Australian Convenience Store News: Fifteen Years - What is a convenience store anyway?

What exactly is a convenience store anyway?
By Keith Berg, Managing Editor

his issue of Australian Convenience Store News marks fifteen years exactly since we published our first edition. That was back in 1988 with the Service Station banner, under the wing of the Service Station Association. A lot has happened since then.

We first became independent in 1993 and changed our masthead to the rather long-winded Australian Service Station & Convenience Store News then, more recently, to Australian Convenience Store News. These changes in many ways reflect where the industry has been and where it's going.

Thirty years ago, the convenience store wasn't much more than a kiosk attached to a service station. By the eighties, just as modern convenience outlets were starting to appear, profound changes were already in the pipeline. Fuel margins became very tight and real estate became very expensive. Suddenly, there weren't enough petrol customers to support 12,000 service stations.

Four oil majors retired from the Australian market. Those that were left closed several thousand outlets and reinvested heavily at a smaller number of high volume locations. Workshops were bulldozed to make way for increased retail areas and the modern convenience store of today became commonplace.

A couple of thousand independently owned and operated service stations followed suit and reinvented themselves as convenience stores. Some evolved retail offers which were even more innovative than those of the multinationals.

And customers liked what they saw. The convenience store soon became a destination in its own right. Before long, convenience stores were opening without any kind of fuel offer and were appearing in traditional shopping strips and residential precincts.
Nowadays, almost every high-rise residential development includes a modern independently operated convenience store. Traditional corner stores have been reinventing themselves just as fuel outlets did fifteen years ago. And small independent supermarkets are coming alive to the needs of the convenience customer.

As the convenience store industry evolved to meet the changing needs of consumers, the industry's own definition of the convenience store has lagged behind the reality of the marketplace. The Australasian Association of Convenience Stores (AACS) has for many years been the only industry body to offer a credible definition of what constitutes a convenience store. Its excellent AACS 2001 State of the Convenience Store Industry Survey* states that there are just under 1,400 convenience stores in Australia which meet the AACS definition, and most of these sell petrol. Here is the AACS definition:

"A Convenience Store (which may also be known as a C-Store or Food Store) is a retail business with primary emphasis placed on providing the public with a convenient location to quickly purchase their requirements from a wide range of consumable products (predominantly food and petroleum products)." It continues:

·"Building size will vary from 80 sq m to 600 sq m with majority being between 170 and 300 sq m
· Generally facilities will be modern and air conditioned with extensive equipment
· Off street parking and/or pedestrian access is essential
· Majority of stores operate 24 hours a day, 7 days a week
· Products include most Food Categories including Fast Food, Restaurants, Home Meal Replacement Facilities plus petroleum products
· Stores offer extensive services including ATM's, videos, film processing, dry cleaning, car washing etc."

Although the meaning of the third point listed above is anyone's guess, this definition has stood unchallenged for a dozen years or more without anyone really thinking too much about it. But at this moment, most of us can think of quite a few successful retail convenience outlets, which don't meet some or all of the criteria listed in this definition.

Rather than ponder a definition of its own making, Australian Convenience Store News reached for Australia's National Dictionary - the Macquarie Dictionary (Third Edition 1999) - which defines a convenience store more simply and concisely.

On the basis of this definition, here's how we currently see the make-up of the retail convenience industry in Australia:

There is an additional few hundred workshop-based service stations not included on this list. As well, perhaps a thousand of the 6,500 service stations that have made it to the list have only a minimal retail offer. However, the grocery stores and corner stores included in the list represent only the very top end of the non-fuel trade, with each store doing substantial business.

These 14,500 convenience retailers, plus around 1,500 or so industry suppliers, represent the circulation of Australian Convenience Store News. The magazine now goes to more than 16,000 industry readers, which must surely represent a more realistic reflection of the true size of our industry.

While the final numbers can be debated and will most certainly change in the years ahead, it is clear that the 1,300-1,400 franchised petroleum based convenience stores are, as a group, the minor partner in the convenience channel. It is also clear that non-fuel convenience outlets have virtually doubled the size and importance of retail convenience business in Australia.

We do our industry no service by selling it short.

Thank You for fifteen years
Thank You to the hundreds of companies that have supported this magazine both with advertising and with industry data - and especially to ACNielsen C*Track.

Thank You to the dozens of expert contributors who, over the years, have provided hundreds of informative articles for this magazine. These articles have helped thousands of convenience retailers to stay up-to-date with industry trends and to improve their commercial performance. Thanks too, to our illustrators, photographers, graphic designers and, of course, to our own hard working staff.

But, most of all, Thanks to You, our reader. Your support for this magazine, and the companies that advertise in it, has been the driver for its success over the past fifteen years.

We Thank You for that and look forward to many more years as your trusted information source in the convenience channel.

www.c-store.com.au

*The AACS State of the Convenience Store Industry Report can be purchased from AACS by phoning 02 9369 5395