Turning the corner from being a convenience store that
sells food and food products to a grocerant niche fresh prepared market that
gas is a lot of work according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.
There is no doubt
that as Huck’s continues remodeling stores to
its new design that highlights foodservice, while integrating technology for a
seamless shopping experience the process of just being a convenience store is
now in somewhere in the past.
So, following it’s positioning as Huck’s Market in 2020, Huck’s has been busy redesigning stores, growing its foodservice
menu and investing in new technology, including self-checkout and frictionless
payments.
In case you did not know, Huck’s can trace its roots to 1960 when founders
Frank Bayley and Bob Martin partnered to open Big John supermarkets. They grew
the business from southern Illinois into Kentucky and Tennessee. The
following is from Erin Del Conte of CS Decisions
“Brittany Bayley, vice president of
marketing at Huck’s, stated, “After they got
started with Big John’s, they realized that Walmart and other bigger retailers
were going to be main players in the grocery business,”.
Thus, the founders found another way to
evolve and that was when the first Huck’s convenience store opened in
Grayville, Ill., in 1974. Currently, Huck’s operates 125 c-store locations
in five Midwest states — Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Missouri and
Tennessee.
You’re going to love this, Huck’s most
recent new-to-industry store opened last month in Hannibal, Mo., the hometown
of Mark Twain, who wrote “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” for which Huck’s
is named. Twain published the renowned book on Feb. 18, 1885. By coincidence,
the Huck’s team planned the store opening Feb. 17, just one day shy of the
publication’s anniversary.
“It was just a cool fact that we found
out after we were getting ready to launch the store,” Bayley said.
Huck’s operations area is positioned
within the vicinity of its warehouse, Carmi Wholesale Distributors, which
delivers to its c-stores twice a week.
“I would say 85% if not more of our items
that you see in the store retail-wise are delivered by our warehouse,” Bayley
said.
That includes foodservice products and
ingredients — such as the breading for its chicken program — and tobacco items,
cold vault and freezer products, and more.
“We are our distributor, except for a
handful of direct store delivery suppliers,” Bayley said.
Forward Thinking Family Business can
Sustain Success
The second and third generations of the
Martin and Bayley families are active in the company today.
“My grandfather was Frank Bayley,” Bayley
noted. Her father, Mark Bayley, is currently the chairman of Huck’s parent
company, Martin & Bayley Inc. Her brother Landon is the company’s vice
president of fuel. Charles Martin, Bob Martin’s son, serves as vice-chairman.
His son Lance Martin is a regional director at Huck’s.
Brittany Bayley started with the company
in 2009. Each member of the third generation — Brittany, Landon and Lance —
started out working in the c-stores after college, training at the associate
level, managing stores and working their way up through the
company.
“We like to ensure that all of us have a
good idea of how our stores work and what our associates and our managers go
through each and every day,” Bayley said. “So, that’s kind of the base training
for anybody you would see at our position, or even at the field level. We like
to promote from within. That’s really part of our culture.”
That applies even to Martin &
Bayley’s CEO Murat Tokad, who joined Huck’s in 2004 as division manager and
worked his way up through the company, holding roles as regional director, vice
president of operations, executive vice president and president before taking
the helm as CEO in May 2019.
In March 2001, the families turned the
company into an Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP), an employee benefit plan
that gives workers ownership interest in the company.
“That decision empowered the associates
to be more than just an employee. They’re an owner. We went along that trail to
empower them to think more as running their own business and not someone
else’s,” Bayley said. “The ESOP acts as an additional retirement plan that
doesn’t require any contribution from the associate, other than their time.”
The ESOP helps employees see firsthand
how their work makes a critical impact on the business’s success, Bayley noted,
and helps to grow their retirement account.
Rebranding Initiative
Huck’s introduced a prototype store in
January 2020 in Seymour, Ind., featuring a fresh design with updated
branding reflecting a name evolution to ‘Huck’s Market.’
“We saw things evolving and other
retailers changing around us. We felt like there was a need for us to center
ourselves and position ourselves with a new look,” Bayley said.
Huck’s partnered with GSP on the store’s
design to incorporate that legacy Huck’s feel and evolve it into something
fresh and new that emphasized the market approach to convenience, emphasizing
foodservice.
“A big part of the redesign was not only
branding the Huck’s Market, but better focusing and showcasing our food
programs, which had always been there, but we wanted to bring them to the
forefront because we know food is our future,” Bayley said.
The updated color scheme fades out the
previous red and yellow with a modern, woodgrain look.
Huck’s has since completed several
remodels on legacy stores and is continuing its remodel and rebranding
initiative in 2022, with a goal of rolling the design out to its entire fleet
of stores in the next three years. Huck’s also has plans to roll the new look
out to new-to-industry stores in the future.
“We have several properties that are
secured for the new look,” Bayley said.
New-to-industry stores will measure over
6,000 square feet, up from the 3,000-4,200 square feet of legacy stores. Most
of Huck’s stores feature Huck’s branded gas and six to 14 gas pumps in the
forecourt. It’s also testing electric vehicle charging at its Beaver Dam,
Ky., location, where it’s encouraging customers to spend time in-store while they
charge up.
Elevating Food
Huck’s features grab-and-go, proprietary
and co-branded foodservice, with plans to expand into made-to-order in the
future.
“We are partnered with Godfather’s Pizza
at over 70 locations. We also offer our proprietary brand of chicken, the
Cluck’s Chicken brand, at 72 locations,” said David Grimes, vice president of
foodservice for Huck’s.
Grimes has been with Huck’s for nine
years. He served as a district manager and regional director before stepping up
to the plate to direct foodservice initiatives.
“We’re in the process of developing our
Huck’s Kitchen brand underneath the Huck’s Market umbrella,” Grimes said. “The
development of the Huck’s Kitchen logo is complete, and we continue to evaluate
and enhance our offers.”
As part of the Huck’s Kitchen program,
the chain is offering new foodservice concepts including Bigg Fresh, Bigg
Breakfast and Bigg Bakery.
Bigg Fresh features several wrap
varieties, including Crispy Buffalo Chicken, Crispy Ranch Chicken, a Caesar
wrap, turkey and ham wraps, as well as sub sandwiches on both traditional and
pretzel buns. The program also includes several different salads. The Bigg
Breakfast program includes sausage and bacon offerings on bagels, biscuits,
croissants or burritos. Offers also include Texas Toast sandwich varieties,
breakfast steak and biscuits, and gravy.
Customers can find Bigg Breakfast items
in the hot hold and Bigg Fresh items in 48-inch deli cases. Huck’s also
features a smaller ‘Snack Attack’ case that includes grab-and-go items such as
meat snacks, cheeses and healthy options.
“Bigg Bakery includes several doughnut
varieties, to include long johns, ring donuts, Persians and a variety of
delicious muffins and cookie offers,” Grimes said.
The chain’s proprietary Cluck’s Chicken
program includes hand-breaded chicken.
“We proudly sell a marinated chicken
tender with our proprietary breading blend that we use to hand-bread our
products. Other category offers include potato wedges, bone-in chicken,
honey-battered wings, and livers and gizzards,” said Grimes. “Our proprietary
blend of seasoning is something that we are super proud of. We think it’s just
a great product. It gives a great flavor profile to our tenders, our wedges,
our bone-in chicken.”
Huck’s features a coffee section branded
Daybreak Café. As it remodels stores and opens new locations, it’s adding
bean-to-cup coffee. “At this point, I would say we’re pretty happy with it,”
Grimes said.
When it comes to cold dispensed, Huck’s
features its Bigg Swigg fountain program and also offers a Fresh Blends
smoothie unit featuring fruit, milk and coffee-based smoothies at its newest
locations.
The chain is also delving into
catering.
Tech Focused
Huck’s provides food and product delivery
with the help of third-party apps.
“In every area where we can be, we’re
partnered with the third-party delivery services Grubhub, Uber Eats and
DoorDash. At our Godfather’s Pizza locations, we have Godfather’s Pizza
Online,” Grimes said.
While the chain offered curbside pickup
as an option during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, there wasn’t a
significant demand for it in Huck’s market area.
Huck’s is currently integrating online
ordering and third-party delivery into its Huck’s Bucks Bigg Rewards app.
The Huck’s Bucks Bigg Rewards app
features its near-five-star-rated loyalty program.
Huck’s
is currently testing self-checkout kiosks and preparing to expand that to more
locations. The chain also features bitcoin kiosks and bitcoin ATMs in several
sites. And it has a gaming section in several of its Illinois’s stores.
Huck’s also features frictionless payment
through the Skip app at all locations. Customers open the Skip app, scan the
items and pay within the app. Huck’s is now working to integrate the Skip
frictionless payment with its Huck’s Bucks app, so customers only need to open
the Huck’s app to both pay and receive loyalty rewards in the future.
“We are also building out alternative
payments (ACH, PayPal, Venmo, etc.), online ordering and digital fuel pump
activation,” Bayley noted. “Currently, we are working on integrating all of
these features into a single-app ecosystem to streamline the customer’s
experience and be able to engage with the Huck’s brand inside, (in the)
forecourt or from home.” So now are you wondering if you are evolving
fast enough?
Looking for
success clues of your own? Foodservice Solutions® specializes in outsourced food marketing
and business development ideations. We can help you identify, quantify and
qualify additional food retail segment opportunities, technology, or a new menu
product segment. Foodservice Solutions® of Tacoma WA is the global leader in the Grocerant niche visit
us on our social media sites by clicking one of the following links: Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter
