Driving Trips in the Convenience Channel: A Roadmap for Growth

The convenience trip is up for grabs.

Convenience stores are competing for trips against pressures that have built for years and newer ones still forming. At the same time, there are signs of renewed momentum and channel strengths that have held. Driving Trips in the Convenience Channel: A Roadmap for Growth looks at both sides and sets out what c-store operators can do next.

The scale is the starting point. The channel recorded 54 billion trips in the most recent year measured, across roughly 154,000 U.S. convenience stores. That works out to about 700 trips per store per day. Merchandise trips grew 6.4% year over year, ahead of the 2.9% all-outlet rate, so shoppers are making more trips and convenience is capturing a share of them. Holding that share is the harder problem: 25% of convenience shoppers considered another channel.

Where volume sits and where growth comes from are not the same place. Gen X and Boomers still account for more than 65% of all-outlet merchandise trips, which makes them the base worth defending. Gen Z accounts for 4% and is growing fastest. Operators have to serve both cohorts at once with finite resources, and that constraint is what the report is built around.

What the study covers

The research pairs a 2026 Cadent Consulting Group shopper survey with NACS and Circana trip data. It works through the decisions behind whether a shopper stops in:

• What brings shoppers in, and what turns them away, ranked by shoppers themselves, from price and checkout speed to store and restroom condition
• Right product, right daypart, with category demand mapped from early morning through evening
• Foodservice against quick-service restaurants, why shoppers choose each, and what would close the gap
• Merchandise by age cohort, and where Gen Z and Boomer baskets separate
• Fuel, and the rewards advantage other channels currently hold
• Loyalty programs, and how much they move store choice
• A sequenced action plan, ordered as a hierarchy of needs: fundamentals first, then growth levers, then a distinctive owned experience
• Rather than a list of everything an operator could do, the report puts the moves in order, so a team can see which step comes next.

The report publishes here on October 2, 2026. Check back on this page, or follow CCRRC on LinkedIn to hear when it goes live.