Facilities Management for Convenience Stores: Where to Start
Does Your Brand Express Convenience…
…or does it impart confusion, concern, or complexity? As a convenience store brand, virtually every aspect of each location within your footprint should make life easier for your customers:
- You need functioning exterior signage to make your presence visible
- You need clear interior signage and digital signage to identify areas/services
- You need bright, high-performing lighting to create comfort and safety
- You need graphics and other brand elements to communicate your value
- You need quality interiors and restrooms to express cleanliness and order
- You need resilient electronics, data systems, and energy tools for operations
That’s just a sample of the many aspects of each location that impact your customers. But whether you’re a facility leader, brand manager, store manager, or any other professional responsible for the assets across your footprint, one thing remains true: these assets must be consistently maintained to ensure proper performance.
Whether you already have a facilities management strategy for your convenience stores or your current approach isn’t delivering the desired results, now is the perfect time to reassess and consider factors that can make an impact. Let’s dive in.
4 Factors in Facilities Management for Convenience Stores to Consider
Consider the location of your stores
Where your stores are located makes a significant impact on the type of maintenance needed as well as frequency. For example, stores in the West and Southwest see high temperatures as well as higher dust levels, whereas stores in the Northeast, Northwest, and Southeast will see higher levels of moisture. These factors lead to separate issues that create separate facilities maintenance needs.
Identify assets and maintenance needs and prioritize accordingly
As noted above, each store has a variety of assets that need to be maintained. However, some need more frequent maintenance than others. Signage, canopies, and other exterior assets are exposed to harsher elements than interior signage and brand fixtures. Understanding the makeup of all assets across your footprint and their respective maintenance needs will help you strategically prioritize the type and frequency of work needed.
Determine the type of maintenance strategy needed and why
In addition to the reasons listed above, it’s important to understand what kind of maintenance approach will be needed to prevent issues and costly repairs. For example, assets such as exterior signage and lighting, arguably, have higher priority than interior signage or branded graphics. Because of that, you’d likely want to consider a preventive maintenance strategy to proactively identify issues and resolve them before they become costly problems. Lower value/priority assets should still be maintained proactively, but an on-call maintenance strategy would also be appropriate.
Who will you rely on for maintenance?
We saved perhaps the most important consideration for last. Whether you have a few dozen locations or a few hundred, managing facilities maintenance for convenience stores is no simple task. If handled internally, the workload and burden of identifying and managing countless vendors by type, location, and other factors will devour your team’s time and capacity (in addition to many other countless issues). Because of this, it’s best to work with a single partner that can manage all of your facilities maintenance needs on your behalf. Companies like these partner with service providers nationwide, allocating maintenance projects to them based on location and work needed.
Entrust Your Convenience Store Facilities Maintenance Strategy to Stratus
With decades of experience in facility management for convenience stores and many other industries, Stratus is the partner you need to maintain virtually every brand asset at each of your locations. Here’s why:
- A national network of thousands of proven field partners to execute your maintenance program across all of your locations
- We offer customized preventive maintenance programs as well as on-call maintenance solutions based on your asset maintenance needs
- Complete capabilities ranging from interior and exterior signage and facility maintenance to refresh & remodel capabilities and energy management.
- A dedicated program management team to oversee your account, manage vendors, and provide reporting and updates via a dedicated online portal
- In-house signage manufacturing capabilities for any signage replacements and any repair needs, as well as new signage for new locations as you expand
Whether you already have a facilities maintenance program in place or are looking to implement a more proactive approach, our team is ready to support your success and your future growth. Connect with us today to learn more about our capabilities and to start building a strategy for your brand.