FRANCHISING CRAVINGS

LEGACY AND EMERGING BRANDS!

Yatco is building four new-to-industry stores and updating the interiors of its existing sites with a unifying color scheme. Its new builds feature laminate wood floors for a modern look.

Design Plans

Yatco stores vary in size, but the chain’s goal is to build sites that are 4,000 to 5,000 square feet.

At press time construction was underway on an NTI store in Leicester, Mass., and construction was expected to start soon on a location in Uxbridge, Mass. Yatco also recently acquired the license to build its fifth c-store in Worcester, Mass. Yatim anticipates construction should begin on that store in three to four months. Yatco also has plans to build a site in Taunton, Mass.

“The new builds have really nice floors. They look like laminate wood. They look very elegant,” Yatim said. “We’re using materials that are easy to update, so if there’s a crack or if anything breaks, you’re not having to redo the entire floor.”

Legacy sites are getting a refresh as well. Yatco shortened its name from Yatco Food Mart to Yatco in 2021. Ever since then, Yatco has been reimaging the exterior of its stores to feature the updated branding. The store exteriors now feature a “Y” at the top of the front door that is made up of blue, green and white LED lights.

“That really pops out,” Yatim then continued. “It’s very bright.”

Yatco has also been busy updating the interiors of its locations over the past two years. It’s working on unifying the color scheme inside its stores, transitioning stores to its colors, white, blue and green. The foodservice areas are also receiving a facelift that includes the addition of granite counters and whitetiled walls.

“The tile is all one piece. It’s white, and it looks really clean,” Yatim said. “You want your foodservice area to represent cleanliness.”

Yatco also installed LED TVs, which hang from the ceiling in its foodservice area to highlight promotions on food and beverages. The TVs are also situated between the gondolas on the sales floor to alert customers to deals on snacks and candy.

“We’re trying to future-proof the store as much as we can,” Yatim said, an idea that informs how it approaches NTI stores as well. Yatco is building new stores with similar layouts and features, which will make the business easier to scale going forward. That includes having a set outline for where each section of the store is situated, so as Yatco grows it can copy and paste that formula from store to store.

“It’s a much quicker way for us to scale up and get these builds done,” Yatim said.

Yatco is looking to model future stores off the best features of its Boylston, Mass., store, and its Webster Square site in Worcester.

The Boylston site is one of the chain’s premier stores and measures 5,000 square feet. It features a full foodservice section and a Dunkin’. In the forecourt, it includes a diesel island. The site’s gas sales by volume are on par with major cities, Yatim noted.

“(Webster Square) has the best register area. It’s huge, where the two sales associates have a lot of room. There’s enough space for all the tobacco and all the lottery. We don’t really need to decide on what needs to be cut out,” Yatim said.

In the Webster Square store, which measures 4,500 square feet, the office storage and the cooking area are located behind the front counter. The isolated area helps prevent theft as customers can’t accidentally wander into the office, and because the office is close to the front counter, the manager is nearby if the cashier needs assistance.

In the forecourt, Yatco partners with Gulf at all Massachusetts sites and its Connecticut store. Its Rhode Island site is branded Sunoco. The chain also distributes fuel through its Yatco Distribution arm to five states in New England.

While Yatco doesn’t currently offer electric vehicle (EV) charging, it plans to add it in the next year.

“There’s a lot more adoption for it, and it’s just another market that we need to cater to,” Yatim said of EV charging. “It’s coming, for sure.”

Foodservice Offering

Yatco’s Leicester site, which is currently under construction, is set to feature a full-service, 2,400-squarefoot Burger King.

Yatco partners with several quick-service restaurants, including Gourmet Donuts in two stores, Dunkin’ in eight locations and Subway in two stores. All of the Dunkin’s have drive-throughs.

Additionally, Yatco has a Pizza Mike’s at its Chaplin, Conn., site.

“Their second site is in our store, and it’s one of the best pizzas in Connecticut, and it’s now known,” Yatim said. “People drive from pretty far to our store to get Pizza Mike’s.”

Yatco also features a Mighty Chicken program through its main wholesaler at several locations. It also serves up burgers, taquitos, quesadillas and Tornados through its wholesaler. Its Webster Square and Boylston sites feature a Smoodi machine, which serves up smoothies with all natural ingredients.

“You take the cup out of the fridge with the flavor you want — you see all the ingredients inside, all the vegetables, all the fruit. You put (the cup) inside a closed compartment, and you see the water mixed in, you see the blending. It’s all (mixed) in front of you, and then it pops out your cup,” Yatim said.

Yatco also sells fresh-baked cookies, which are available in the foodservice section and also at the front counter.

The company’s Rhode Island site features a beanto-cup coffee program.

“That store does really well with coffee,” Yatim explained. “That site is in the center of a town. It’s a very tight-knit community, and there are no other restaurants or coffee shops in the area. So, we sell a lot of coffee there. People come there strictly for their coffee.”

All stores feature open-air coolers with grab-andgo sandwiches, burritos, breakfast sandwiches, fruit cups, hard-boiled eggs, and packages of higher-end meats and cheeses. The stores feature microwaves where customers can heat up the sandwiches.

Technology Focused

Yatco’s Yatco Rewards app debuted 16 months ago. Already the chain has 10,000 members on its app.

“Through this app, you can build up points through your purchases, get gas discounts, get discounts on in-store purchases and get free stuff in-store around holiday time,” Yatim said. “We do special things, like on Super Bowl Sunday, we’ll do buy a bag of Tostitos, get dip free. Last Easter we did 30 cents off a gallon, and that was a big deal when the gas prices were almost $6.”

Customers receive a 15-cents-per-gallon discount on their first fill-up following signing up for the loyalty program.

Yatco is preparing to offer order ahead and delivery through its Yatco Rewards app. All items in the c-store including food but excluding tobacco and lottery will be available for delivery. Customers will order through the app, and Yatco employees will collect the order, which will then be delivered by a third-party delivery service like Grubhub or Uber Eats. Yatco is currently developing the infrastructure to support the rollout, including testing iPads for employees that alert them when a customer places an order. The iPads are expected to roll out to stores by the end of this year.

Yatco is also investing in self-checkout kiosks, which are expected to roll out to its Boylston and Webster Square locations by the end of 2023.

In 2024, Yatco plans to integrate mobile payment into its app.

Yatco introduced its Yatco Rewards app 16 months ago. Now Yatco is preparing to launch order ahead and delivery through its Yatco Rewards app. All items in the c-store except for tobacco and lottery are expected to be available for delivery.

“It’s similar to the Starbucks model. You load your credit card or money straight onto the app,” he said.

Also, in 2024, Yatco is set to launch mobile fueling via its Yatco Rewards app, which will allow customers to select their pump number and type of gas and pay right from their phone.

“They won’t have to touch the buttons on the screen,” Yatim said.

Since the COVID-19 pandemic began, a lot of customers don’t want to touch the screens or buttons at the gas pump, Yatim pointed out.

“Customers use wipes to wipe the screen,” he said. “It can cause damage, if people are using certain chemicals to wipe down the pump screen.”

The mobile fueling option is expected to be popular with customers, but it’s also expected to protect the longevity of the dispenser screens.

Company Culture

A big part of Yatco’s company culture is ensuring employees are treated well, and the chain has been rewarded with loyal long-term employees.

It offers an incentive program for employees through its Yatco Rewards app, which gives them 25 cents off per gallon on one gas fill-up per week. Yatco also awards bonuses to associates when a store sells a winning lottery ticket and offers an aggressive bonus structure for sales associates.

“We aggressively incentivize employees because our success is on our people, and the people who run the cash registers or who clean the bathrooms are the most important people,” he said.

The family spends time working in the stores and training employees.

“I actually trained stores on cleaning the bathroom myself because when the owners are out there on their hands and knees cleaning or ringing up customers at the register … then employees know that they’re working for people and for a chain that cares and practices what they preach,” Yatim said.

The average tenure for Yatco managers is above 10 years, with its two longest managers celebrating 21 and 20 years with the business. One general manager has been with the business for 25 years.

“The last two to three years, we’ve had about

10 associates cross the one-and-a-half to two-year mark. In the sales associate workforce, that’s not common,” he said.

Yatco also pays above the minimum wage, including sign-on bonuses in some instances, and offers employees a path from the associate level up to management.

“I would say you get better people applying potentially when you’re raising your store’s minimum wage and you train them a little more hands on. And you get the retention because you incentivize them through the bonus structure, through the ability to grow, because I don’t consider working at Yatco a job for anybody. It’s a career.”

Within the next five years, Yatco is looking to double in size. To prepare, Yatco is opening new roles as it expands its office staff and builds out its back-office infrastructure.

“People want to work for us now, so we’re investing in these positions in our backend office, and we’re getting successful individuals in this industry to join us, whether that be in pricebook, in marketing, in sales,” Yatim said.

“That’s helping us get bigger because you can’t scale without having that backend infrastructure taken care of and the manpower on the backend,” he added.

Growth Outlook

As Yatco looks ahead to the future, it plans to grow through franchising, acquisitions and new store builds.

After growing through single-store acquisitions, it’s now looking at five- or six-site portfolios, but it hasn’t found the right fit yet.

Yatco’s franchising model is also a focus going forward. It currently has one Yatco franchisee in Orange, Mass., and it leases a second site to an unbranded operator. It’s currently developing standards of operations for its franchisees so it can scale the program.

“Going forward with our franchising, we want to make it a bit more stringent where we do score our franchisees,” Yatim said.

As part of that initiative, Yatco developed an internal mystery shopper program for all of its locations, with tough criteria to motivate managers to raise the bar. Yatim sees the franchising model as a way for the company to acquire sites quickly.

Through the distribution business, Tarek knows hundreds of gas station owners in New England, and when mom-and-pop operators are looking to sell, he often gets a call.

“We can’t just buy (and run) 20 stores at once at the size we are currently,” Yatim said. But he sees an opportunity in purchasing stores but leasing them out to other operators.

Yatim noted Yatco is looking to lay the ground- work now to allow it to expand into more states and still have a good eye on the operations of the convenience stores.

“We want to make sure that as we expand, we don’t lose that quality,” he said.

Navigating A Family Business

Navigating a family business can have its challenges, but Yatim said that the key is to avoid discussing the business outside of work unless it is absolutely necessary.

“Having family time is important,” Yatim elaborated. “Certain things, you have to (discuss), but it can consume you. If you’re doing it outside of work, your relationship becomes business. There’s no separation.”

Yatim also noted transparency in the information you’re relaying to family members is particularly important to avoiding confusion or conflict.

But being a part of a family business also has great benefits.

“You grow something together as a family,” Yatim said. “There’s always beauty in the struggle, and with struggle comes accomplishments as well. My parents went through immense struggle when they were younger trying to start this business, and they’ve grown it into what it is today. I’m very proud of what my parents have done and appreciate everything they did.” CSD