Convenience store

A convenience store is a small store or shop, generally accessible or local. They are often located alongside busy roads, or at gas/petrol stations. This can take the form of gas stations supplementing their income with retail outlets, or convenience stores adding gas to the list of goods that they offer. Railway stations also often have convenience stores.

Convenience store in Tokyo, Japan

Goods on offer

Sometimes abbreviated to c-store, various types exist, for example: liquor stores (off-licences – offies), mini-markets (mini-marts) or party stores. Typically junk food (candy, ice-cream, soft drinks), lottery tickets, newspapers and magazines are sold. Unless the outlet is a liquor store, the range of alcohol beverages is likely to be limited (i.e. beer and wine) or non-existent. Varying degrees of food supplies are usually available, from household products, to prepackaged foods like sandwiches and frozen burritos. Automobile related items such as motor oil, maps and car kits may be sold. Often toiletries and other hygiene products are stocked, as well as pantyhose and contraception. Some of these stores also offer money orders and wire transfer services.

Some convenience stores have a hot food counter (often called, simply, a deli), with chicken pieces, breakfast food and many other items. Often there is an in-store bakery – throughout Europe these now sell fresh French bread (or similar). A process of freezing part-baked bread allows easy shipment (often from France) and baking in-store. A delicatessen counter is also popular, offering custom-made sandwiches and baguettes. Some stores have a self-service microwave oven for heating purchased food.

Convenience stores may be combined with other services, such as a train station ticket counter or a post office counter.

Differences from supermarkets

Size is the main difference, although larger newer convenience stores have quite a broad range of items. Prices in a convenience store are typically higher than at a supermarket, mass merchandise store, or auto supply store (with the exception of the goods such as milk, soda and fuel in which convenience stores traditionally do high volume and sometimes use as loss leaders). In the United States, the stores will sometimes be the only stores and services near an interstate highway exit where drivers can buy any kind of food or drink for miles. Most of the profit margin from these stores comes from beer, liquor, and cigarettes. Although those three categories themselves usually yield lower margins per item, the amount of sales in the categories generally makes up for it. Profits per item are much higher on deli items (bags of ice, chicken, etc), but sales are generally lower.

At least in some countries most convenience stores have longer shopping hours.

Convenience stores in the United States

The first convenience store in the United States was opened in Dallas, Texas in 1927 by the Southland Ice Company, which eventually became 7-Eleven. Since that time many different convenience store brands have developed, and their stores may either be corporate-owned or franchises. The items offered for sale tend to be similar despite store brand, and almost always include milk, bread, soda (soft drinks), cigarettes, coffee, slurpees, candy bars, snack cakes, Slim Jims, hot dogs, ice cream, candy, gum, chips, pretzels, popcorn, beef jerky, doughnuts, maps, magazines, newspapers, small toys, car supplies, feminine hygiene products, cat food, dog food, and toilet paper. Other less common items include sandwiches, pizza, and frozen foods. Nearly all convenience stores also have a toilet for customer use, and an automated teller machine (ATM), though other bankings services are usually not available. State lottery tickets are also available at these stores

Some convenience stores in the United States also sell gasoline. Since the sale of alcoholic beverages are regulated in the United States by the individual state governments, the availability of beer, wine, and liquor varies from one state to another. Convenience stores in Pennsylvania generally do not have liquor licenses, while stores in Florida may have a limited license to sell beer and wine.

American convenience stores are sometimes the target of armed robbery, colloquially referred to as "held up at gunpoint", if a firearm is used in the robbery. It is not uncommon for clerks to work behind a bulletproof glass window, even during daylight hours. This is regarded as a common sense precaution in the United States. CNN Money did not list working in a convenience store as one of the most dangerous jobs in the United States. The main dangers are that almost all convenience stores have only one person working the night shift, and that there is usually large amounts of cash and easily stolen and easily resold merchandise on the premises.

Because of these reasons, nearly all convenience stores have a friendly relationship with the local police. Some even provide a small police substation in the store, and traditionally provide free coffee to police officers. Police officers often patrol the parking lot of a convenience store, especially after the closing time of bars in an effort to apprehend drunk drivers.

In parts of the Midwest, especially Michigan, the term party store is used, rather than convenience store. In New York City they are almost always referred to as bodegas. Other regional differences in terms also exist.

Convenience stores in Canada

Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. (operates Mac's Convenience Stores and Beckers Milk) is the largest convenience store chain in Canada. Another large chain is Quickie Mart, which predates The Simpsons and its store of the same name.

In French-speaking province of Quebec, a convenience store is known as a "dépanneur". Dépanneur means literally "the one who gets you out of a jam".

Convenience stores in Taiwan

With the highest 7-Eleven outlet density in the world, it is not an unusual scene seeing two 7-Eleven shops stand face to face in a same intersection in Taiwan. The distance between them might be less than 50 meters.

Boasting 8,058 convenience stores in an area of 35,980 km² and a population of 22.9 million, Taiwan has the Asia Pacific's and perhaps the world's highest density of convenience stores per person: one store per 2,800 people or .000357 stores per person (2005 ACNielsen ShopperTrends). With 3,680 7-Eleven stores, Taiwan also has the world's highest density of 7-Elevens per person: one store per 6,200 people or .000161 stores per person (International Licensing page of 7-Eleven website). In Taipei, it is not unusual to see two 7-Elevens across the street or several of them within a few hundreds of meters of each other.

Because they are found everywhere, convenience stores in Taiwan provide services on behalf of financial institutions or government agencies such as collection of the city parking fee, utility bills, traffic violation fines, and credit card payments. Eighty percent of urban household shoppers in Taiwan visit a convenience store each week (2005 ACNielsen ShopperTrends). The idea of being able to purchase food items, drinks, fast food, magazines, videos, computer games, and so on 24 hours per a day and at any corner of a street makes life easier for Taiwan's extremely busy and rushed population.

Similar concepts

Convenience stores are similar but not identical to Australian milk bars. Corner shops in the British Isles, still to be found today, were the pre-cursor to the modern European convenience store (e.g. SPAR) in these countries. In the Canadian province of Quebec, dépanneurs are often family-owned neighbourhood shops that serve similar purposes. Travel centers are a relatively new concept in the United States. Selling the same types of goods as convenience stores, travel centers typically are larger and offer more services. Fast food restaurants, large dining areas, and even showers for the professional driver are commonly found in travel centers. Typically, travel centers also sell high volumes of diesel fuel for over-the-road "18-wheelers".

Convenience stores in fiction

A Quick Stop convenience store in Leonardo, New Jersey was the primary setting for the movie Clerks. Other films with convenience stores include Michael Winterbottom's Butterfly Kiss (1995) with a powerful performance by Amanda Plummer as a demented killer of convenience store clerks. In George Sluizer's The Vanishing (1988), remade in 1993, a woman is abducted at a roadside convenience store while her husband waits outside in the parking lot.

Apu, a character in The Simpsons, runs a local Kwik-E-Mart.

In Dennis Etchison's horror short story, "The Late Shift" (originally in Kirby McCauley's anthology Dark Forces, 1980, and excerpted here), the undead work nights at the Stop 'N Start Market and other convenience stores.

In Twin Peaks, and its prequel movie Fire Walk With Me the characters BOB and Mike are said to "live above a convenience store".

List of convenience stores

North America

* 7-Eleven
* ampm at ARCO gas stations.
* Allsup's
* AmeriStop Food Mart
* A-Plus at Sunoco gas stations.
* Beckers Milk, Mike's Mart, Daisy Mart
* Bill's Superette
* BreakTime
* Budget Mart, owned by Avanti Petroleum, operates in many small towns in Minnesota. 'Hot Stuff Pizza' is one well advertised brand at their stores.
* Casey's General Stores
* Circle K
* CoGo's
* Cumberland Farms
* Express Lane
* E-Z Mart
* Famima