Only 17% of convenience-store retailers are very satisfied with their current technology stack, while 65% are somewhat satisfied and 14% are not very satisfied, according to CSP’s C-Store Technology Outlook report.
More than 100 retailers with locations from one to more than 500 (39% independent retailers and 61% chains) shared strategies and priorities in the survey.
The most important consideration for retailers when developing their technology is the potential to drive sales, the survey found. After that, retailers are interested in leveraging tech to impact the customer experience and reduce costs.
Retailers first must navigate through some obstacles in order to achieve these benefits. Read on to find out what challenges investing in technology brings for c-store retailers.
Costs
Costs for cloud-based software licensing are the top concern for both small and large convenience-store retailers when it comes to developing tech stacks, with 38% of respondents choosing it as their No. 1 obstacle.
High upfront costs for hardware are a challenge for more independents, 34%, compared to 22% of retailers with chains.
It’s important to be mindful of the cost of new technologies, said Justin Mitchell, vice president and head of IT at Refuel Operating Co., a 227-store chain based in Charleston, South Carolina, at CSP's inaugural C-StoreTEC event in December. It may seem inexpensive at first, but it can add up when it’s duplicated across each location the chain operates.
Refuel Operating Co. is No. 36 on CSP's 2024 Top 202 ranking of convenience-store chains by store count.
Finding a balance can prevent employees from doing repetitive tasks so that they can assist customers better, he said.
“I think the hardest challenge is making sure that you preserve some funding to help stunt work, innovation, research and development,” said Mitchell. “That next great idea is what is going to differentiate you between your competitors, and if you're not going to take a risk, then you're probably going to fail.”
Still, those concerns have not dampened retailers’ investment plans, with the vast majority planning to update their tech stacks in the next year, indicating that they see enough upside—via increased sales and operational efficiencies—to warrant the costs, the report found.
Retailers also noted elsewhere in the survey that the ability of digital tools to drive sales, improve customer experience and reduce operational costs were top of mind as they pursue greater return on investment from their tech.
Technology that enables personalized promotions, for example, influence consumers to make extra purchases, brings revenue into the business that wasn’t possible before.
If a customer adds a bag of chips, a beverage and a foodservice item to their intended purchase, a small chain of 50 stores could make around an additional $160,000 a year, based on some math that Art Sebastian, founder and CEO of NexChapter, a consulting firm for convenience stores based in Des Moines, Iowa, proposed at CSP’s Convenience Retail University (CRU) in 2024.
An 800-store chain could “pay for the technology with one automated campaign. The technology does the job; it pays for itself,” he said.
Training and Knowledge Gaps
The second biggest concern in expanding technology is employees’ level of comfort with new tech and learning how to use it.
A third of respondents, 33%, said they don’t have the staff to implement new technology, and 31% said they lack understanding of available systems and their capabilities. Another 18% said they are overwhelmed at the number of new tech solutions to evaluate and pointed to difficulty training teams on new technology.
However, technology like operations management systems combine individual tasks like temperature logs, maintenance requests, checklists, incident reports, communications, audits and more, into fewer systems. This can result in employees spending less time learning and jumping between multiple systems and more time interacting with customers or doing other tasks, said Matt Riezman, partner at NexChapter, at CRU in February.
Functionality and Integration
Retailers are also experiencing challenges integrating new tech with their existing tech. More than 26% said their current systems lack functionality that they need.
Respondents are also concerned that it is too difficult to integrate new tech solutions, 23%, and that systems have extraneous features they don’t need or use, 16%. About one in seven respondents, 14%, said data silos—whether between vendor partners or within their own organizations—were holding them back.
Integration challenges were reflected elsewhere in the survey. When asked what the ideal setup for their organization was, 45% of respondents said they were more interested in end-to-end solutions and were interested in working with fewer, more comprehensive tech partners to reduce integration needs.
Less than a third said they prioritized buying more best-in-class point solutions from multiple vendors, despite the greater integration need.
More than a quarter, 26%, said they were interested in building customized technology solutions in house, a path generally only available to larger, more sophisticated operations.
Whether a retailer is working with one partner or a range of providers, Mitchell said, “If we take shortcuts and we implement things improperly, there's going to be some type of functionality issue.”
Budget is often the limiting factor for which path a company chooses to take, but the strong interest from retailers in working with fewer vendors and lessening the need to combine systems underscores the fact that integration is a key challenge.
Spencer Bean, director of strategic accounts for Par Retail, said that when deciding whether to build or buy, retailers should consider the ongoing maintenance and costs of in-house development.
“Spending over time supporting in-house stacks becomes a burden, and making changes or updates consumes too much time,” he said.
Maverik is No. 12 on CSP’s 2024 Top 202 ranking of U.S. convenience-store chains by store count.
Maverik is integrating Android devices in its stores, said Chad Kobayashi, senior director of retail technology at Maverik, at the 2025 Conexxus conference in Tucson, Arizona. Mobile devices allow employees to carry the system around with them as they’re doing tasks, such as scanning inventory, instead of having a central device like a computer to continue going back to. Tablets can be used to see bigger things like planograms.
There will be two tablets and four to eight handheld devices in each store, he said, and the change aims to bring about a future-proof and scalable solution. There should be an overall cost decrease as well, Kobayashi said.
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