Crude tops $100 again as pump prices slip, squeezing c-store fuel margins
Crude climbed back over $100 a barrel while street prices eased. Brent rose 2.1% to $100.10 on continued uncertainty about when crude from the seven-month Iran war fully returns to market. At the same time, gas prices dipped slightly after weeks of increases.
Put those two together and the math works against the forecourt. When the wholesale cost of a gallon rises and the retail price drifts down, the cents-per-gallon an operator keeps gets thinner. In a week like that, operators lean harder on inside sales, where most of their margin has come from for years, mainly foodservice and packaged goods, backed by loyalty programs that keep customers coming back.
Toast at the pump
Toast added fuel payments to its retail platform. Toast Fuel lets a customer pay for gas inside the store and at the pump, in the same system that already rings up foodservice and general retail. For an operator who runs Toast in the kitchen, that means one platform across the counter and the forecourt instead of a separate fuel controller bolted on.
Whether that matters depends on your setup. Chains already locked into a fuel point-of-sale and a dispenser contract will not rip it out for this. But smaller operators building a food program from scratch may find one vendor across the whole store easier to run, and it puts Toast directly against the incumbent forecourt POS names.
Warrenton Oil's new CEO
Dana Moloney stepped into the CEO seat at Warrenton Oil, the third generation of the family to run it. On the CStore Talks podcast she walked through the chain's foodservice program, its technology work, the latest new-to-industry store, a logo reimaging, and where she wants to take the company.
What she described lines up with the bet Toast is making: the store, not the pump, is where the business is now. A family jobber-retailer putting a third-generation operator in charge and leading with food and tech shows where the attention is going.
Packaging award
Anchor Packaging's Invertibles container won Convenience Store News' Best New Product award. It is a small item, but foodservice packaging is part of the operating cost of every hot-food program, and the operators expanding food are the ones who care which containers hold up on the warmer and travel well.
What to watch
Whether crude holds above $100 while the Iran war stays unresolved, and whether street prices keep sliding and pinch pump margins further into the fall. Watch early Toast Fuel adoption too, and whether it shows up at independents first or stalls against the entrenched forecourt systems.