Foodservice has become one of the biggest growth opportunities in convenience retail.

In 2025, foodservice accounted for 28.5% of c-store inside sales while contributing nearly 40% of in-store gross profit dollars. Prepared foods, including pizza, chicken, burgers, sandwiches and wraps, now represent nearly three-quarters of foodservice sales.

The opportunity is clear. But capturing it consistently is much harder.

Unlike traditional center store categories, foodservice requires operators to balance demand, production, ingredients, labor, freshness and waste, often within a matter of hours.

Produce too little and customers find an empty hot case. Produce too much and margin ends up in the waste bin.

The retailers that can better connect those decisions have an opportunity to make foodservice not only a source of growth, but a more predictable and scalable one.

The Foodservice Opportunity Is Really an Execution Opportunity 

A customer walking into a convenience store at 8 a.m. for a breakfast sandwich has a simple expectation: it should be there. If it isn’t, the retailer doesn’t just risk losing one transaction. They risk losing part of that customer’s routine.

That makes availability especially important in foodservice because demand is tied closely to specific dayparts. Breakfast demand cannot simply be captured later in the afternoon.

At the same time, maximizing availability by producing more isn’t the answer.

Every production decision carries two potential outcomes: a revenue opportunity and a waste risk. The challenge becomes finding the balance between the two.

That requires operators to answer questions throughout the day: 

  • What should we make?
  • How much should we make?
  • When should we replenish it?
  • What is likely to sell out?
  • Do we have the ingredients required to produce it?
  • Are we producing too much and creating unnecessary waste?

For many store teams, those decisions still depend heavily on experience, spreadsheets, paper processes and disconnected systems. And that makes consistency difficult to scale.

Reduce the Decisions Store Teams Have to Make 

Great foodservice execution shouldn’t depend on having the most experienced associate working every shift.

Yet associates are routinely expected to make dozens of decisions while also serving customers and completing the rest of their responsibilities in the store.

High employee turnover makes that challenge even greater.

Instead of asking every associate to become an expert in forecasting, inventory and production planning, technology can bring those decisions together and translate demand into clear actions.

Rather than asking an associate to determine how many breakfast sandwiches should be prepared, for example, a production plan can recommend what to make and when based on expected demand.

The outcome is not removing people from the process. It’s giving them better information so they can spend less time calculating and more time executing.

For operators, that creates an opportunity to: 

  • Improve availability during critical dayparts
  • Reduce unnecessary overproduction and waste
  • Get new associates productive faster
  • Create more consistent execution from store to store
  • Reduce dependence on institutional knowledge

Connect Production to the Ingredients Behind It

Knowing what customers are likely to buy is only part of the equation. Stores also need the ingredients to make it.

A production forecast that says a store should make 20 sandwiches isn’t particularly useful if the store doesn’t have enough eggs, cheese or packaging available to produce them. That’s why forecasting, production planning and ordering need to work together.

When expected demand informs production and production informs ingredient requirements, retailers can move from asking:

“What should we order?”  to “What will we need to fulfill the demand we expect?”

Inventory decisions become connected to what the store actually plans to produce.

The result is better ingredient availability, fewer production disruptions and less guesswork when placing orders.

Turn Forecasting Into Execution 

Forecast accuracy matters. But a great forecast sitting in a report doesn’t put a breakfast sandwich in the warmer. The real value comes when demand intelligence becomes part of daily execution.

That means translating forecasts into production plans, prep tasks, ingredient requirements, ordering recommendations and replenishment decisions that store associates can actually use. It also means keeping people in the process.

Local teams often know things a model may not. A nearby event, unexpected traffic or another local factor may change demand.

Associates should be able to respond to those conditions while giving operators visibility into where teams are following or adjusting recommendations and what happened as a result.

The goal isn’t automation for automation’s sake. It’s helping every store make better decisions with greater confidence.

Create Consistency Without Adding More Complexity

For many retailers, modernization has historically meant adding another system.

Foodservice teams already move between production plans, recipe documentation, inventory systems, waste logs, ordering tools and reporting.

Adding another disconnected application doesn’t necessarily make their jobs easier. Connecting those workflows does.

One operational environment can guide an associate through the work that needs to happen throughout the day, from prep and production to labeling, waste tracking and ordering.

Recipes and instructions can also live alongside the work itself, helping operators maintain brand standards without relying on binders, printed instructions or outdated documents.

For store teams, that means fewer places to look for answers.

For leadership, it means greater consistency across locations.

And for customers, it means a more reliable experience regardless of which store they visit.

Give Managers Time Back to Run the Store 

There is another outcome that is easy to overlook: time.

When managers spend less time reconciling reports, calculating orders or searching for operational information, they can spend more time where their experience matters most. On the floor.

Coaching associates. Engaging customers. Identifying problems. Improving execution. At the enterprise level, the same principle applies.

Instead of searching through spreadsheets to determine where performance is slipping, operators can focus attention on the stores, categories and items that require action.

The shift is from asking “What happened?” to understanding “What should we do next?”

The Next Foodservice Advantage Is Consistency

Foodservice is giving convenience retailers an opportunity to become more than a stop along the way.

They can become a destination. But becoming a destination requires customers to know that the product they want will be fresh, available and consistent every time they visit.

That is difficult to achieve when every store is making production and replenishment decisions differently.

Connecting forecasting, production, inventory, waste and ordering gives retailers a better foundation for profitable foodservice growth. Not by asking store teams to do more. By helping them make fewer decisions, with better information.

The result is a simpler path from prep to profit: better availability, less waste, more consistent execution and a foodservice operation built to scale.