The founder of Couche-Tard, Alain Bouchard, likes to repeat that “convenience stores’ most important product is time”. What a shocking truth!
The little time you take in a depanneur to buy milk, tobacco and beer and then get on with your day, is what convenience is truly about: more time for you.
Still, how much time are we talking about here? A minute? 10 minutes? Two hours???
Motivated by nothing but a thirst for knowledge and a quest for the truth, DepQuébec has put together a first-of-its-kind shopping test: The Milk Race!
The idea is to buy a pint of milk in two convenience stores and two supermarkets, stopwatch in hand, and simply measure the difference.
The aim is not about knowing which will win (because we know deep in our hearts that our beloved depanneurs will) but to what extent depanneurs truly succeed in saving their customers’ time.
The rules we have followed are very simple:
Park as close to the entrance as possible without spending an hour looking for a place;
Start the clock once the car door is locked and stop it once back to the car;
Buy one pint of 1% or skimmed milk, preferably the same type but not necessarily (we could have opted for a six-pack of beer but our budgets are limited …);
Avoid rush hours, like around 3 PM.
1) COUCHE-TARD : FIRST WITH 1:30 SHARP
The main factor reducing purchase duration is the premises size: at Couche-Tard, you park right in front of the entrance door. You are at only 10 feet from the inside. And there’s always room to park. But even so, it takes about 45 seconds to walk, go through the door, bypass one or two people, identify the product you are looking for and get hold of it.
When we checked out, a customer who had finished shopping ended her conversation with the polite employee and so we lost at least 10 seconds right over there. The convenience stores, as we know, are the new churches when it comes to putting people together and this role can lead to a waste of time … which is probably worth it.
2) SUPER RELAIS (PETRO-CANADA) : SECOND WITH 1:43
Like Couche-Tard, Super-Relais offers parking directly in front of the entrance, and there is always room. The distance to be walked through is substantially the same between the two competitors for a pint of milk.
Super-Relais’ purchase took a little longer than Couche-Tard for two reasons: 1) we were in line behind one customer who paid by card and two, at the time of the transaction, the zealous (or well trained) employee offered us a Petro-Points loyalty card explaining that “should we buy milk often, it could mean a free pint from time to time.” Interesting enough, but no thanks. We have a test to do!
3) MAXI (LOBLAW) : THIRD WITH 6:02
As for supermarkets, we are entering another range completely. First, the car is at least 40 feet from the entrance, but more likely 100-150 feet. So just reaching the entrance can easily take 20-30 seconds.
Once inside the Maxi, you’ll have to cross the equivalent of a football field back and forth, all for a pint of milk!
There is an express line (8 items or less) but the friendly clerk who works there must also take care of bottle returns and tobacco purchases, so much so that her line often ends up being slower than regular ones. Besides, we had time to go get a pint of milk at the back of the store and come back to find that the queue has not moved a bit since we came in.We therefore decided to take another line … and hopefully help Maxi to look better in our test!
3) IGA EXTRA (SOBEYS) : FOURTH WITH 6:20
At IGA, same as Maxi for parking, but with even more cars to bypass. And when you are in a hurry, you realize all the details that you won’t see normally. For instance: holding the entry barrier to help a customer with a cart: 5 sec! There is no grocery cart in convenience stores!
As with Maxi, the dairy section is really in the far back corner of the store, as if the supermarkets completely ruled out any attempt to compete with convenience stores on the speed level.
And that explains why IGA came fourth: we stumbled upon a clerk making a deposit … this often happens in supermarkets, but never in convenience stores! At least 45 sec. lost here.
In conclusion, the convenience stores we visited asked for one-and-a-half minute on average of our existence when buying a pint of milk while supermarkets took five minutes more on average for a similar transaction. This is a significant difference and, of course, under the best conditions for supermarkets since traffic was low. During rush hours, who knows how long it could take to buy a pint of milk in a supermarket, while the risk of congestion at the convenience store is minimal.
Mr. Bouchard is quite right: everything is designed in a convenience store to help customers save time, and time, as you all know, is nothing but convenience!
