Convenience Matters Intro:
[Music] You’re listening to Convenience Matters brought to you by NACS. Whether it’s for food, fuel, drinks or snacks, about half of the U.S. population shops at a convenience store every day. We’ll talk about what we see at stores and what the future may hold for our industry.

Jeff Lenard:
We talked at the intro that half of the America comes to convenience stores every day, but I think another really important fact is that 60% of our industry is made up by small entrepreneurs. That means that half of all the stores in the country are owned by a small business. And we’re going to have a conversation with somebody who lays out some of the ideas I wish someone told me before I began leading my company. Welcome convenience matters. My name is Jeff Lenard with NACS.

Carolyn Schnare:
And I’m Carolyn Schnare also with NACS.

Jeff Lenard:
And Carolyn, when we do Convenience Matters. One of the things that comes up more than anything else is the idea about connections. How do you connect with customers? How do you connect with people at work in your stores? How do you connect the brand to everybody? Connections are everything. And that’s one of the things I’m looking forward to talking with our guest today. Bassem Nowyhed is an ampm franchisor, he has a couple of stores out in the Southern California area. So first off, welcome Bassem.

Bassam Nowyhed:
Thank you. I appreciate you guys having me. Thank you, Jeff and Carolyn for having me on Convenience Matters. And I’m looking forward to exploring the conversation with you guys and talking about this industry and just why I believe like you said, is that nearly half of Americans are walking into this common place. There’s a common thread that people are basically walking into and a lot of big brands, a lot of conglomerate brands are obviously in this hub and there’s a lot of insight and there’s a lot of just business 101 that you get to see on such a molecular level. You know, most people think, oh, a gas station, what are you gonna learn at a gas station?

New Speaker:
Pretty much everything.

Bassam Nowyhed:
Exactly. I I’ve wiped the counters on the coffee tables, right? Multiple times like dude, I just cleaned this why is it dirty again. Well that tells you something. People are walking there. People are…you’re a brand. You want to be on that coffee table. You want to be on that coffee counter. Right. It’s telling you something. At all the products in this hub of a business, which categories is really flying the most coffee. ‘Cause I just have to clean it all the time, right?

Jeff Lenard:
{Laughter} Yes. Yeah. And what’s the line I’ve heard. If you can lean, you can clean and that’s what you hear. And I’m sure you come from a family business. So, you grew up with the business and it’s one thing when somebody is telling you, okay, you need to do this and you do it because you know, the answer is because I told you so because it’s a family, but then when you run your own business, it becomes an entirely different animal. And you look at things differently. And I like the approach that you’ve taken Bassem, where, for example, I said earlier, the five things I wish someone told me before I started my own business. And, let’s just start with the first one you had there, which I think is the most interesting three repetitive words, connect, connect, connect. Talk to me about why you think connections are so important in convenience retail. I always

Bassam Nowyhed:
I always say your net worth is your network. And that statement is so true and so poignant because at the end of the day, it just takes one person and one opportunity for your whole world to switch for doors and opportunities. That’s why I call them godsends. Because ultimately you can’t decide who it is that you meet. But when you meet that person and you meet that opportunity, I don’t care if you’ve read a thousand books, it takes one opportunity and that opportunity usually comes from people. So that’s why I always say connect. Some of my best relationships have been from customers that have come into the store. And these are just your average individuals. But they’re at times when you kind of need them the most, like you need like, “Hey I’m looking for somebody that can do this…”

Bassam Nowyhed:
Well, this person I know has a very genuine relationship with me. Like I said, they sincerely care. I wonder if they know somebody that can basically take care of this. And of course there’s always somebody that knows someone that can basically provide a service, fill you in on knowledge that you’re not aware of. You need an opportunity like, “hey I’m looking for somebody that’s got distribution and hotels.” Well, my buddy down the street, basically he’s the director that basically does that. Opportunities lie in people, right? And the best way to connect with somebody is like kids on playground, right? Like you want to know who has got it figured it out, go and watch the kids. They just, having a genuine time. They’re being sincere. They’re just trying to help out one another, this is not competition. This is collaboration. Like, I just want to get to know you. I’m not trying to take nothing from you. You’re not trying to take nothing from me. We’re just trying to basically feed off of each other’s energies and just try to build something. If there’s an opportunity together to do together and to build something that neither you, nor I can, can make on our independence. If there’s a collaborative effort behind it. So when you have that approach, man, you could, you could start having opportunities pop up out of nowhere. You know, where my biggest platform is in terms of connection, like now in this digital age? LinkedIn. LinkedIn is like the event that cocktail party that you had to go to rub shoulders with that individual that you’re trying to rub shoulders with now is as simple as a connect button and a nice little message and a nice little follow-up if they don’t respond, right? Get my attention.

Jeff Lenard:
And I just want to point out that about 45 seconds ago, somebody called in and said, “don’t forget dog parks, too, they’re awesome places to watch how people and dogs all get along and have a good time.

Carolyn Schnare:
As mine bark in the background!

New Speaker:
Don’t forget dog parks….

Bassam Nowyhed:
My best friend I met because I take my dog all the way to a park. And he was a coach. He’s a coach. So I always saw him there always, always training kids, always every time. So I was like, you know what, I’m going to go…I want to get trained by this guy. Next thing I know he’s now my best friend. So it’s like dog parks, absolutely. Because when you…because you meet genuine people that care about animals and nature and that are kind of connected into that world. They’re not self-absorbed, they’re like out in the world connected. So 1000% dog parks! My best friend came from the dog park.

Carolyn Schnare:
My best friends are dogs and they’re at the dog park. So a great place to be always. One question though, you made me think of people. And I know that’s people being those that work in your store. And, to find great people, sometimes talking to those who already work with you are there. Is that a way that you find new employees or new management. Is that part of your personnel structure?

Bassam Nowyhed:
I mean, here’s the thing. Finding employees is…it could be difficult, right? Because you know, you could put ads out on Facebook. You know, I’ve done that before. You know, I could put ads out on Indeed. You know, I can put ads out on Craigslist, newspapers, whatever. But to find employees that’s, again, that’s a godsend. It’s like, it’s when you have that opportunity, because I’ll tell you this, I don’t care if you’re a Fortune 100, Fortune 50, or you’re a mom and pop store. Your business…number one, do not buy yourself a job. If you are a restaurant owner and you’re cooking, you’re not a restaurant owner. You’re basically somebody that bought themselves a job. If you are a gas station owner and you are running the register and you are basically mopping the floors, you are not an owner. You bought yourself a job. You are an employee to your business. People are who basically ultimately run your business. A structure of people. And you are so dependent on that because much like a machine has moving parts. And it has mechanics that have to flow a certain type of way. These people that run your business have to move a certain type of way. So it’s very important that you have a structure and a team that just understands the motion. So our top employees have come from existing employees. Honestly, we’ve put ads out before. Maybe you get a walk-in every once in a while. Like there’s, one employee that we have, her name is Flo. She came in from from a family friend of ours and she was looking for a job or whatever. Like, can you help her out? We’re like, absolutely. She came in and didn’t know a word of…she had trouble with the language barrier. But she had such an optimistic attitude, such high energy, like treated the store like it was hers. I kid you not, customers would come in solely to just have a conversation with her. They wouldn’t even buy anything. Sometimes they’d come in not to buy anything, just to have a conversation with her.

Jeff Lenard:
Yeah. And you get the thing where they’re not in and it’s like, {I’ve} got to come in the next day. {I’ve} got to make sure everything’s okay.

Bassam Nowyhed:
She now is our manager for one of our stores. Went from being an employee having trouble with language to now dealing with distributors. Now making deals because she had such a strong, genuine effort of wanting to take care of the store, wanting to take up this business and wanting to help her other employees around her be better.

Jeff Lenard:
So we talked about connecting on social media, talked about LinkedIn as being THE platform to really find people and we talked about connecting dog parks, playgrounds, find people where they’re all social and you can kind of see the true person without having to put on your business hat. Let’s talk about connecting on…well, in California, you’re in Southern California, it’s a unique market. So you have some other challenges related to how do you connect with people? How do you find labor? It’s probably more expensive with minimum wage and just the various regulations that you go through. How does a business communicate, “hey some of these regulations really make it difficult for me to…I get this regulation, I get the positive behind the regulation, but it really has a negative effect on a business because of this.” So is there a way that you suggest that it works to kind of tell your story to legislators that they may listen or you tell it to customers like, “hey this is my challenge with some of the things we’re dealing with, whether it’s environmental regs or various other regs.”

Bassam Nowyhed:
So, the topic on the employees in terms of the wage, how much a minimum wage be a hefty expense on a business. Is that what you’re basically trying to address?

Jeff Lenard:
Yeah. Just the kind of thing, like minimum wage going to $15. There’s a difference between living wage and minimum wage. And having teenage kids, I’ve told them they’re not worth $20 an hour. But you know, somebody will pay them less because they’re worth that. And you know, how do you navigate all that so that people feel good about their jobs and they feel that you’re supporting them?

Bassam Nowyhed:
I always say this, man. The way we run our business, the way we run our operations is you got to make life a game. There’s a book that I literally like chewed up and read called Actionable Gamification. And it basically talks about how, if you want to run a successful business, successful life, you have to understand that you have to put objectives and goals, short-term goals, long-term goals, just levels along the way. So that way you feel like you’re accomplishing, right? That you’re basically having a purpose. You wake up every day, there’s an objective. I’m going to my work, I’m not collecting a paycheck. I have an objective, right? I’m trying to sell X amount of coffee cups. I’m trying to sell X amount of croissants. I’m trying to sell X amount of water bottles. I’m trying to sell X amount of whatever. So that way I can hit the objective to basically get a thousand dollar bonus, a $500 bonus. Hey, you know what? All my employees are working 15 times harder. They’re upselling all the time. “Hey, would you like to get a water bottle with that?” “Hey, would you like to get a coffee with that?” “Hey, would you like to get a croissant with that?” “Hey, would you like to get this or that?” Every time, always upselling, upselling, upselling. How much money do you think that they’re going to generate me a month, $5,000? Great. You know what? The person that did it the best, you get $2,000. You just got me $5,000. I can profit $3,000. That’s fine, no problem. But I’m gonna shove it right back into your pocket, not, “oh, here’s a $25 Amazon gift card.” I just put five racks in your pocket and you try and give me 50 bucks. Don’t insult me. $3,000? Oh brother, I will literally stand outside, go shake my tushy for some croissant sandwiches.

Carolyn Schnare:
{Laughter} So that is, that’s a really smart idea!

Bassam Nowyhed:
Actionable! Actionable! Not $15 an hour, $20 an hour. Cool. $20 whatever. No, $2,000 at the end of the month.

Jeff Lenard:
Okay. You put something on my, my summer beach read or wherever I go – Actionable Gamification. I’ll throw one back at you. There was this book suggested a couple of years called the Dream Manager. And it was basically a story about a sanitation company that these people clean toilets and stuff like that for a living. And they found out that their turnover in cleaning toilets was like 400%. They assumed that the answer to the problem is paying people more money that reduced turnover a bit. They thought that, okay, maybe they have trouble getting transport. So they started finding a way to bring them more. You know, we’ll get you transportation to get to work. That dropped turnover a little bit. And then they said, “hey, do you know what? Why don’t we ask them why they have a job? What is their dream? What will the job accomplish for them?” And it sounds very much like Actionable Gamification. And what they found out is this one person has a job because their goal, their dream is to put their kid through college. Another one has a dream to take care of their parents who were first-generation Americans, and they need help now. And they created…they said, let’s write down your dreams and let’s make them reality, let’s build towards it. If you have a kid that’s looking to go to college, let’s do a 521 account. Let’s do this. And their turnover went from 400% to 20% because same type of thing, actionable gamification, it’s not a job, it is going towards a goal. And every day of the year in that office, you’re accomplishing something for the business and you’re accomplishing something for yourself. And I think that’s a really cool way to look at things.

Bassam Nowyhed:
That’s how it should be in life in general. Mind, body, and soul – always elevate. You know, you hit a billion dollars, but you’re empty inside, elevate every dynamic of yourself. And that’s why I always say, before you want to be a business person, be a good person. The business will fall into place. That’s where you get the divine intervention. As you start having opportunities that people connecting with you, because fundamentally as yourself as a person, you are soulful, right? So you can start navigating through the ways and wits of business without a hundred percent you having to do all the work, if you know what I mean.

Carolyn Schnare:
Yeah. That’s for sure. And, if you’re working towards something that, like you said personally gets you up and out of bed in the morning and it just makes it that much easier to put a smile on and get there. Now, let me pivot a second and I want to talk to you not about the croissants that they’re outside selling, but about the new… customers in general. I think we found from a lot of our events from things that we’ve been doing at NACS, and I’ve been here quite a while, that one of the things that a lot of people look to NACS for ist to find new products. We have our convention every year and they come to learn and discover new things. But it’s not because they want to necessarily have the newest and shiniest thing, it’s because customers want them. They want to get what they want in stores. Now just like we said earlier, we were looking on… reading some articles about you. And one of your things that you’re really keen on is making customers happy, whether it is having that newest, greatest thing, or even finding out what you could carry in your stores that’s really important. So I guess my question is, meandering to get there, is how do you put new products in stores? I know as a smaller operator, it is harder to find what’s new and hot out there. What’s your thought behind being the latest and greatest stuff, or having the latest and greatest stuff?

Bassam Nowyhed:
Be a customer, right? What did Jeff Bezos say? You know, he’s like. Customer service is my number one thing. The dude stressed on customer service like it was his whole company. And look, he’s billions of dollars, right? So the thing is, is be a customer. How can you stress customer service if you’re not a customer. How are you trying to identify the problems when you don’t even experience the problems. For you to come up with a solution, you have to be the customer, right? So if you want the freshest of the freshest and newest of the newest, ,hat’s my new convenience, right? I’m driving, I want a Snickers bar. Am I going to really pull up in Costco? Am I going to go to Vons? No, I’m going to go to ampm. I’m going to go pull up, hop out, three, two minutes, cool. They marked me up 50, 75 cents or whatever, I’m paying for convenience. That’s a need, a pressure point, right? So the way you identify it is you have to be a customer, you gotta be in the trenches. Don’t start a business, don’t try to be in this arena if you can’t even be a customer in it. So for me, what I identified during this whole digital wave and just 2020, and just the shift of how people are kind of going about life. There’s a new convenience that has popped up. The convenience of driving into an ampm, quick grab-and-go is now, I’m on my couch, watching a movie.

Bassam Nowyhed:
I got the app, bing-batta-boom, I ordered the thing, pops up, shows up to my door. That’s a new convenience. Now, the roads are kind of a little empty.. They’re not popping in any more. They’re at home. So what do you gotta do? You gotta go to them. You gotta go to them, start understanding, oh, wow, there’s this new wave of food platforms. I can order on DoorDash. I can order on Postmates. I can order on Uber Eats. I can order directly from the ampm, the 7-Eleven, the whomever. I can have my food, my product, get delivered to me. Now for me, at least, and this is where I’ve been going in, is yeah, I’m with you guys. There’s a lot of new products out. There’s always a new chocolate bar. There’s always a new vegan this. There’s always a new non-GMO this. There’s always I have a meal replacement. Yeah, okay, great, I’ve been a part of that. What I’m more interested in is this new avenue. It’s a completely different beast that just basically emerged. You have industries like, like DoorDash producing hundreds of millions of dollars. Like they’re public, right. Postmates. Uber Eats. You’re talking about, I think somewhere they were saying is like a trillion dollar market. With ghost kitchens, virtual kitchens..this whole digital platform of Postmates…I could order my food on Door. Dash, I could order my food on Uber Eats. That Market is huge. If you’re not…if you’re a convenience store and you’re not on a food platform, you’re leaving money on the table.

Jeff Lenard:
So that’s fascinating to me. Here on the east coast, you have Wawa, you have Sheetz, you have some of these companies that have been known more for food than their fuel. And on the west coast, it tends to be companies that are fuel-first because of the longstanding love affair in California with the car. It’s around brand of fuel and oh, by the way, we sell other items. And, how do you merge that together where, hey, we have the brand of fuel that not only you like, but probably the generation before you liked, and merge that as a go-to place, because I think it sounds like a good idea for the big food companies. But when you have somebody with three stores that’s affiliated with a fuel brand and talking about the future is food and it’s delivery and it’s however the customers want it. I think that’s a really powerful point that you’re looking that way, that smaller operators are looking that way, and really it may not work for everybody, but you should at least take a look at it.

Bassam Nowyhed:
Absolutely. Your whole understanding of why fuel is first in the west, as opposed to the east is because of the necessity that people drive around. And California is I see it. I see the shift. You know, I’m not one to say all gas stations aren’t going to be around in 10, 15 years, but we might be going there. And it’s because electric cars are real, like this whole switch, this is real. We are making that shift. So most people think they’re like, “oh, okay, cool, I’ll just switch out my gas stations into electric charging stations.” I wish it was that easy, but you have to understand something….

Carolyn Schnare:
It’s expensive!

Bassam Nowyhed:
It’s not just that. It’s not just that. You go to a parking structure, you’re at Whole Foods, guess what? You can charge your car. You’re at the movies, parking your car, guess what? You can charge your car. You’re at your school, parked your car, guess what? You can charge your car. I saw a Tesla getting charged while it was on the meter – literally it was charging itself while on a parking meter. So to me, I’m thinking like, wow, gas station and convenience stores y’all need to understand that the market is shifting, that fuel may no longer be the driving force into bringing that customer into your store. Much like what we saw during COVID, traffic flow went away. What did you do? Me, I went online. I was like, great, DoorDash, Postmates, Uber Eats, I’m up there. What happened? Ring, ring, ring doors. Literally the guy that’s in the Hills wants to have a Coke, .guess what? He’s ordering it from me. New convenience. So you have to understand, if people are going there, what else is in that arena? And that’s where my mind started going into. I’m looking at my kitchen at my convenience store and I’m thinking to myself, this is a place where I’m not only just selling hot dogs and hamburgers and whatever. Like this is a hub where you can actually really start tapping into a whole ‘nother world that this digital platform basically showed you.

Jeff Lenard:
Yeah. And I guess the one challenge or an added challenge in the LA market is…well, I just remember my father-in-law always was bragging he lived three miles away from work and it took him three minutes. Three miles in LA might be 30 minutes, so I imagine that’s another complication in that people want it, but they also have to understand that, boy, traffic can be sometimes a little bit tricky there, but you’re going to get it there as fastly, as safely as you can and make it at that convenient experience that they want to repeat.

Bassam Nowyhed:
Exactly. I mean, look what Pizza Hut is doing, they have these robots that are delivering the pizzas. It’s all about how quickly can you service a need and how convenient can you do it? And that’s really what it comes down to. So for me, it’s really understanding that food is a driving force at the end of the day. If you can service to that need, then you’re ultimately going to get that audience that you want, but you have to deliver it to them in a way that they’re basically expecting. If people aren’t driving and they’re staying at home, how do you basically start navigating and maneuvering yourself to be in those funnels and places.

Carolyn Schnare:
You are… you have touched on so many things that we talk about on the show in the last, not only year, but we’ve been on the air for quite a while, but especially once we start talking about the pandemic, now it’s hit us all in different ways, different sides of the country, different waves of when the openings, closings and as we’re coming out of this, now, we talked about the two things I think that are the most important that I think we all need to remember and keep in mind as we move forward, which is people and convenience. And so you nailed both of those things. Now where in California…remind us where are your stores?

Bassam Nowyhed:
So we have one in Studio City. We have ones just kind of all spread out throughout the Southern California region – one in Downtown, we got a couple up in the suburbs, so we’re kind of just like spread out. And the cool thing about that is you can really start to have like that true data. You’re in different parts of like Southern California, just like the region to where you can have like a macro understanding. We could start like piloting and just bringing in different types of concepts or products and just start to understand how that data is really funneling through.

Jeff Lenard:
And I know that when I talk to people in the LA area, they all have at least one great celebrity story something about somebody who was even nicer than they thought they would be. Do you have anything that you…that’s worth sharing to talk about somebody came into our stores and boy, that’s why they’re famous because it’s how they act when there’s no cameras on? You just see what, as you mentioned earlier, good person before or being a good person and then good businessman.

Bassam Nowyhed:
In Universal, one one of my employees recognized Steve-O and he’s like, “oh my God, this is Steve-O!” I was like, “just go talk to him.” And he went up to him and he was super nice. He was like, “yeah, let me take a picture.” He started talking and whatever, just like kinda made his whole day. And to me, I’m like, that’s what it is – like real genuine people. Especially an individual like that. He had fame kind of like not overnight, obviously they put in the work, but being on the TV show of Jackass and kind of doing just crazy, obnoxious stunts and putting his body through rigorous things, going through drugs and rehab and man, life slapped him all up and down the face. And still just so nice and just humble and just cool, like real gratitude. He understands the simple things of life, those types of people, they last because sometimes success at an early age or early time, it could be very detrimental to you because you don’t know how to harness that resource because that fruit that you’re wanting to indulge in so much could actually become poison if you don’t know how to treat it.

Jeff Lenard:
And I think that those kinds of stories are also interesting because they really…I think can tie back to convenience stores because years later, or months, or days, or however long it was ago, it still resonates with you just like when you talk to people and it’s like, I had a great experience in the store and it’s memorable. Negative experiences also are memorable, let’s not talk about them. But great experiences have long roots, deep roots. And the idea is how do you connect and how do you have those great experiences as often as possible, and then grow with your customers and find new ways to have great experiences. So I think there was a lot of interesting things to cover there. One final thing, we talked about connections a lot today. How do people connect with you? How can they find you and learn a little bit more about, hey pretty interesting guy I’d like to like to stay in touch with this guy.

Bassam Nowyhed:
Yeah. I mean, absolutely. I mean, for me, my easiest way to connect with people nowadays is I’m really big on LinkedIn. So just find me my first and last name and you know, just add me as a friend and we basically can just kind of go from there.

Carolyn Schnare:
Well, that sounds awesome. And I really enjoyed, I know I speak for Jeff, that we’ve really enjoyed meeting you and talking to you, and I know this won’t be the last time that we’ll do that, so…

Bassam Nowyhed:
Yea, absolutely, I really appreciate it.

Carolyn Schnare:
[Music] Yeah, certainly stay in touch and thanks again! And thank you for listening to Convenience Matters.

Convenience Matters Outro:
Convenience Matters is brought to you by NACS and produced in partnership with Human Factor. For more information, visit convenience.org.