In a recent post, Beyond the Microwave: Hot Food Options for Your C-Store, we gave you a taste of some options for providing hot food offerings in your C-Store. This week, we’d like to address equipment and design requirements around food safety.

Six options for improving your food offering.

Look around and it’s clear to see. Appetites have evolved! Expectations have changed. As a result, new equipment options and food trends are displacing the once mighty microwave in C-stores.

CTM asked our independent C-store Consultant, Mark Walsh, about different equipment options available to help you take your food offering to the next level.

Why it makes sense to plan for a Remotely Monitored Retail Site at the time of your build.

Recently, CTM has worked on several design projects involving Unattended Self Service Outlets (also known as Remotely Monitored Retail Sites).

It is a relatively new business model that allows an owner to run a gas bar without the need for onsite staff. Currently, Alberta and Ontario are the only provinces to permit these types of operations.

In our last blog post, independent C-Store consultant Mark Walsh helped us shed some light on the Pros and Cons of adding a hot food program to your service offering. 

As part of that conversation, he suggested the next key question an owner must ask after deciding to proceed with a hot food offering is whether or not is should be a branded (national franchise) or non-branded product.

It's a question many C-Store owners struggle with: "Should I have a hot food offering? And if I do, should I choose a branded or non-branded product?" 

To help shed light on the key points you need to consider, we solicited the insights of an independent consultant and C-Store specialist, Mark Walsh. Mark addresses both questions in this two-part interview.

The "Car Wash Study" provides curious insights into consumer behaviour.

As a business owner, you’d love to get inside the heads of your customers in order to see what motivates them.

That’s exactly what consumer research is all about. Researchers devise psychological studies to test how consumers respond to certain offers and marketing approaches. Often the results are surprising... and even counterintuitive.

Radio frequency technology next step for fleet vehicles.

In business you need to be nimble. Yet it can be challenging to stay on top of technology trends.

One advance that should be on your radar if you cater to fleet vehicles is the introduction of Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. It is something we expect will be widely adopted in fuelling and carwash applications in the years to come.

New products to look for at CARWACS 2015!

On November 17^th and 18^th, the Convenience U CARWACS Show is coming to Calgary at the BMO Centre.

As Western Canada’s largest convenience, gas and car wash events it is a chance to discover the latest and greatest developments when you peruse the tradeshow floor.

How to save water in your carwash using environmentally responsible reclamation systems.

Car washes take a lot of water to operate. And these days, there is a great deal of public pressure to operate in an environmentally responsible manner. Fortunately, you can save a lot of water – and also reduce the associated operating costs – by choosing the right solution.

Independents increasing look to CTM to help with custom planning and design.

CTM has been designing carwashes from Day 1. All in, we’ve probably helped build well over a hundred car washes – serving motorists from Vancouver Island to Ontario.