Best of Darren's Great Ideas for Independent Operators

Welcome to the newest post in our blog series, Darren’s Great Ideas! for Independent Operators. 

Best of Darren's Great Ideas for Independent Operators

Summer time means popsicles on the front poor, a cool dip in the neighborhood pool and if we are lucky a trip out of town with family and friends. As Darren enjoys a much-desired vacation, I thought I'd guest host with a round-up of his most popular blog posts.

Four Essential Improvements for your Grab-N-Go Food Offerings: Food service is a powerful profit center for truckstops and travel plazas. In many locations, this category generates more revenue than non-food service retail offerings and is often the largest portion of the non-fuel gross margin dollar production. Read Four Essential Improvements for your Grab-N-Go Food Offerings here. 

Take Flight with a Merchandising and Marketing Checklist: Treat your operation like a pilot treats his or her plane prior to every departure. A pilot follows a pre-departure checkout plan ensuring everything is operationally intact and you can do the same. Simply use a merchandising and marketing checklist every day. Follow the checklist as part of your basic walk through process when arriving and leaving the location daily. Read Take Flight with a Merchandising and Marketing Checklist here.

One-A-Day Truckstop Marketing: Most truckstops and travel plazas are open 365 days a year. While I know many of you work the majority of those days, if you perform just one simple marketing item on the 200 business working days of the year, at the end of the year you will have done a lot of marketing. For example, enter the door as though you were a new customer; remove one piece of merchandise or fixture that is creating a bad first impression. Read One-A-Day Truckstop Marketing here.

Six Simple Tips for Truckstop Retail Displays: Are customers that enter your location greeted with visually pleasing and dynamic displays featuring hard to resist promotional opportunities? Read Six Simple Tips for Truckstop Retail Displays for guidelines to follow to build visually pleasing and dynamic displays.

One Dozen Ideas to Reduce Shrink at Your Truckstop Immediately: Don't wait until after your audit results to take action on shrink loss. Remember, paperwork errors typically account for 1% to 2% of your variation, customers 5% to 7%, vendors 7% to 10% and employees a whopping 80% to 90%. A busy, happy employee is usually less of an issue. Read One Dozen Ideas to Reduce Shrink at Your Truckstop Immediately here.

12 Ideas For What To Do With That Tired Truck Lounge: Are you wondering what to do with that tired truck lounge? Do you have an empty area that used to house a telephone bank that used to drive profitability to your bottom line? Or worse, do you have an arcade room that generates $12 in revenue a day but costs $24 a day to clean? Try these ideas in 12 Ideas For What To Do With That Tired Truck Lounge.

15 Items Every Truckstop Operator Should Check Daily: Outside store appearance is a large factor on how many customers move from the fuel islands to inside the store, thus giving you the potential to make a sale. Breaking it down further, you could say that besides your posted fuel price, it may be the reason someone pulls into your operation in the first place. We have all heard the phrase curb appeal. Practicing it is critical on all three shifts. Read 15 Items Every Truckstop Operator Should Check Daily here.

/// Read more Darren's Great Ideas for Independent Operators posts here.  

Join the conversation! What were your favorite blog posts in the past year? What do you hope to see if the future? What retail issue keeps you up at night?