CONVENIENCE IS WHAT'S IN STORE

The corner grocery is little more than a fondly remembered piece of Americana.

Fifty years ago, more than 40 small grocery stores -- mom-and-pop operations, for the most part -- thrived in Cape Girardeau. Hirsch Brothers, Fischer's, Dietiker, Werner's, Vogel and dozens of others carried everything from fresh eggs to bologna-and-cheese sandwiches.

Those stores may be gone, but Cape's corners aren't bare. Convenience stores, the updated cousin of family groceries, have taken their place. Some 60 convenience store operations are listed in the Cape Girardeau area.

Rhodes 101 Stops, Bi-State, Huck's Convenience Store, KWIK Stop, Amerimart and Quick Shop offer some of the same stock of small grocers, but with a few differences.

Convenience stores provide what their customers want -- coffee, soft drinks, snacks and gasoline for their cars. Many also contain a selection of general merchandise and, of course, a convenient location.

"We've become a neighborhood gathering place," said Scott Blank, owner of Bi-State Oil Co., which has two locations in Cape Girardeau -- 920 N. Kingshighway and 400 Morgan Oak. "We have groups of retirees who come in every day for coffee and/or dessert."

Bi-State, which will observe its 60th anniversary this month as a service station, added the convenience store component to the business about 20 years ago.

"You get to know your customers by name," Blank said.

"That's a fun part of the job," said David Cordia, who is manager at the Rhodes 101 Stop at the intersection of Independence and West End Boulevard.

Rhodes 101 Stop, which has 22 facilities throughout Cape Girardeau and Southeast Missouri, wants people to get to know their convenience store employees.

"We like to keep managers and clerks at one location for this reason," said Paul Dirnberger, a co-owner of the Rhodes 101 Stop company with Jim Maurer.

"Customer service is one of our big things," said Cordia, who has been involved in retailing a number of years. Cordia previously worked in the C-Store industry in Springfield, Mo., before returning to his hometown.

Like most service station/convenience store locations, gasoline is the top selling product, with 70 to 80 percent of total sales.

Cordia added that cigarettes and drinks are among the top inside sales.

Big business

Sales at the 119,751 convenience stores in the U.S. reached $269.4 billion in 2000, a 15.1 percent increase in sales over 1999, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) 2001 State of the Industry report.

This figure is more than double the sales 10 years ago and a nearly hundred-fold increase from 30 years ago.

Motor fuel sales accounted for $165 billion in 2000, up 23 percent from a year ago. However, industry gallon sales were down a bit.

Cigarettes and food service remain top "in-store" items, collectively accounting for nearly half of all in-store sales dollars in 2000. These categories also held the top two spots for gross margin dollars. A trend toward consumers snacking more and eating fewer full meals may have led to increased sales for several other categories.

C-Store size has increased. For the first time, the average store site property size topped 50,000 square feet (50,458), allowing retailers to "bundle" services and develop additional services on their properties, such as car washes, which can be found at 8.9 percent of the stores.

BY THE NUMBERS

Convenience stores are big business. Nationally, the industry posts some impressive statistics:

* 68 percent of all U.S. consumers visit convenience stores.

* There are more than 119,000 conveinence store/gasoline retailers in the U.S.

* Annual sales total more than $265 billion.

* Overall, convenience stores have averaged double-digit sales increases most years.