Participants:

• Luis Ackerman, Vice President of Technology, The Spinx Company
• Roy Austin, Director, Information Technology, Graham Enterprise, Inc.
• Jeffrey Carpenter, Director, Cliff’s Local market
• Christopher Egan, CIO, United Dairy Farmers
• Steve Evans, Chief Technology Officer, Haffner’s
• Erin Graziosi, President, Robinson Oil
• Jhaddaka (JD) Leverette, I.T. Manager, PRINCE OIL
• Brad Miller, Senior Director of IT, Coen Markets
• Abhi Patel, VP Info Technology, Operations, Nouria
• Nick Peters, VP – IT, Campbell Oil Company
• Donnie Rhoads, Director of Business Development, The Convenience Group, LLC
• Bill Ridge, VP of Technology, Eastern Petroleum Company
• Emily Sheetz, EVP Strategy & IT, Sheetz, Inc.
• Scott Smith, Senior Director of IT / Parker’s Kitchen
• Rance Wells, Vice President of IT, Toot’n Totum Food Stores, LLC
• Amy Wood, Director of Enterprise IT, Friendly Express, Inc.

Presenter

• Robert Hampton, VGN, Director of Strategic Growth & Initiatives

Ally Supporters

• Paul Kern, Product Leader, Invenco by GVR
• Ted Donley, Account Director, GK Software, GK Software

Guest

• Ryan Mulka, Loyalty Manager, Spinx
• Andrea Neurohr, VP. Marketing, Coen Markets, LLC
• Tom Bachrodt, Regional Manager, HJB Convenience Corporation

Vision Group Network

• Myra Kressner, CEO Kressner Strategy Group
• Eva Strasburger, President StrasGlobal and CEO Compliance Safe
• Roy Strasburger, CEO StrasGlobal and President Compliance Safe

Meeting:

Ed Collupy:

Hello everybody. Ed Collupy here and welcome to our September 2025 Convenience Technology Vision Group session. It’s great to be with all of you today. We’re going to do something that we did in the early days of CTVG and let you, our members, versus a guest speaker, drive the discussion on the topic of the convergence or maybe the lack thereof of loyalty, digital apps and social media. Some of you may recall that we did this on the point-of-sale topic and that discussion led us to a special CTVG meeting where we invited many of the industry’s current and emerging point-of-sale solution providers. Together, both meetings surfaced great commentary, exchange of ideas and takeaways, which is at the heart of what the Vision Group Network is all about. I’m sure that today the insights that emerge will help each of you and your fellow peers and industry observers who continue to inform the Vision Group Network team of the value CTVG and the other VGN virtual meetings bring to them.

First, some brief housekeeping. This is our Publication and Antitrust Statement that serves all of us as a reminder of the antitrust guidelines that all our members and all our guests have signed. [Publication and Antitrust Statement Shown on Screen]

And as always, we are recording this afternoon’s discussion, so please use your camera and keep it on as much as possible and remember to mute yourself unless you are speaking, so we are not disturbed by what may be going on around you. And then also please be open to share and participate with candid and diverse points of view. And on that note, if you want to make an off-the-record comment, just let us know that what you’re going to say or what you have said is off-the-record.

We’re pleased to say that we’ve got some new members who are joining us for the first time today: Kristina Anderson, who’s the chief service officer at Midwest Petroleum; JD Leverette is the IT manager at Prince Oil; Brad Miller is the senior director of IT at Coen Markets; and Amy Wood is the director of enterprise IT at Friendly Express. Could each of you take just a minute to introduce yourselves and your company?

Let’s go to Brad.

Brad Miller:

Afternoon everybody. My name is Brad Miller. I’m senior director of IT for Coen Markets. We are a 55-store chain of c-stores based in Southwestern Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia. I’ve been in the IT field across multiple industries for about 30 years, but I’ve been in this industry for the last 13 and with Coen for the last nine.

Ed Collupy:

Thanks Brad. JD?

JD Leverette:

Hello everyone. I’m JD. My name is Jhaddaka Leverette for everyone that was wondering what the JD stood for. I’ve been in retail for 25 years. I’m currently the IT manager for Prince Oil Company. We are a fuel provider and provider for lubricants and all other things fuel-related to 156 consignment locations. We are currently in Mississippi and Alabama, mostly in the coastal part of Alabama. I’ve been with them for 18 years and I am looking forward to learning as much as I can from everyone here. I am super excited about joining and I’m just happy to be here. Thank you.

Ed Collupy:

Thanks JD, and thanks for bringing your smile along with it. Amy?

Amy Wood:

Hey everyone, I’m Amy. I’m the director of IT for Lewis & Raulerson and Friendly Express. Lewis & Raulerson is our parent company, which is a fuel wholesaler. And then Friendly Express is our convenience store side, and we have 38 locations in South Georgia. I’ve been with Friendly Express for about four years, but I’ve been in the convenience store industry for about 26 years.

Ed Collupy:

Very good, thank you. Looks like Kristina had a family emergency, so we’ll move on.

All right, so everyone knows both Brad and Kristina are joining us from the Conexxus Vision Group (CxVG), which was a twelve-month collaboration between Conexxus and Vision Group Network, and Myra’s going to give us an update on that.

Myra Kressner:

Thanks Ed. So, we are really pleased that CTVG is growing with some new members coming from the Conexus Vision Group. And as Ed referred to, about 18 months ago Vision Group Network and Gray Taylor with Conexxus agreed to create a Conexxus Vision Group. So, between November 2024 and July 2025, the unique nature of each quarterly CxVG meeting and Vision Reports broadened Conexxus’s reach and mission to provide a collegial and collaborative forum where all industry stakeholders work together. The Conexxus Vision Group meetings discussed Conexxus’s Digital Roadmap, third-party delivery services, data visualization and analysis tools, as well as digital coupons. And of course, these discussions and learnings were made available to everyone in the Vision Reports supporting our mission of Sharing Today to Shape Tomorrow.

After four very successful CxVG meetings, which the members have contributed in a very big way, Conexxus is now using those learnings from the 12-month Vision Group initiative to strengthen Conexxus’s membership recruitment and standards creation. So CTVG is delighted to welcome Kristina and Brad from the Conexxus Vision Group. Current CTVG member Ray Huff has been a member of both. Donnie, you’ve been a CTVG member, and your dad Don [Rhoads] was a Conexxus member. Loop was also represented at the Conexxus Vision Group. Together with our Ally Supporters GK and Invenco, CTVG is very proud to now become even stronger. So, we’re ready to move on with a very robust discussion of loyalty, digital apps and social media. Ed, I’m going to hand it back to you.

Ed Collupy:

Super. Thanks, Myra, for the update on CxVG.

We have some CTVG members who invited colleagues to our meeting today and we appreciate that. We want to welcome Tom Bachrodt who’s a regional manager at HJB Convenience, Ryan Mulka is Spinx’s loyalty manager and Andrea Neurohr, is the VP of marketing at Coen Markets. We look forward to your participation in our discussion today and a big welcome from all of us.

As we get underway, I’d ask you to please remember to use the raise hand icon as often as possible for conversation and I’ll work to call on you in order. If you find yourself in a back-and-forth discussion, please keep that flow going. And if you do need to step away, you can either write a short note in chat or just leave and return when you’re able.

Digital Infrastructure Let’s open today’s session reflecting on our last meeting and the Vision Report that we called “Envisioning the Future of Digital Identity in Convenience Retailing.” A quote to get us started from Mark Van Horn. He’s the digital solutions lead at G&D, which is a global security tech company founded in 1852, which in and of itself is something to stop and think about. They specialize in solutions for digital security and financial platforms. He recently said, “Digital exclusivity isn’t likely to be universal in the near term.” One of my takeaways from our conversation with Christina Hulka, the executive director of the Security Technology Alliance and the US Payments Forum was that we’re still sometime away despite the advantages from using digital identity for payments, loyalty, age verification, and in other ways that we discussed before digital identity advances. Her thoughts, and I guess I agree with them, are in line with Mark’s quote.

On that front Rance Wells commented during our meeting that he didn’t see a clear path ahead for the future of payments in this area. In a recent Digital Transactions article, it had as its cover story “The Future Card” and pointed to this slow walk saying, “The card segment of the payments industry is underway with a hybrid adaptation of cards for a digital world.”

Our discussion on mobile driver’s license was interesting, especially when Christina commented that she was hesitant to use her own California license, mobile license, to pass through the airport. We did hear from our own Jeff Carpenter who downloaded his MDL (mobile driver’s license) during the meeting and said it was easy. But Sharif Jamal told us his employees needed more training in order to accept a New York State mobile driver’s license just like the one Jeff had just downloaded to his digital wallet.

The lack of standards across states points, in my mind, right back to the slower adoption of digital identity methods at stores. But it doesn’t mean digital identity isn’t alive in the convenience industry. A number of industry retailers have begun digital identity initiatives with TruAge for the digital verification of age-restricted sales. We’re fortunate to have our member, Erin Graziosi from Robinson Oil, as one of those early adopters of TruAge in her Rotten Robbie stores. Erin has some very early observations and hopeful outcomes she’s looking for that she’s going to share with us. Erin?

Erin Graziosi:

Yes, so we have 39 locations, and we did activate TruAge at all of them by the middle to end of August. It was a pretty easy process to activate them. We’re all on Verifone Commander and we could actually do it remotely, so it wasn’t too bad. I think the thing that we’ve observed so far is that we don’t have a lot of people attempting to use it. We did do a really basic training video that TruAge helped provide and we could actually put that through our RTO setup, which was great so that people could kind of see what it’s like. We’ve since figured out that one of our challenges is it’s not always working correctly within the California MyDMV app. And we happened to just have a CFCA (California Fuels & Convenience Alliance) meeting down in San Diego this week and so I met with TruAge and we can get it to work on a TruAge app, but not through California DMV.

And so it is that commentary of needing some standardization. If every state’s going to do this themselves, how do you make sure that it works across the board? Because if it works on one app but not the other, it’s going to cause a problem. TruAge is now going back and trying to figure out what that difference is. And then there’s also a lot of consumer confusion because within the California DMV app, there’s one button that you hit if you get pulled over for instance, that the CHP (California Highway Patrol) would scan and you have to hit the other button if you want it to scan in a store. And so, consumers don’t necessarily know that.

And then as we were walking through that, that’s an extra training piece for employees, make sure that you’re hitting this button, but people don’t want to hand over their phone. And so, there’s a little bit of a communication challenge with getting there. But we’re going, we’re seeing. I’m curious to see if it takes on more near a college town. I think that group is more likely to always be on their phones, but so far, it’s been pretty slow as far as actual customers asking for it.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Well, thanks Erin for taking time to share that with us. RTO, just so we capture an RTO process, what is RTO for you folks?

Erin Graziosi:

Oh, that’s Ready Training Online, our operational training. It’s a company that does all of our onboarding and everything like that. And so, the fact that TruAge could put a video right into that just made it really, really simple to get it out to all of our employees and assign it to them so that we could make sure that everyone watched the five-minute video to at least get that training piece checked off.

Ed Collupy:

Excellent. Thank you. We’ll certainly be interested in learning how things are progressing when we see you next. Roy Strasburger?

Roy Strasburger:

Erin, thanks for that report. Just so I understand, are your employees prompting people to use TruAge when they come in or is that something that the customer needs to initiate on their own?

Erin Graziosi:

No, TruAge provided some really basic marketing, like a decal for the door and then something right at the point of sale saying that we accept it, but we don’t prompt them because we just ask for an ID and however they want to give us an ID is fine.

Roy Strasburger:

Okay, thank you.

Ed Collupy:

Does anyone else have any thoughts on what you maybe took away from our last discussion on digital identity or maybe some of your own experience with it in the last three months? Rance?

Rance Wells:

Yes. We too are Verifone customers and we’re rolling out Base55 that has TruAge baked into it. We were really gung-ho about it and then we reached out to the Texas Alcohol Beverage Commission, and they said in the state of Texas, you still have to use a photo ID to purchase alcohol. You can’t use TruAge, so it kind of put the whole kibosh on us to move forward. Lottery as well. All the age-restricted products, those are a lot of our core demographic to buy things from us. Lottery as well, you have to use a physical photo ID, and we have the lottery machines too that you have to scan the barcode on the lottery machine to purchase out of those.

But there was a law passed in Texas where you have to have at the point of sale, the ability to scan IDs. It went into effect in August and it’s going to start being enforced I think August 2027. But we’re already doing that. It’s just we’re not going to be able to bypass if someone comes to buy something in our store that’s age restricted, we’re not going to be able to bypass that by, oh, you look like you’re 80 years old. No, you’re still going to have to bring an ID, and we will have to put that in place in August 2027. So, it’s a good move for TruAge to be ahead of this, but again, I still feel that as states move to digital IDs that that’s probably going to be the norm. Texas doesn’t have any plans for it now, but they’re going to do it at some point, so that’s kind of where we’re at with it.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Anyone else’s thoughts on digital identity that you’ve stumbled across in the last couple of months or some takeaway from the meeting? Do you agree that it’s still some time off? Steve Evans?

Steve Evans:

Ed, I’ll always come to you with an opinion. I left the meeting last time pretty jazzed. Absolutely. I was all in and I’m like all of us, a big digital fan. But I’ll be honest, the past few months as I’ve been trudging through loyalty and tobacco ads and promos and age verification, I’ve been just drowned and landed where everybody else is. There’s a different rule in every county, city, state, and a different solution and they all do it differently. And then just trying to get consumers to change their habits, it’s been quite a struggle. So, I’ve kind of backed off the concept that it’s here and it’s here to stay and we’re there. Maybe my kids will see it, but it’s almost too early.

Ed Collupy:

And one of the things that I’ve seen with TruAge and I’ve talked to the folks about it is it’s kind of a one-off, right? The digital identity part of it is solving age restriction, but it doesn’t get to other things that we talked about during our session with Christina, which is how do you use it for other applications in store and even on mobile apps, digital apps or websites and those types of things — it’s kind of that one focus.

Steve Evans:

The consumers just don’t see the need yet.

Ed Collupy:

Myra?

Myra Kressner:

Yes, I was going to say, is there more that TruAge can do in terms of consumer awareness and education and marketing?

Steve Evans:

Probably so. As I’ve talked to the TruAge folks, and full disclosure, I’ve sat in some panels with them, so I’ve been pretty pro-TruAge. Somebody has to get a critical mass of use, whether it be “I can use this at multiple stores, I can use this at multiple stadiums or venues.” You have to have that critical mass and until one solution gets a critical mass or three or four states adopt it, that’s what’s going to drive it. Right now, we’re all trying to educate our individual one-on-one and it’s tough.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. JD?

JD Leverette:

My question about that is what approach would you take with individuals that do not have smartphones, and they do not have any kind of devices that would actually allow them to go digital? What advice would you give to those individuals? Because a lot of them don’t have those capabilities right now.

Ed Collupy:

Yes, I think in the case of age verification, you rely on the current process of using your driver’s license, but I think it’s a point. I see some nods from other people on the matter. So, Brad, you were next.

Brad Miller:

Yes, I just wanted to piggyback on Steve’s point about hitting a certain critical mass. I think in addition to critical mass, not to sound like the spokesman for Conexxus, but you’ve got to have some level of standard, and it’s got to be top to bottom, coast to coast, sea to sea. If you think a bit about digitizing driver’s licenses, you’re always going to have at least 50 different versions of it and it’s going to be a mess and it’s going to be hard to get the masses to adopt it. But if you could digitize a passport, which is the same in all 50, now you have a standard and you can get up the ladder of that critical mass you need much, much faster.

I don’t know how you get there. That’s probably something that requires a lot of heavy lifting, again at a national level. But if you really want the digital ID to become just another thing that we all do, I think you need the user base pushing it, and I think you need a standard that works no matter which one of the 50 states you’re standing in trying to buy a six-pack of beer.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Paul, before I come to you, I want to just say Rance, I noticed you nodding your head with some of those comments. Did you want to acknowledge your head nods with a comment?

Rance Wells:

All this just reminds me of when we did this with digital wallets and remember Apple Pay and Google Pay came in and it just overnight became, “this is what we’re doing”. We did the same thing with, oh, we’re going to have the Isis digital wallet, or oh, I’ve got a digital wallet and I’m going to work with this point-of-sale company. And everyone did this one-off stuff and as soon as Apple said, okay, we’re doing Apple Pay, everyone’s like, “Yeah, that’s what we’re doing.”

Editor’s Note: Isis digital wallet, later rebranded Softcard, was founded by AT&T, T-Mobile and Verizon. Softcard shut down in 2015 and was sold to Google. The founding mobile carriers then agreed to pre-install Google Wallet (now Google Pay) on their Android phones.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Paul Kern?

Paul Kern:

I can’t believe anybody remembers Isis. I still have a grocery bag that says Isis on it. One of the most unfortunately named companies at the time. I just wanted to say, I don’t know if it’s in defense, but for TruAge, I think it is a critical mass problem. And so, getting multiple states is where they’ve got to get, they were struggling to get some of the vendors on board too. I think they’re getting further with that. I know we now support them, which helps. I think others are coming up. Unfortunately, as a vendor, sometimes it takes you longer than you’d like for you to get some of this stuff going, but hopefully that’ll help. I think at the end of the day, somebody’s going to come out with something, and it could be somebody like Apple.

And I think that’s the fear a little bit in that if Apple or Google or Visa or MasterCard do it, is there going to be a charge along that line, right? Am I going to have to pay a penny every time I’ve got to look at an ID or something? And so, I think that’s where hopefully TruAge can help because the idea was for TruAge to help prevent that, right? So, we don’t have to pay more money to somebody else just to do our day-to-day work.

Ed Collupy:

Good point there. Roy Austin, you had your hand up.

Roy Austin:

I was just going to counter that because I just got back from an API (Application Programming Interface) conference where I got on the plane using my face. I didn’t have to pull anything out. I used my face with the TSA pre-check and that required nothing for me to do. So, are we going to have to just jump over that and skip the entire physical step entirely?

Ed Collupy:

Yes, that digital check-in both at TSA and somewhat now at some of the Delta counters, you can do that as well. It does speed things up for sure and eliminates licenses and apps and all that kind of stuff, so good point. Donnie Rhoads.

Donnie Rhoads:

I’m glad Roy brought up the face thing because that’s kind of where my brain has been wandering as we’ve talked about this today. That is do you need to have a device in somebody’s pocket to verify their age or can say you do it once and combine it with facial recognition technology on site, and then when that person walks into your store the next time you already know by the time they reach the register that they’ve been age verified. That sounds like a completely different set of challenges for the legality of it and ensuring compliance and stuff like that. But I’m not sure if I want that. The more we talk about facial recognition, I’m not sure if the consumer wants that. We’re going to demo some stuff with our camera system soon, but it has more to do with certain aspects of shoplifting and just having hot spots in our stores, but there’s hardware and software that is available now that I think there might be an opportunity to use it for this purpose as well.

Ed Collupy:

Thanks Donnie. Paul and/or Ted, with this idea of taking digital identity to the next step and perhaps the way that Roy described it at the airport. Paul, you mentioned development time. Is it even on a roadmap?

Paul Kern:

It’s things we think about for sure right. USPF (US Payments Forum) did something earlier this year where they were with one of the identity groups and I was talking to some of those guys. So it is on our radar, it’s not on the roadmap. As was mentioned, our big concern as a vendor starts with “we think the idea is cool and we like the idea of getting rid of any friction”. But then you start getting into all the privacy rules and all the different other PII (Personally Identifying Information) rules and stuff, and so you start having to deal with all your lawyers and it gets really messy quick. So, I think there is an opportunity there longer term. They’re already doing some of this I know overseas, and I think even the U.S. where they’re starting to have age restriction rules for some websites and other things. So, I think they’re starting to integrate some of this ability to detect people’s age with cameras. I think long-term, that probably is the way to go, but it’ll probably be a while before we’re in a place where we feel comfortable that we can make it work with all the various PII rules and everything else.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Ted?

Ted Donley:

Ed, it’s different internationally with GK, but same thing with what Paul was saying, nationally, it’s a different ball game. And yes, we’re going to have to figure that out.

Ed Collupy:

Is some of it happening internationally that we could learn from?

Ted Donley:

Oh, yes. I think so. And that’s something we might want to discuss on a next call.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Thanks. Brad Miller, you had your hand up.

Brad Miller:

Yes, I was just going to say I won’t be surprised if this ends up being facial recognition. And I don’t know what the failure and success rates are for facial recognition today, but I suspect we need it to be a lot more bulletproof and get it wrong a lot less before we decide we’re just going to put it everywhere and start to legitimately rely on it. Even though I know to the one gentleman’s point, he got on a plane using his face, which is great, but that still doesn’t work far too often.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Any other comments, thoughts? Okay. So as with most initiatives these days, digital identity crosses functional areas within retail operations. It has consumer experience impacts and requires an eye on security and advancing technologies. All of those, which we touched on just now, so I’m sure this topic will continue to come up in future CTVG discussions.

So, all right, let’s dig into our main topic for today. In the preview that I sent out, I pointed to the likelihood that there are many perspectives when I wondered if there has been, will be or perhaps be real challenges that might keep you from achieving the convergence of loyalty, digital apps and social media. Many loyalty programs still lean heavily on cents off fuel or basic rewards, but your customers are living in mobile apps and social feeds that are dynamic, personalized and community driven. The question is, how do you close that gap?

Consumer Experience Strategy We have discussed in prior CTVG meetings, and I’ve heard from other convenience mobility retailers, and even fuel brands over the years, that the ideal consumer experience, and eventual personalization of that experience, lies with all types of digital solutions: social media, surveys, in-app gamification, voice AI, using payment as loyalty, engaging content, platform tools, enrolling new members in seconds, stacking rewards across programs and constantly innovating without disrupting the point of sale. The list seems endless. So where are you on the journey? Are you and your teams at your company having a journey that’s going to bring you to a single ecosystem that can either create friction or fuel some growth? And I believe we’d be mistaken if we are thinking this is just about technology. To me, convenience retailers need to be thinking about it as influence.

Social media can spark fans and advocates. Apps can enable new behaviors at the pump, in the store or at the car wash, which means marketing and IT leaders need to be working together to connect those dots so your competitor doesn’t capture that influence. Perhaps it’s time to rethink, in some cases, where ownership sits within your companies for this convergence to succeed.

The social media aspect of this union of consumer touch points is intriguing to me. At the NACS SOI (National Association of Convenience Stores State of the Industry) conference this year, it was reported that social media solutions were down in popularity, but mobile solutions and other digital innovations were on the rise as top opportunities using digital to grow the business. Conexxus Vision Group member Chris Bambury pointed out on a LinkedIn post recently that he’s cut back on social media posts and his approach now is storytelling.

Fellow CxVG member Babir Sultan, who operates four Fav Trip stores, on the other hand said in his post on LinkedIn that he went, quote, “from a local gas station to 6.2 million views in 28 days,” achieving it with authentic content, consistency and a little creativity, even using security footage as part of that creative solution. So, what is the right strategy to leverage social media to increase awareness and drive sales? And am I thinking about this correctly?

This convergence will shape how often customers visit, how much they spend, even how they feel about your brand. I ask since these are likely measurements of success that are already being looked at, but it would be interesting to hear from you about how your company is feeling about the results of your consumer engagement efforts and how you believe measuring success will be accomplished as programs continue to evolve and become integrated. Let me, for a moment, share my personal consumer anecdote on the subject of convergence.

Truly knowing that I’m an outlier, I have about 50 retailer apps loaded on my phone for a wide range of reasons and about a dozen of those apps I could use at CTVG members’ locations. Of the 50, I’d say only two connect with me beyond the app being there to use it when and if I choose. One of those is a non-convenience retailer who, believe it or not, continues to send a monthly snail mail pamphlet with the same rewards and offers that are on the app. On the other hand, there’s United Dairy Farmers, Chris Egan’s company. Their freebies come to me via text every week without fail. The texts drive me to use their U-Drive app where I’ll find the coupon. Chris, even though I’m not in the market, if I was there, I missed out on the Buffalo Ranch Uglies Potato Chips this week. But clearly, the UDF team has some level of convergence underway. So, Chris, would you mind, since I mentioned you just now, leading the conversation off with your thoughts on the convergence, or lack thereof, of loyalty, digital apps and social media?

Chris Egan:

Sure. Thanks, Ed. I think we have seen some pretty good convergence in terms of our app and loyalty. We got away from physical cards about a year and a half ago. And so now the majority of people who get into the loyalty program, they do that through the app, and the weekly freebies are a big part of that. It’s expensive to do, but we’re really focused on looking at active members, not just downloads. It’s who’s in the app? How often are they in the app? And that’s something that drives into it, whether it’s just, “Let me see what that offer is,” or if it is to go get that app so it keeps it top of mind.

The third leg there is something that we’re trying to figure out where I think there’s a lot of room for us to continue to grow. And Paul with Invenco, and the GK guys, have heard me talk about Apple VAS and how do we make it easier to enroll people into that system. But [we’re] trying to figure out how does social media fit and is that worth it right now? Is there enough there or is there enough of just the low- hanging fruit on how do make it easier simply to interact and to better interact with people through the app today?

Editor’s Note: Apple uses the Apple VAS (Value Added Service) protocol which can be Implemented on third-party contactless terminals or in iPhone apps and uses NFC (Near Field Communication) to communicate with supported Apple devices.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Thanks for sharing that, Chris. I appreciate it. Paul?

Paul Kern:

> So, from a purely consumer side, I don’t have 50, but I get everybody’s app. When I go visit customers, I get their app. When I go to a restaurant, I try to get every point and everything I can get, so I have a lot. But I will say, and I believe they’re still a member [of CTVG], but one of the larger fuel retailers in the United States, for whatever reason I wasn’t part of their loyalty program. I didn’t have their app, but their store is right across from my gym, and I needed gas. So, I go in there and they made it super easy. I just typed in my phone number at the beginning, and they gave me the discount that day and then I started getting texts, “Click here to sign up.” Last week, they sent me a text. Yesterday, they sent me a text and said, “Hey, today is a special fuel day in your area, 40 cents off a gallon between these hours. If you’re a loyalty member you can come an hour early,” and it was pretty impressive.

So, their communication, they’ve kept up with me pretty well, whereas the just larger than them retailer in the U.S., I’m part of their loyalty as well. And I really appreciate the, I think it’s 5 cents a gallon I get every time I show up but have never heard a word from them. I didn’t do their app, I didn’t do their other thing, I just did the fuel, and I don’t know anything else about their program. So, I do think that interaction and that communication really matter. At the restaurant side, one of my favorite guys, they give me a free burger every month ’cause I hit a certain level. So, I show up, they have a burger of the month. If I show up the first week and they remind me that you only get it this week to create that sense of urgency, I go in there and buy some other stuff and end up eating a free burger, which keeps me coming back. So that’s probably expensive for them, but I like it.

Ed Collupy:

Yes, and I think one of those chains you were referencing, Janeth Falcon from Circle K was not able to join us today, but she is one of our members and said to say hello. So very good, Paul. Thanks. Anybody else? Where’s your journey on this convergence? Jeff Carpenter?

Jeff Carpenter:

Thanks, Ed. In listening to the conversation, I’m asking myself as I’m sitting here, what is the future of the apps that we so readily have seen historically? What is their future? Are they more of a placeholder? We’re now seeing ease of functionality to be able to just enter your phone number at the pump or at the register and utilize that loyalty program. And with the advancement within tap to pay and utilization of loyalty within digital wallets, what does the future of the app itself actually look like?

Ed Collupy:

Who’s going to help Jeff with that? Chris Egan?

Chris Egan:

Well, I think one of the important things for our app is how do you communicate with people. Certainly, we’ve got old ID at the pump and that other ways to enroll them in things. But that app, I think, is going to maintain, or at least we think for a long time because that’s the way we can interact with people, send them offers. We’ve got VIP app-specific deals. So, I hear what you’re saying about there’s easier ways or there’s other ways that you can ID without having to have an app. But I think without that, you lose some ability to market to people.

Ed Collupy:

JD?

JD Leverette:

Geofencing I’ve noticed that recently with us we’ve actually been trying to do geolocation so that we can implement it into social media and that way when someone is close to one of our locations they’re actually, if they are on social media, they’re actually driven by ads. And those ads promote the apps and then promote our menus that we have dailies in those locations that they’re near. And then if they’re close to just say a branded location that offers a special loyalty, then that ad is also placed in there if they’re close to that location. So, geolocation is becoming a very big thing on the social media platforms as well to help drive the loyalty and drive the traffic into our locations right now.

Ed Collupy:

JD, what social media is Prince Oil on?

JD Leverette:

Strategy We are on, well, every one of them because the owner is crazy when it comes to social media. We are on Instagram. We’re on Facebook. We just actually started a page on TikTok. So yes, we’re everywhere. He’s trying to drive towards a different audience because we’re seeing that we’re getting the locals more, and he’s actually trying to get a different set of traffic to start to come in, especially for our newer location that we really didn’t have a lot of marketing for. But right now, we’ve seen an increase since we started the geolocation on social media, and it has actually helped. And we’ve actually kept track of the users that have been signing up and using loyalty. And we also have our own loyalty that we offer any kind of gift cards or free oil changes, things of that nature for our locations as well. And it has been helpful lately.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Thank you. Amy, and then I’ll go to Andrea.

Amy Wood:

So, we’re in the process of launching a new app in a couple of weeks. Our old app worked fine. We didn’t have a lot of engagement, but it was just pretty much a white label app and it didn’t really do anything specific. But we actually are combining, like you said, all of our social media channels with our app to try to drive customers to use our app with our loyalty program. And we’re using that as a way to engage with some of the younger customers that we’re trying to capture. So, we’re using our app for push notifications and just specials that’ll be specific to users inside the app, but we’re also going to be doing some gamification, which we think will actually help to capture the younger users. So, we’re excited to launch our app and a lot of our resources have been actually lightly directed to our social media platforms, our digital advertising along with our app solutions.

Ed Collupy:

And Amy, does the app encompass more than loyalty and rewards?

Amy Wood:

Yes. Our previous app was tied to our loyalty program, so you had to be a loyalty member. The app that we’re moving to, you do not have to be a loyal customer. You can still interact there. We can still offer discounts or promotions depending on whether you’re a loyalty customer and you’ve registered and you’re using the app, you can present a different offer to those loyalty customers, but you can also offer to those that actually aren’t a loyalty customer but are engaging in the app.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Thank you. Andrea, welcome. Thanks for being with us from Coen.

Andrea Neurohr:

Thanks for having me. For us, I’m going back to your original question of the convergence, I feel like the app and loyalty, the way that we handle it are one and the same. If you’re a loyalty member, you most likely have the app and social we handle separately. So, we could be talking to the same audience, we could be talking to a different audience, different social platforms. You’re talking to different ages of audiences, and I think that social is more where we show a little bit more of our personality. We talk to people more. You can talk about what you’re doing in the community. You can just have a contest. We can promote different appearances we’re having from celebrities at different stores and stuff like that. And then the app, I think everybody that’s spoken here, you included, is probably the exception to the rule that you have 50 different loyalty apps.

I found that people really have to be convinced to download it and convincing is proving the value of becoming a loyalty member or downloading the app. So, is it extra cents off? Is it VIP deals that somebody mentioned? I think the app is really where you show the value of choosing to come to your store over others, and social is more where people go to learn about your company, your personality, what you’re doing, what you stand for, that kind of thing. So, for us, it’s really two different strategies and I don’t see us bringing social into the app really ever.

There are some crossovers where we may talk about the same thing at times, but I think social has its own values and its own reasons for being. But the app is where we talk to our loyalty customers directly and try not to do it too much or they’ll delete the app because they don’t want to be talked to every day, right? It’s a balance and you have to find where that line is so you also don’t irritate people by talking to them too much. But for us, I don’t see the convergence really ever happening, at least for us. App and loyalty are the same in my mind for us and social is different.

Ed Collupy:

And to your point about not pushing too much out — to, I guess, Chris Bambury’s comment after NACS SOI results came out, he said he’s scaled back quite a bit and really focused in on that storytelling. So how often are you doing push on social or posts on social media?

Andrea Neurohr:

Consumer Experience Strategy Well, social media we’ll post every day. Social media is not getting in front of somebody’s face, right? So that’s different than a text message or a push notification through the app and through loyalty, that’s different. So, you could post every single day on social media and even if people follow you, the way that they change algorithms, they might not see it. So, social’s a much more passive way of talking to somebody, and sometimes it shows up in somebody’s feed and sometimes it doesn’t.

For us, in being careful on how much you message them, the way that I was thinking about it was through the app and loyalty. We give a lot of value when we send somebody a text message or a push notification ’cause that’s invading their space. That’s disrupting their time, their life, they get it on their phone. If you put something out on social, unless they for whatever reason want to know every single time and set up notifications on when you post, they might not see it. So, invading their space, whether it’s giving them a coupon, telling them we had a Labor Day fuel sale going on for the four-day weekend for our fuel customers, you tell them, you give them a value and then they’ll keep reading your stuff and telling their friends that they should download the app, right? So, I think it’s a different strategy of how often you communicate on social versus the app because one is disruptive and one’s not.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Thank you. Donnie, I was actually thinking about you when we got to this topic because you’re a small operator, with few stores. Do you have both app and loyalty?

Donnie Rhoads:

First of all, yes, we have app and loyalty. Much like Andrea said, they’re one and the same. We’re guessing that if you’re a loyalty member you probably have the app and if you don’t, our goal is to get it in your hands soon if you want it. But I wanted to echo her comments about social media because I’ll put on my consumer hat and my young person hat, but when I get on social media, my goal is not to be sold to. Quite the opposite, in fact, I’m going to very deliberately try to avert my eyes once I see an ad and scroll past it right away. Now, that’s different from if I willingly follow a brand on social media or their content pops into my feed and it’s not necessarily promoted.

But when I think of the most successful ones in my feeds, when that’s the case, it’s about telling a good story. It’s about being entertaining. It’s not about the fact that I can submit my phone number and then get pushed special deals on their app or something like that. So, I think that it’s an interesting conversation to say you want convergence of loyalty of a mobile app and social media, but social media is a very unique space, so I think you’ve got to play it carefully. We do a bad job of telling our story on social media. We don’t use it very much, but if and when the time comes where we really scale that up, we want to be accessible on it. Certainly, we want you to be able to visit our pages and then get to where you need to be in order to get value from our programs. But I definitely agree with Andrea that it’s more of a dance. You don’t want to just shove stuff in people’s faces nonstop.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Eva, when I first met you, you were giving a talk on phygital. You’ve got your hand raised.

Editor’s Note: Phygital is a term combining physical and digital to describe the blending of the two worlds to create a more immersive and personalized customer experience

Eva Strasburger:

Actually, I had a question for Amy. She talked about gamification and there’s lots of ways to do that. I was wondering if she would be willing to share some of what they’re doing and some of the ways that may be unusual if no one else has thought of it.

Ed Collupy:

Amy, you up for that?

Amy Wood:

Consumer Experience Gamification Yes. We have some games that are built into our new app in a game room kind of scenario so they can play whatever games that they opt to play. They can play those games, and it earns points for them to redeem inside the store. We’ll also switch it out with a scratch and win, which is like a lottery ticket scratch-off where you can win some prizes. That one won’t be an everyday game for them to play. It’s just we’ll put those out for a couple of weeks and then it won’t be available anymore. We know that our customers like to play games where we feel like they’re engaging with our brand. And so that’s just another way that we feel like we’ll keep them front and center as we have some competition that’s moving into our areas, and it separates us from the competition.

Eva Strasburger:

Ed to your point, the conversation we were having about the phygital space, which is combining the physical with the digital, there were many ways that they were saying you could use that. Such as, if you go into a store and they’ve got artisanal beers you can actually use your phone to track what’s the background, source it, see the story behind it and then decide if the principles of that farmer aligned with yours, for instance. So simple methods of using digital within the store, especially for the younger customers and those who might be demanding more about knowing the background to the items that you’re selling.

Ed Collupy:

Got it. Thank you. Nick Peters.

Nick Peters:

Strategy Yes Ed, thanks a lot. I want to work backwards a little bit. I actually appreciated something that Andrea said that we echo as well. Currently, our strategy is social media is a different channel for us. It’s an identity thing. It’s a presentation thing. Our marketing team and our conversations are all around how to communicate to our customers who we are. The loyalty platforms and the mobile app platforms are really about providing value to the customer, so we’re no different in that regard and I think there’s a lot of people going that way. One of the things that’s really interesting for me is I think even on this call with all the smart people on the call, we are doing the same thing that a lot of other people are doing and that is conflating the difference between mobile and loyalty. And we treat them interchangeably, and I don’t see them as interchangeable.

I actually think about it as a reverse pyramid in the sense that you take a customer that has no data at all from a loyalty platform standpoint. You get them in the door, and I think that was what Amy may have been calling out in regard to, well, they don’t have to be fully registered, if you will. Then you get them to a registered status and then maybe you take that customer that’s in a registered status and you get them to go all the way down to the mobile app. That’s why I actually appreciated Chris’s call-out when they made the convergence to going mobile app only, you jam them through the front door on the mobile app and they have to go through that process from the get-go.

Data Analysis We’re still figuring that out, and I think as we’re doing a lot of data analysis right now, we’re going back and forth around how do we track a customer through that journey and figuring out where they are and measuring the elasticity from an acquisition cost perspective, how do we get them all the way into the app? So, we’re doing all that math and we’re doing all that analysis. We haven’t cracked the magic code yet, if you will, but that’s something that we’ve been kind of going back and forth on.

And I think the last thing that I would close on because Steve and I and a couple of other people and colleagues have been trading some messages back and forth on this. There’s also this cigarette compliance and data compliance part of the mobile strategy that’s coming along with it. And so, I think it was actually one of the Vision Group’s Reports that was put out, and I think somebody had a quote in there where it’s like, how do you create a loyalty platform that feels like a value proposition to the customer rather than just a discount program? I still think even many years later, we’re still trying to fight that battle and I’m worried that in the world of these cigarette discounts and things like that, they’re pushing more towards that rather than true genuine engagement where you have a great relationship with your customers. So just kind of wanted to add my thoughts on all that.

Ed Collupy:

And you folks at Minuteman have just announced an exciting new program, at least it seems exciting to me, around the fountain cup and an interactive experience with the cup. How does that all fit into this idea of converging apps and other digital experiences with consumers?

Nick Peters:

> Gamification The cup was an interesting strategy. Our marketing team was talking about it, and I’ve got to admit they had to explain it to me two or three times because I didn’t quite connect the dots right away to what they were trying to do. And they’re like, no, no, no, you turn the sleeve on the cup and it’s a QR code and it’s really a simple process, but it does create an environment where we wrapped it around a contest and a promotion. We wrapped some campaigning around it. There’s a bit of a scratch to win, twist to win, type of an element to the cup too. So, there is a bit of physical gamification, if you will, on that that we’re interested in seeing. We’ve gotten some pretty positive results out of that campaign. Time will tell us. We continue throughout the summer, and I think we’re going to close that thing down by the end of the year. But that is something where our marketing team’s done a great job of thinking outside of the box and trying to do something that’s just more than just pushing out a digital coupon or just throwing a standard giveaway to it.

Ed Collupy:

And then when the consumer scans the QR code, does it bring them to your app?

Nick Peters:

It does.

Ed Collupy:

That’s where the gamification and the rewards spot lives.

Nick Peters:

Yes, and I apologize, I don’t know if it was Amy or Andrea, but I think one of the things that was interesting was when gamification was being talked about. I appreciate pulling younger clientele into the app and generating a points-based system to kind of keep them in the app platform. There’s a lot of identity things going on there, in regard to gamification within your app and then really when the product’s free, guess what, “the customer’s the product” kind of a thing going on right now where third-party agencies are back ending with data broker platforms to kind of capture that information from the consumer’s devices. So, we’re still trying to figure out if that’s the best way to go with that. I do know that we are planning to go forward with one kind of gaming platform, but yes, to your original question though, it is pulling them into the platform, and it does hook them into our app.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Andrea?

Andrea Neurohr:

Just to chime in on the gamification piece. So, we launched an arcade. We offer five different games in our app. We launched it in February as sort of a soft launch. We didn’t really tell people it was there, we just monitored to see how many people played. And then in May we told people it was there and then in June we started giving out coupons if people hit a certain number of points. So, we’ve seen plays go 10 X what they were when it first launched. And to us, I mean the coupons are small. Really, we’re not rewarding people for playing, we’re rewarding people for coming into the app and seeing our other messaging that’s there.

Customer Experience So, the way that our loyalty is set up is you don’t have to scan a card. You don’t have to open up the app when you’re at the pump. You just have to put in your phone number at the pump which is a real benefit to the customer where they don’t have to fiddle with another card or another key tag or, oh, my phone’s dead, or whatever it is. So, if they know their phone number, they can get their rewards at the pump. But it also, on the downside, makes it a lot of messages we put in the app they don’t see. So, the arcade for us was a way to get more people into the app on a daily basis and see if we have a new food item that we’re dropping or a new promotion or something like that.

So, it’s just getting people in there, getting them engaged with your brand is really, I think, the goal for any of us because if they’re not engaging with you, they’re engaging with somebody else. I mean, just listen to the people on here. So that was really the main goal of gamification for us. And again, going back to my earlier point of downloading the app in general, what’s the benefit to the customer? So now the benefit is, you play and you get a coupon and it’s free money for doing really nothing. So that’s the value to the customer and the value to us is getting their eyes into our app and then hopefully selling whatever we’re promoting in there.

Ed Collupy:

Andrea, I think I heard you correctly and it sounds like the idea of rewarding the customer for just going into the app and looking at the app and then perhaps after so many visits you reward them with something. It sounds similar to something I just read about from a Tennessee retailer that had implemented something very similar to that where they’re rewarding based on the number of times they come to the app. Have you been able to measure the value that you get from those repeat visits to the app? Like the conversion rate?

Andrea Neurohr:

I read that article too. So, we’re implementing that too, of just coming to the app, right? I think it’s called streams or something like that.

Ed Collupy:

Streaks.

Editor’s Note: In app design a “streak” is a gamification feature that rewards users for completing an action consistently over a set number of consecutive days.

Andrea Neurohr:

Yes, streaks. We haven’t done it yet. What we reward them for is just plays. So, if you can play up to five games, I think, a day and get a certain number of coins and then you can trade in those coins for a coupon. So that’s where we’re rewarding them. We have not implemented streaks yet. But I learned about it through that same article. Really anything to get them in there to see the other messages.

The app is a really good tool, but a lot of people, I mean, a small percentage of our loyalty customers are in there on a weekly basis. Even if they come to our store, we’ve made it so easy for them to get their rewards and come here often that they don’t have to open the app. And so now we’re trying to think of ways to have them do that. So, “streaks” is coming, but we have seen the benefit of the coupons through the app, the game plays in the arcade. We do see people coming and redeeming those coupons, and those coupons and those points expire, which is another sort of tactic to have people come in quicker. There has to be some kind of sense of urgency, or coupons like that don’t matter and people don’t feel like they have to act right away.

Ed Collupy:

Got it. Thank you. Brad, are you going to tell us how much work Andrea is causing you in the IT side?

Brad Miller:

Oh no, no. It’s the other way around. I make her life harder. She doesn’t make my life harder. Just to come at this from sort of the technology piece, a couple of things that Andrea talked about — the good side is it’s easy to get your discount when all you do is type in your phone number, but the bad part is you’re not being driven into the app. Another part of that technology piece is — and the good part of the phone number — if you’re major oil branded like we are and you’re in the major oils loyalty program and you have the same phone number for both, it’s ridiculously painless to stack your rewards so you can get more and more rewards. The downside to that, and Andrea and I have had conversations about this that have gone literally hours, is we don’t want to be a single-building convenience store asking you to download 2, 3, 5 different apps, only one of which is ours, just to get your maximum value. And there’s a lot of our customers that are what you call the value shopper.

I heard some people here talk about having 50 apps on their phones. These are the people that will gladly jump through whatever hoops they have to jump through to get the maximum savings. But for a lot of other people, they want to have just one app and not have to think about it and have it all just work. So, there’s a little bit of a technology stack as well as a major oil branding tap dance you have to do sometimes to give the customer as much as you can give them without making their life harder.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Nick?

Nick Peters:

Yes, so Brad nailed that one. Couldn’t have said any better. I 1000 percent agree with Brad on that. It’s an identity crisis. A bit trying to fight to get to the consumer. I actually have a question for Andrea, if you don’t mind. Your mobile app, your mobile arcade, did you partner with a third party? You don’t need to name names or anything. I’m just curious, did you do it with a third party or did you try to do that in-house?

Andrea Neurohr:

Gamification We just used our app powered by Rovertown and we use their arcade. I have looked into personalizing in those third parties that you’re talking about that’ll go into the app that personalize them, makes Coen more part of the game. That’s super cool and interesting. I don’t see the real ROI on that just yet. So right now, through Rovertown, this arcade was available to us in what we already pay. I’m not sure making it a Coenized game would make people play any more than they already are. So, I had a hard time justifying the expense of that, but there are a lot out there that can do some really cool things. I’m just not sure that you get that much more value out of a personalized game versus not.

Nick Peters:

Gotcha. Thank you.

Ed Collupy:

Tom, we’re missing Ray today but I’m wondering at HJB if there are aspects of this. You’re a small operator. You’ve got the unmanned stores in many cases. How do you bring this idea of loyalty and digital to life at your stores?

Tom Bachrodt:

Strategy I’ve got two and a half pages here of notes that I’ve taken. In our environment, we have stores in LA, Denver and one in Hawaii. The Hawaii store is a resort store. We don’t have an app right now, but we are looking into an app. And this conversation today has really sparked me to try and light a fire for this whole app program because I think we’re missing out. But we do have a rewards program, and the rewards program works fairly successfully for us in our manned environment and in our unmanned environment. We have two stores that are completely self-serve in lobbies of office buildings with the rewards program at the POS. If you want the promotions that we’re running or if you want to get your birthday club reward or if you want to get your points-based award, everything is at the register, it’s very simple to use.

What we’re struggling with is the success rate. And that’s one of the questions I have for the group. We’re seeing about a 30% success rate on people using the rewards that pop up at the register if they enter their rewards number at the register. But so many customers don’t enter their rewards number. So, the success rate for us at 30%, we don’t know if that’s good or bad. We’ve kind of been averaging that for really since we’ve instituted the program. So, we struggle with the success rate of an app. We also don’t use any social media right now, although we’re working on some programs on social media.

We do an email campaign via brevo.com, which sends an email out to all of our rewards club members. The email will basically say you have a birthday club award, come down to the store and redeem it. And those too are at about a 30% success rate. So, a lot of information today that’s been noted. And I guess what I’m trying to get to is what determines a good success rate for everybody?

Ed Collupy:

Great question there Tom. Thank you. How are people measuring success? Is it the conversion? Nick?

Nick Peters:

Data Analysis Right now we do it a few different ways. We don’t over-complicate our KPIs (Key Performance Indicators). But a few of the big ones for us are obviously total transactions against amount of those transactions that are multi transactions. Another KPI for us is, and this one’s kind of a bit different, but it’s important for us, what percentage of transactions were the customer entering their loyalty or they gave us their loyalty information where no discounts were applied.

Obviously inside versus outside. Loyalty usage matters a lot for us. And all those are different levels. And then kind of what I alluded to earlier when we’re trying to track the journey of the customer of whether they entered their alt ID or their phone number all the way down to registering with us, giving their birthday, email address and all that down to the app. And we track that progress too right now. So, hope that’s helpful. Those are some of the KPIs we use and some of the methods we use to track progress.

Ed Collupy:

Thanks Nick. Ryan from Spinx. Maybe as somebody that’s knee-deep into loyalty, could you just share some thoughts on how you measure success on your end?

Ryan Mulka:

Yes, more than happy to share. First, good to be here. We do complicate our loyalty metrics on our side. We look at a lot and it depends on what we’re looking at. We’re kind of data hounds and can blame my boss for that. But overall, we’re really looking at the change of behavior. So, when we implement an offer, we’re taking the month that that user redeems that offer, looking at their 60 days prior, what is their number of trips per month, they’re spend per trip. And then we look at the month that they redeem and then even the 60 days after to see if there’s an elevated lift. And that’s really where we focus a lot of our performance because there’s so many different metrics you can look at, but we really try to treat loyalty as a profit center on our end. So, it really is about driving dollars to the bank. Not to say that there isn’t the focus on the relationship aspect as well, but that’s really where the majority of our focus has been.

Ed Collupy:

Luis, are you the boss that he’s referring to?

Luis Ackerman:

No. No. But his boss can be a pain, so, Ryan, terrific.

Ed Collupy:

Is it the data? The asks around data?

Luis Ackerman:

Yes. Brendan Nugent, he’s our vice president of marketing and merchandising, and those guys do a lot of analysis, and they drive themselves into that data and almost ask every possible question. They’re trying to answer everything. So anyway, we don’t encourage it, but we definitely have to try to give them everything they want from a data perspective. But yes, I don’t know, Ryan, if you want to add anything, they certainly spend a good portion of the time analyzing not just the market basket, but what he said is driving the trips, right? Really looking at did we change the behavior?

Ryan Mulka:

We’re really trying to develop a playbook on our end so we can see when we do a free offer, when we do a BOGO (buy one get one), when we do something points related, fuel related, sweepstakes, all those different tactics over the past couple of years, we’ve measured pretty much every metric across the board and what gets changed. So, then you can just plug and play like, hey, traffic’s down, we can plug this tactic into there. Baskets are lower, we need to drive sales. Okay, we can pull something from there. And so, we really have been trying to implement all those good go-tos depending on the state of the business and time of year.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Bill Ridge, smaller company, I know you’ve got some external foodservice programs that you run at your stores. Do those interact at all?

Bill Ridge:

Technology Infrastructure Foodservice No, and that’s part of the problem. I was going to chime in here. We are rolling out a new loyalty and app in the next 30 days. Part of that, we’ve been trying to transition almost all of that stuff, except for obviously a small technology piece, from technology to the marketing people. And part of that process, it’s been hard, and the marketing people have had to learn what we’ve dealt with for a long time from a branded perspective. And that is dealing with a certain POS, dealing with a foodservice program that doesn’t really communicate well with the register, all kinds of things.

So, they’re asking, why can’t we do this? So, they look at all the nice, nice things out there and wish that they could use all those products and we have to whittle those down to the one we can actually use. And that’s been hard, but it’s getting better. I think it’s getting a little better for us. We really can’t offer foodservice deals. It has to be the foodservice department along something as a deal in our loyalty app. But it is moving along. It is something that people are really asking for and people are going to like, I think. I wanted to mention a couple of things about the loyalty program and the apps — we wanted to find ways to differentiate ourselves from our competition.

Our company started as a fuel company 70 years ago, so we are big into the residential fuel and propane business. So, we are going to be offering deals where if you buy your summer fill program, then you get a certain amount off of the pump for a certain period of time or up to a certain number of gallons if you’re purchasing propane from us, just to create business on both sides. That’ll actually help with both sides of the business.

The other thing that we’re doing is we’re giving our employees deep discounts on things, which is a big thing now. We found in the hiring that employees are looking for something like a perk where they can get 15% on all items that aren’t age restricted or a gallon of gas. We’ve considered some gas discounts for our employees also. So those are two things that we’re trying to differentiate. We really would not be able to do that without a loyalty program. And so that’s solving that for both of them. Those are the main things that I have. A lot of the stuff I’ve heard here today, we’ve totally gone through, and I agree with. But it’s been a chore for the last six months just trying to get it all together.

Ed Collupy:

Where’s the challenges been mostly?

Bill Ridge:

Technology, and I would say education maybe from a technology perspective that you have to pass on to a marketing person or the marketing group just so they understand the kinds of deals they can provide from a loyalty perspective. And those have probably been the biggest challenges.

Ed Collupy:

Can you talk a little bit about a couple of the specific technology challenges?

Bill Ridge:

The biggest being the food one. We use a foodservice that when you order from the mobile app and things like that, that you order on a kiosk, well, it’s not really tied to the register on a item per item basis. It’s basically ringing up an open department ring for the foodservice. So, you can’t really provide a loyalty deal on a specific sandwich because the register really doesn’t know that that’s a sandwich. It knows it’s a foodservice. So we get our foodservice information after the shift has been closed and the foodservice part of it combines the foodservice items with the shift itself. It isn’t done at the register. So therefore, you can’t really offer the deal you want to offer, especially when you’re trying to grow a foodservice program. So, it’s frustrating.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Thank you for clarifying. Abhi, I’m fortunate, as you know, to live in the backyard and near some of your Nouria stores. You folks just went through a pretty significant change, at least in the market that I live in, and went from branded fuel to unbranded and really highlighting the Nouria brand right out on the canopy in a very big way. And I’m wondering, were there any changes to loyalty or the app use that you’ve seen as a result of moving from branded fuel to unbranded in the market?

Abhi Patel:

Technology Infrastructure I’m not really an expert in this subject. Very interesting subject I’m learning today. But to answer your question, no major change as far as the consumer. However, it’s a better deal for the gas in general, plus the discounts, the day-to-day discounts. But I want to ask you or ask anybody here from the technology side, what we see as a challenge, and I’m sure some of us are in the same boat, is inconsistent message. We’re talking about social media, we’re talking about the app, loyalty and payment. I think to us it feels like it’s disconnected as far as the technology, that we don’t have full visibility of each consumer, whether they’re on our social media or app versus in-store. And I think that’s the challenge. At least as how we are seeing it.

And we are looking into how we can resolve this and it’s not easy, at least for us. As Bill mentioned, there are some restrictions on the solutions that don’t integrate with other systems. So, from the technology side, I think, we see that we need something different, maybe universal between payment and loyalty. Combine them together. Which is what the digital wallet [is], but it’s still the same challenge going back to the digital ID. How many people really want to adopt that, your digital wallet versus Apple Pay or Google Pay. So those are the things that we see and are trying to find what the right mix is here.

Ed Collupy:

Anybody have a thought on that, relative to how you bring the different channels together that Abhi’s looking for? I mean, has anyone succeeded at that? Luis and Ryan, you chatted about the data side of things, so I’m wondering if you’ve somehow overcome this.

Luis Ackerman:

Data Analysis So, we found the same challenge, right? How do you unify that data for reporting purposes? You want really rich data so that we can weaponize it, let Ryan and Brendan and his team go to town on it. What we found is, just being a smaller operator, the technology hasn’t been there for us from a right size or affordability standpoint until really recently where now we can start looking at creating a true data lake, our own data lake, pulling all these different siloes and repositories into a single data source, and then using platforms like Power BI and Tableau (data visualization platforms) and all these others to create your own insights.

Editor’s Note: A data lake is a centralized repository that stores vast amounts of raw data in its native format. Unlike a data warehouse, which typically stores structured and formatted data, a data lake can handle structured, semi-structured, and unstructured data. This allows organizations to store data as it is, without needing to structure it first, making it flexible for various analytical and machine learning purposes.

So, the cool thing is I think over the next handful of years, we’re going to see that develop even more, become even more affordable for companies our size. You’re talking about 150 stores and less and really being able to allow our businesses to compete at that data level. But you have to transform your data, you have to modernize your approach with your data because if you’re still using your old database, your old transactional-style databases, then you’re going to have a hard time pulling that data out and using it and organizing it, transforming it, and keeping it into a state that you can use it consistently.

So, it’s been a challenge. It’s something that we’re literally going through now. It’s a transformation process with your data. So, it’s really a big focus for us. We’ve probably been doing it for 12 months, and it’s going to be another 12 months before we get to somewhere that we feel like we’re really in a position of strength with our data.

Ed Collupy:

Hopefully, that doesn’t discourage you, Bill, about the journey that may be ahead of you. But Erin, I’ve always loved the name of your company from when I met your dad many, many years ago, Rotten Robbie. Do you capitalize on the name at all when you use social media or in your app at all?

Erin Graziosi:

No, not really. I mean, we don’t really capitalize on anything in social media at this point, so it’s something that we’re refocusing on now that we have finally moved from one app provider to another app provider because that was a really, really long process. And then we have some changes in the office, we’re getting a new person that will take more of that on. But no, traditionally, we have not really.

Ed Collupy:

Interesting. Very good. Well, maybe it’s an idea for the future.

Erin Graziosi:

It’s on the list.

Ed Collupy:

There you go.

Roy Austin, just curious, you mentioned that you were new at Graham. What’s your experience been in the couple of months you’ve been there with this whole topic of loyalty and apps and social media?

Roy Austin:

Strategy Gamification Yes, it’s been pretty exciting actually since I started. We just launched an app about a month ago with Rovertown with gamification and other things, but we also hired our first internal social media content-type person, and he’s strictly focused on going to stores and posting stuff live at stores, having live events on TikTok, Instagram, just blasting as much as he can from the stores. And they’re separate, they’re not tied. You might advertise a coupon that’s in our app, but we don’t have loyalty in our app. It’s just coupon-based and specials. So, the next phase will be adding in car wash memberships and loyalty down the road.

Ed Collupy:

Do you have loyalty though, but today it’s separate?

Roy Austin:

Loyalty for us today is the major oils where we’ve got five or six different major oils. So, we’ve kind of got a conflict of what loyalty is to whom.

Ed Collupy:

Does anyone among us, and forgive me for maybe not knowing this, but does anyone have Sunoco as a brand? Abhi?

Abhi Patel:

We do; we do have Sunoco.

Ed Collupy:

So, they just entered into a partnership with one of the loyalty providers, solution providers in the space. Have you heard about that, or seen anything that’s coming down the road that’s of interest?

Abhi Patel:

No, not really.

Ed Collupy:

Okay. Keep an eye on it, and let us know if you will, as time goes on. It’s an interesting partnership. Go ahead, Myra.

Myra Kressner:

AI So I don’t know if this could open up another two hours of conversation, but does AI play into the way you’re communicating or training folks to use programs, capturing the data, et cetera?

Ed Collupy:

Anybody using AI or are your solution providers saying they’re using AI and you’re wondering about it?

Nick Peters:

I’ll say this without going into too much detail.

Data Analysis Yes, AI is a very powerful tool when built properly to help transform, normalize, slice and dice your data. We are going through some exercises to deploy those types of techniques against our data marts and our data lake.

Ed Collupy:

But it’s really on the analytical side, not on the consumer side?

Nick Peters:

It may or may not be on the engagement side. So, the question comes down to how comfortable are you with business process automation as far as engaging with the customer, not necessarily a chatbot to the end customer, but kind of Ryan’s call-out when you’re doing analysis around what makes a good promotion, that’s one where you’re altering behavior — figuring out a smart promotion as to what, statistically speaking, could have a high success of altering the behavior type of a thing. So yes, let’s just say that type of stuff and that type of concept and approach is in our sandbox right now.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Brad, and then to Eva.

Brad Miller:

AI So, where AI stands today, I think my standpoint on it is the biggest benefit that we get from AI today is speed, not accuracy. And I’m really not talking about building formulas in Excel. It’s fine at that, but in terms of making decisions, I don’t think it’s trustworthy on that yet to actually communicate with a customer. But in terms of the speed, I’ve been telling the user story to our loyalty provider for the last two years of what I want. And what we want is to be able to, in real time with the geofencing that’s already in our app, identify that loyalty customer that’s on the lot, filling their car, and as someone who never comes inside to buy food, and give them an offer targeted specifically to them for a very deep discount or a free food item to get them, as Nick said, to modify their behavior, to change their behavior and get them in the store when they normally don’t come in the store.

And I don’t know how you can have the speed to do that without having some AI constantly in the background mining data and looking at that stuff. But that’s a real big data lake and probably more money than we’re going to spend this month.

Ed Collupy:

Got it. Eva?

Eva Strasburger:

I don’t think this is the group where it was discussed before, but in places like Japan and Korea, you’re seeing with social media, stores are using AI-generated influencers. They were saying that it’s a lot better because you don’t have to have expensive contracts, you can create it in the middle of the night, and some of these avatars have millions of followers on the Instagrams and social media. They’re able to promote, “Come and have a burger” in the middle of the night, or, “Here’s our favorite ice cream.” And they’ve been quite successful. But is anyone doing anything like that? No? Okay.

Ed Collupy:

No AI influencers, huh? But someone was mentioning about making sure the app engaged the employee. And to me when you mention influencers, to me, your best influencer is your employee that becomes the ambassador.

Eva Strasburger:

But it’s the influencer, which is the avatar, that goes in and is pretending to dance with the employee. And then they’re saying, “Come here,” and they’ll have a dance with you tonight, and here’s a broomstick, and I’m singing a song that’s AI-generated too because now they’re using the AI music generators to create original music. So, it just feels a little cooler and a little bit more cutting edge than seeing some of the traditional ways of doing it.

Ed Collupy:

Got it.

Donnie Rhoads:

Are these influencers… did they have a huge following before they were contracted with their brands?

Eva Strasburger:

Well, they’re not real.

Donnie Rhoads:

I know.

Eva Strasburger:

They’re not real. The companies just created them. They created the avatar, created the figure that’s gone from zero followers to now, I think two of them that I was following had like 2 million people that follow them. It’s like where are they going, and where are they going to eat tonight? The same way they’re doing pop bands that are completely AI-generated and aren’t real. So, they’re able to incorporate the logo and the values, and there’s no contract. It’s very cheap to do. They’re not having to pay a real influencer any money.

Donnie Rhoads:

So, they’re created by the brands?

Eva Strasburger:

Yes.

Roy Strasburger:

Well, I thought the influencers were independently created and acted as influencers for different types of brands.

Eva Strasburger:

They’re created by the company. They become an influencer because of what they’re doing, and people are enjoying following them. And then they also have the separate ones that you can have come to visit your store, but those cost you money because you’re having to pay a contract to be able to use that person.

Ed Collupy:

Very good. Any other thoughts on this convergence of loyalty and digital apps and social media as a way to wrap up?

Okay. Well, thank you, everybody. It really was a good conversation. What I heard today is that loyalty isn’t just about points, apps aren’t just transactions, and social isn’t just buzz. When they converge, they become the engine that will drive trips, basket growth, and brand love. But there’s a clear challenge. All stakeholders, including your colleagues at your company, solution providers, and others need to up their collaboration efforts and move us and the consumer to more connected experiences.

The opportunity appears to be large and larger than any one program. The future isn’t loyalty, apps, or social, it’s the fusion of all three. And again, I know we had some different points of view, which always makes it interesting to our conversation.

Before we wrap up this afternoon, Robert Hampton has been sitting by quietly. Robert is part of the Vision Group Network. It’s good to have you back with us today, Robert. He’s been busy on a number of fronts beyond the VGN Summit he spoke about our last time together. Among those things, he’s been focusing on an academic partnership and is going to share with us his thoughts on teaming up with a university for a capstone project and/or a possible hackathon. I know Robert would appreciate some feedback and hearing about your own experiences in these areas. Robert, you want to fill us in?

Robert Hampton:

Sure. Thank you, Ed. Good afternoon, everyone. I know for some of you it’s almost five o’clock on a Friday, so I’ll keep this brief. I know many of you on the call, but just really quick, I’m Robert Hampton. I’ve been in the convenience industry for over 16 years now. Most recently, I was with Jacksons Food Stores. I was the CIO there for a number of years, and also VP of innovation. I left Jacksons in January. I’ve been doing consulting on my own and I’ve been working with Roy, Eva, and Myra quite a bit here with the Vision Group Network.

And as Ed said, I did mention the Global Summit that we have coming up on November 19th at 11 AM Eastern. So, we have a website on that, more to come there, but we’re looking forward, and we’ve already had over 80 people register for that.

[SLIDE 1: CTVG Cover Slide] As Ed said, I’m going to talk a little bit about academic partnerships, and I’m going to share my screen here really quick.

[SLIDE 2 – VGN Academic Partnership – Background] So, with an academic partnership, we know that academic institutions have long been used to come up with out-of-the-box thinking and also to have additional resources for various projects and things like that.

Most recently, Conexxus and W3C (World Wide Web Consortium) leveraged a hackathon in Munich, Germany, to help with Smart Safe standards. And for those of you who were part of the Conexxus Vision Group and know Gray Taylor, that was very successful. I know the folks over at Armor Safe participated with that, and they came away with some good results from that resulting in some of the new standards and APIs (Applications Programming Interface) for use within the Smart Safe industry. And so that was a hackathon. Previously when I was with Jacksons, we leveraged folks over at Boise State University, students, and had semester projects. They weren’t really capstone projects, but they were project-based. And even doing some of the things that we were just talking about here in this session, we leveraged students using AI and ML (Machine Learning) to go through data, and quite a bit of data actually, hundreds of millions of rows of data, market basket data over years to find various things and be able to look at potential use of fraud and things like that. So had a great opportunity there and a great experience. We did that over three or four semesters.

Editor’s Note: Smart Safe Standard: A smart safe is a commercial device that follows standards from other organizations, focusing on physical security, payment processing and connectivity.

I know others in the industry have had success as well. We pitched this to the Convenience Leaders Vision Group, and there were a few folks on that call last week who had experience with it as well, had leveraged students and student projects.

And then also, one of the things we found was it kind of opened the door for a pathway into the convenience industry. I participated in a lot of job fairs with Boise State University, and a lot of students just have the impression when you talk to them about a convenience store chain, they’re all like, “Oh, no, no, no, thank you. I don’t want to sell beer and cigarettes at 2 AM.” Well, no, it’s actually not that. What we’re doing is we’ve got supply chain, we need folks in supply chain, we need folks in IT, we need folks who are doing AI and ML. And once you kind of tell the story, then they become really interested.

And so we found, and in fact at Jacksons, I believe in IT, we hired three or four students that came out of the computer science department because of projects we did and partnering with the university there at Boise State. And so, the Vision Group Network will facilitate the initial effort in a capstone project, working with an institution, either a long-term project or a one-or two-semester project, and then also a hackathon. And I’ll talk more about each one of these in the next slide.

[SLIDE 3 – VGN Academic Partnership – Capstone Project] Really, a capstone project typically runs an entire semester. Sometimes, depending on the complexity of it, it can last an entire year. It usually involves a professor helping with this, a teaching assistant, research assistant, and ties into specific learning objectives. What we found works best is to have a very, very clear definition of what you’re looking for, requirements, etc. So almost like you’re going to contract somebody to go do something, you need to have it clearly defined. It also requires some amount of consistent involvement with the students who are working on the project.

What we did at Jacksons, and it worked well, is you spend a few hours up front for the first week or two, and then you have regular check-ins with the students. Generally, they take about 30 minutes a week, 30 to 45 minutes a week depending on what’s going on or as students have questions.

And we find, once they get going and they have regular check-ins, it’s almost kind of like an agile methodology. You’re getting regular feedback, you’re giving them feedback, and you’re making sure that the project doesn’t go in the ditch, basically.

We did a thing where we signed NDAs (Non-Disclosure Agreements) with the students and also an irrevocable perpetual license so that whatever they came up with, effectively we owned a royalty-free license to use however we saw fit.

We also had a monetary component that worked well with the students. They were happy to get paid for something as long as it met the requirements, and it was great for us as well. And again, it’s kind of a win-win because the students love getting the actual real-world experience using real data, and we enjoy getting insights into things from a different perspective for one, and things that sometimes we didn’t think about. And, again, it’s kind of a pathway into the industry and into talent. As I mentioned, at Jacksons Food Stores we did a number of those, and then at Boise State University.

[SLIDE 4 – VGN Academic Partnership – Hackathon] Moving over to the hackathon. That’s generally a shorter-term event. I’m on the Board at Texas Tech in both the engineering department and the computer science department. Texas Tech has had great success leveraging hackathons to solve problems for local businesses who sponsor, and they’ve had a number of weekend ones. The most recent one was fall of last year, this time last year, and had well over several hundred students show up, worked on various projects, solved a lot of problems, and came up with ideas, out-of-the-box thinking for a number of local companies there in the Lubbock area down in Texas.

They are starting a second hackathon because the first one was so popular. So, they have one every fall, and then in the spring of ’26, they’re going to start a second one because they’ve had so much interest.

They’ve offered to partner with us on the spring session if we want to have a project or some kind of problem to solve. They’re interested in working with us to help framework that. And the nice thing is it is student-organization-run, meaning that they’ll handle all the details. We just need to provide them with the problem and some guidance in order to solve the problem.

Again, a very clear requirements document and expectations need to be set, and there will be some involvement needed by the sponsor or us as a whole. And then generally, I think we all know hackathons, there’s prizes: most innovative, most creative, quickest to solve the problem, things like that. So, it’s kind of fun, and the students really get engaged with it.

[SLIDE 5 – Next Steps] Next steps, we need advice and input from this team. We’ve also, as I mentioned, shared this with the Convenience Leaders Vision Group. It’s not just restricted to IT. I mean, we can involve other disciplines as well. We’ve been doing AI/ML, and computer science, but there could be other uses. Marketing comes to mind, and things like that.

Where can we get the biggest bang? Where do you guys think would be a really good big, initial win? Are there gaps in this? Ideally, and this is thinking out loud, wouldn’t it be nice if three or four or five years down the road, we had several institutions working with us, and every year, we partner with them and farm out a number of problems and see where this leads. It could be a great resource for the industry. We need some help from you guys to help define and formalize a process to do this. We’re looking for sponsorship as well, somebody to help sponsor this and defray the cost since there are some costs involved.

And then as I mentioned here, I’ve got a great relationship with Tech. That’s where I got my undergrad. The computer science department has over 1,000 students, and over half of those students are graduate level, so they’re eager to work on projects. And then I’m on the Dean’s Council for Engineering, and there’s 5,700 students in the engineering department. So, a great resource there to leverage.

[SLIDE 6 – Questions/Feedback] I tried to keep it quick, but happy to answer any questions, thoughts, concerns. So open to you guys.

Ed Collupy:

Any immediate reactions for Robert?

Rance Wells:

Hey, Robert, that Texas Tech stuff’s right in our backyard. We just opened 10 stores down there, and we’re a corporate sponsor for Texas Tech too, football and everything, so yes, we’d love to see what that could look like.

Robert Hampton:

Excellent. Thank you, Rance.

Ed Collupy:

I’ve mentioned to Robert a couple of times and some of the other folks on the call here that my alma mater, the discussions I’ve had and conversations I’ve listened in on with them, and with students today and universities today, it’s all about these experiential learning opportunities that are making a difference, and universities and students are looking to do these kinds of things. So, I think coming up with the problem and what we’re looking to solve would be a fun thing to do.

Robert Hampton:

Definitely. And I know we’re running short on time, and it was kind of a quick presentation, but if anyone has any thoughts or suggestions, feel free to drop me an email or happy to get on a call with you guys later to discuss it. And Rance, I’ll reach out to you as well. I’ll actually be down in Amarillo and Lubbock in the not-too-distant future, so maybe we can connect then. And if you guys have partnerships with other universities, it’s just not limited to Boise State or Texas Tech, let me know. It could be with anyone.

Eva Strasburger:

So, for instance, Bill, you mentioned earlier, I think it was you, how you can’t identify from the foodservice information which items have sold. So that could be potentially a problem that we identify and say, “Solve this.”

Ed Collupy:

Yes, that would be a challenging one. But I’m sure they’d be up for it.

Robert Hampton:

You’d be surprised. I mean, I sit through the senior presentations, and I’m amazed at what these students can do these days. It’s quite impressive. There are some really sharp students out there.

Ed Collupy:

Robert, will you share your email, your VGN sharing email in the chat so people have that?

Robert Hampton:

Absolutely. [Robert’s e-mail is robert.hampton@vgnsharing.com]

Ed Collupy:

Thanks, Robert.

And I really appreciate the work you’re doing in strengthening VGN’s value to our members and our wider community. I’m really looking forward to the Summit in November.

Speaking of which, I also will be talking to some of you, our members, to pull together an overview of all that we’ve been fortunate to discuss during our 12 CTVG meetings since our beginning three years ago.

So, as we look to wrap up today, a big thanks to all of you. The industry is better because of each of you. And a special appreciation to our guests and thank you for joining us.

I’m going to pass off the wrap-up to VGN’s own Roy Strasburger, and I hope to see many of you at the NACS show next month in Chicago. Roy?

Roy Strasburger:

Ed, thank you, and great meeting today. And just to echo what Ed said, thank you, everybody for helping us with providing information and guidance to people in the industry. Our Vision Reports go out free to everybody who wants them, and it’s because of your participation, not only in attending the meeting, but in contributing to the meetings, that really helps make it valuable. And with the programs that Robert was just talking about, we’re trying to add to that value that we’re providing the industry. So, thank you very much. Thank you for your time today.

I wanted to give a special shout out to our Ally Supporters again, GK and Invenco. Thank you very much for your support and being with us. And on behalf of the rest of the VGN group, thank you, everybody for attending. I hope to see some of you in Chicago at NACS. So, thank you, everyone, and thanks again, Ed. Great meeting.