In-store c-store transactions fell 4.5% in the first half, NACS says

Convenience store foot traffic is sliding, and the people who track it are worried. Total in-store transactions in the first half of this year came in 4.5% below the same stretch of 2025, NACS research director Chris Rapanick told the NACS Show on Tuesday. "It's not pretty," he said.

For operators who make their money inside the box, that drop lands harder than any pump number. Gallons bring the car to the lot. The margin is on the coffee, the roller-grill, the packaged drink, the pack of smokes. When trips fall, the high-margin baskets fall with them, and fuel spread alone rarely covers the gap.

What a 4.5% drop costs

Half a year of trips down 4.5% is real volume gone, not a rounding blip. Every one of those lost visits was a chance at a $6 foodservice ticket instead of a card-at-the-pump sale that never comes inside.

The causes aren't a mystery. Shoppers are stretched, fewer discretionary stops, more trips consolidated into the grocery run. Some of it is price. A customer who used to grab a drink and a snack twice a day may now grab one, or skip it. Loyalty programs and fresh food were supposed to defend against exactly this, and the number says the defense is leaking.

A new No. 1

A separate report, picked up by WKMG, named a new chain as America's top convenience store, ahead of both Buc-ee's and Wawa. Those two set the bar on foodservice and the in-store experience, so getting passed says someone is pulling the trips that the industry at large is losing.

Rankings like this usually turn on the same thing Rapanick is flagging: whether people still choose to walk in. A chain gaining share while category traffic falls is taking visits from someone else, most likely the single-site and small-chain operators without a destination food program or a loyalty app that actually moves behavior.

What to watch

NACS Show data runs through the first half, so the second-half print will tell whether 4.5% is the floor or the start of a longer slide. Watch foodservice specifically, since that is where operators have put their capital and where the defense has to hold.

Watch fuel margins too. If retail gas spreads stay thin into the fall, stores leaning on gallons to cover a soft inside count have less room to run. The operators who hold traffic through the winter will be the ones with a food and loyalty offer worth the stop.