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The Discipline Advantage: What 2025’s Top Performers Do Differently
Every year, businesses explain their performance through market conditions. Demand softens. Costs rise. Customers become more cautious. Competition intensifies. And in many ways, those explanations were valid in 2025. Across several Study Groups industries, growth...
AI Isn’t a Threat to Your Software. It’s a Test.
Submitted by Stephan Okano, VP of Engineering We met with a fuel wholesaler at SIGMA and heard a story that has since come up in different versions from several other operators. His college-age nephew, home...
Minnesota Joins Growing Number of States Regulating PFAS
Minnesota has joined the wave of states enacting laws to regulate per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS). In 2023, Minnesota passed Amara’s Law, Minnesota Statute Section 116.943, which has two primary functions: banning certain PFAS-containing products...
Why Do Companies Hedge?
The concept of hedging often appears daunting to companies approaching it for the first time. They might think perhaps it’s too complex or it’s only for larger businesses. This isn’t true now and it wasn’t...
Ditching the Tablet Farm: How to Master Online Delivery Without Operational Chaos
Triggered out of necessity during the Covid pandemic, convenience store operators scrambled to capture the exploding demand for online delivery. The industry-wide response was a collective, chaotic sprint to deploy third-party marketplaces. Almost overnight, store...
Unlocking $20 Million in Foodservice Margin
Strategy & Quick Wins Propel Surge in Margin Growth Understanding that foodservice is the future of retail convenience business, the convenience store chain raised the bar with bold foodservice margin targets. For most c-store retailers,...
Your Greatest Competitive Advantage Is Already Around You
By John McCauley, Partner and Director of Brand Design Large convenience chains have deep pockets. They have sophisticated loyalty programs, national marketing budgets, and supply chains that can source virtually anything at scale. But there...
Maximizing Margins: Turning Your Pricebook into a Profit Machine
Every retailer fundamentally understands that the pricebook is a massive, complex database, and maintaining it requires constant attention and regular updates. That said, it’s easy for pricebook teams to get caught up in the sheer...
From Deployment Dread to Reliable Rollouts: The Case for QA Test Automation
A new loyalty integration or a software update should herald progress, but for many mid-market convenience store chains, it too often initiates a systemic crisis. The reality of retail technology deployment is frequently characterized by...
Federal Courts Draw a Line: Generative AI Communications Fall Outside Attorney-Client Protection
Submitted by Brent Lorentz, Shareholder In a decision likely to influence how courts evaluate privilege claims involving generative AI, the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York recently held that a criminal...
War, Technology, and Fuel Price Volatility: Why Closed Loop Automation Matters
The current turmoil in the Middle East has once again demonstrated just how volatile fuel prices can be. Driven by supply uncertainty, market speculation, and rapid shifts in futures pricing, the resulting price instability has...
When Your Team Sends the Customer to the Competition
After four generations in the convenience store business, I’ve learned to pay close attention to the small things people say at the counter. A broken cooler gets your attention fast. A long line does too....