AACS Awards celebrate excellence within the convenience industry

The Australian Association of Convenience Stores (AACS) has celebrated its annual awards last week in the Grand Ballroom of the ICC in Sydney.

The AACS awards are a celebration of excellence within the convenience industry and showcase the very best in terms of performance for both suppliers and retailers throughout the industry. The Retailer and Suppler awards are evaluated through the CMA Convenience Pulse program, which benchmarks supplier and retailer performance over the entire 12-month period, a very detailed and exhaustive process. The Store of the year awards and Excellence awards are judged by a selected panel of eight industry leaders, which recognises best in class retail operations.

The major winners included 7-Eleven as Retailer of the Year, Patties Foods as Supplier of the Year, and the Store of the Year award was a tie between APCO Wangaratta and Urbanista Colyton – the first time in our history.

Two new awards were introduced in a series of six new awards over the next three years. In 2022, Excellence in Retail format development was awarded to OTR Linden Park, whilst the Excellence in Community Engagement was awarded to The Station Grocer Lennox Head.

While he was unfortunately unable to attend due to falling ill, AACS CEO Theo Foukkare passed on his congratulations to all of the AACS Award winners.

“These awards recognise the significant achievements, innovation in retail and best in class performance by both retail and supplier members.

“To all our supplier winners and finalists – keep up the amazing work. The results continue to get closer each ear as you all strive for excellence in customer management. You are all very deserved of having your company names up in lights.

“To our retail winners, what can I say – more competition that ever in both the corporate and independent categories. The level of investment going into store development, coffee, food to go and food for later; healthier choices, digitisation and customer experience is greater than we have seen in some years.

“Congratulations to bp Australia on winning Corporate Store of the Year, an amazing retail offer with a curated range driven by technological innovation with the customer at the heart of the offer.

“The Independent Store of the Year category was the best we have ever seen. These retailers have the ability to be very nimble and experiment with so many ideas. It was so close that we had joint winners – we simply couldn’t split them. Congratulations to the teams at APCO and Urbanista Cafe & Convenience – well done,” said Foukkare.

Here are all the winners:

Retailer of the Year

Winner: 7-Eleven

Finalist: bp Australia

Finalist: Chevron