Open Pantry Food Marts of Wisconsin, Pleasant Prairie, Wis.

Burritos and coffee are the cornerstone menu items for this Wisconsin-based chain that counts so-called soccer moms as its target audience.

By Amelia Levin, Associate Editor -- Foodservice Equipment and Supplies, 12/15/2007

In the past, convenience store food consisted of your basic roller grill hot dog, packaged beef jerky, maybe a prepackaged wedge sandwich or two. Nowadays, many c-stores have not only stepped up but also completely revamped their foodservice operations to, in many cases, offer their own line of branded food items like fried chicken and other Southern favorites, and made-toorder deli sandwiches. That’s not too unusual — but how about made-to-order burritos?

That’s the venture Pleasant Prairie, Wis.-based Open Pantry took when it introduced Santa Fe Café in its New Berlin, Wis., store about a year and a half ago, according to Jim Fiene, senior vice president. Since then, the c-store has expanded the Café to five out of the company’s total 40 locations throughout the Milwaukee and Madison markets and, Fiene says, expansion continues. “We wanted to move slow on expansion to make sure we could do it profitably through ground-up construction on new stores and retrofitting existing stores.”

After testing the first store and finding it could be profitable, the company opened a couple more and retrofitted two others. “We opened the rest of them last summer,” Fiene says. “As a result, our foodservice program has gone from 350-square-feet in our old stores five years ago to 1,500-square-feet in new stores.”

But Santa Fe Café did more than just grow the physical space of Open Pantry stores, it helped the company’s foodservice sales jump from 3 percent to 10 percent of total revenues. Just as importantly, it also tremendously reduced the amount of food waste the c-store was producing, Fiene says. “The biggest stress for us has always been waste of fresh product.”

In the past when Open Pantry sold prepackaged sandwiches, “We’d make sandwiches, and then if we didn’t sell them, we’d have to throw them away,” Fiene says. “That’s been the history of convenience store foodservice. Instead, making items fresh for every customer allows you to maintain that quality of product without wasting food, so it’s a very profitable option for us.”

OK then, but why burritos? “We have seen sandwiches done a hundred different ways, and we didn’t know if we could build a better sandwich,” Fiene says. “We didn’t want to compete against the seven different sandwich places that include the likes of Subway, Quizno’s or Jimmy John’s. And we didn’t want a fried food program because of the labor to operate it, the difficulty with keeping things clean, and the atmosphere in the store it would create.” Instead, Fiene says, the company sought to develop a fresher, healthier food like sandwiches and also maintain that portability. “We wanted something that travels well in the car.”

At the same time, Open Pantry sought to compete against other c-stores in its market offering just pizza or hot dogs. And, their made-to-order burritos add an element of choice and customization that American consumers have grown accustomed to, thanks to Starbucks and other big-name chains. The burrito concept “is a new market, but a very popular one,” Fiene says. “There’s not a lot of training for staff — they can learn how to make them in a day and a half.”

That’s particularly the case at Santa Fe Café, which does not require any major on-site cooking. Instead, a food distributor ships in precooked, flash-frozen meat fillings for the burritos, requiring only retherming via two high-powered microwave ovens, according to Fiene. Here’s the scenario: A customer comes into the Café, approaches the counter and starts at the tortilla end of the line where, based on their preference, staff will either steam or lightly grill the tortillas using either the clamshell steamer or clamshell grill. From there, staff scoop out the meat choice (chicken, beef, steak, pork) that’s been rethermed and held warm in hot pans on the line. Moving on, the customer can request any type of salsa or pico de gallo and fresh vegetable toppings such as lettuce, tomatoes, olives, onions and black beans plus cheese, sour cream and/or guacamole for no additional charge, Fiene says. “Our goal is not to nickel and dime the customer,” he adds.

That said, Open Pantry turned to lower price points for its burritos as a way to compete against burrito giants Chipotle and Qdoba, which both have an advantage in that they cook their meat products on-site from a raw state. Charging $5 for a 12-inch burrito, compared to $7, $8 or $9 for a burrito, helps draw in customers looking to get more for less, Fiene says.

Open Pantry gets away with charging less because of its lower overhead costs as a result of not needing to purchase any heavy-duty cooking equipment or hood systems. Moreover, the Santa Fe Café section shares its walk-in cooler with the retail side. “We don’t have huge overhead costs so we can make a 65-percent profit margin on our fresh food offerings,” Fiene says. Compared to the minimum $500,000 many restaurants must spend on their kitchens, Open Pantry spends roughly $70,000 per Santa Fe Café.

In addition, the simple and efficient burrito station setup has allowed Open Pantry to cut costs on labor. Generally, only one staff member mans the burrito station all-day, with an additional one or two staff members during busier breakfast and lunch rushes. In addition to purchasing precooked fillings, the c-store also buys pre-cut vegetables and prepared salsas to further save on labor. And this also makes cleanup a cinch, requiring only a three-compartment sink in the back. “We run grease traps on the threecompartment sink but that’s about it as far as our grease situation goes,” Fiene says. “We don’t have any heating elements that need to be cleaned other than maintaining our steam table. Our labor costs are very, very low compared to the typical chain or restaurant. We can also keep food safety issues at bay because we’re not handling raw meat products.”

Controlling labor and overhead costs has been the key focus for Santa Fe Café to boost profits. “There’s a perception among consumers that gasoline and food don’t mix, so we’re still not going to hit the volume that a Qdoba, for instance, does,” Fiene says. “And we’re never going to try and shoot for that either. At the moment we’re rolling about 300 burritos a day, and that’s still a huge number for us in the convenience store industry.” Quality assurance also plays a central role in hitting these numbers as well, Fiene says. “Regional sales leaders consistently test on every visit the weight, consistency, flavor and freshness of the burritos,” he says.

Breakfast burrito sales account for roughly 40 percent of all burrito sales. Breakfast remains one of the busiest dayparts for Open Pantry, like many other c-stores. The burrito station is set up in exactly the same way as it is during lunch, except that precooked scrambled eggs, bacon, ham and chorizo take the place of chicken and other meats. Customers still have the option of customizing their burrito with cheese, beans, and the same selection of vegetables.

While on the topic of breakfast, one can’t possibly talk about Open Pantry and not mention the c-store’s coffee offerings. Open Pantry introduced its own branded coffee line, Willow Creek Coffee, about three years ago, and since then coffee sales have just about quadrupled, Fiene says. The company has strove to position Willow Creek as its own separate entity, something that draws customers into the c-store on its own. Open Pantry sought to accomplish this by not only enhancing its packaging design and merchandising elements, but also by expanding its stores to include a coffee “lounge area” where customers can grab a cup of coffee and, instead of just taking it to-go, sit in plush couches and enjoy the fireplace, according to Fiene.

Open Pantry also broke into the stand-alone coffeehouse segment when it opened its first 1,250- square-foot Willow Creek Espresso Bar in 2004 near the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee campus to attract younger consumers. The coffeehouse seats 22 people and features various wood tables and leather chairs, similar to the Open Pantry stores.

In addition to the furniture, dark cherry wood detailing, natural stone and slate floors, and sleek, black steel coffee brewers vs. traditional plastic or stainless-steel versions, also add an upscale element to this area. “Our goal was to tie the atmosphere to the equipment that’s sexy,” Fiene says. Freshness here, was also key. The c-store invested a significant amount of time and effort coming up with the highest quality, drip coffee it could find, and also has a policy of dumping whatever coffee doesn’t sell every three hours, but during breakfast that’s rarely an issue, Fiene says. The chain also uses high-tech coffeemakers: Each brewer is electrically monitored by time and temperature and hooks up to a central computer system so staff and managers can maintain quality of the product as well as properly maintain the equipment.

Capitalizing on this upscale look and feel using coffee and aesthetics not only played an important role in generating coffee sales, it served as a way to attract its newer, target customer: essentially, the “soccer mom,” Fiene says. “We target a female customer that’s on the fly — mobile women between the ages of 18 and 50 — which is a big range for us,” he says. “We target moms or other women who don’t have a lot of time but want something fresh and healthy to eat for breakfast or lunch, and especially if they come in with their children on their way to work or after school.”

At the moment, Open Pantry execs have no plans of expanding outside Wisconsin, Fiene says. Instead, it will just stick to what it’s apparently best at: burritos and coffee, who knew?