Experience that fuels the Future

to 30 months, half are expected to be raze-and-rebuilds and half are planned as NTI stores.

Elevated Menu

When it comes to brand identity, most of the top cstore retailers are known for their menu, Wills noted.

“We really knew we needed to lean into prepared food and beverage and become known for something,” he said.

The food and beverage program at Dash In has historically offered a combination of made-to-order and graband-go foods.

As Dash In embarked on its Series 3 design, it focused on building its own foodservice identity as it reworked the menu to feature elevated versions of c-store staples. The concept centered on the idea of putting a restaurant inside a c-store.

“We have line cooks, prep cooks and dishwashers,” Wills noted. “It’s kind of new for us, but it’s been very exciting, and we’re very bullish about where we think we can take this new brand concept.”

Today, Dash In is frying doughnuts and baking cookies, brownies, biscuits, croissants and pastries in-store. The pastries include both sweet and savory options, including a Spinach and Feta Danish and a Parmesan and Leek Danish.

“We’re also bringing in sliced potatoes, and then we’re frying those and making house-made chips, so you’re able to get a fresh product. That’s really been the big shift, moving towards less of a consumerpackaged goods offering to much more of a fresh, minimally processed type of foodservice offering,” Wills said.

Other fresh-prepared menu items include griddle-pressed burgers, which are available as a single, double or triple. The new Dash In also features a Smokehouse burger. All burgers are fully customizable with toppings and cheeses. Dash In also offers the Impossible Burger for customers who prefer a meat-free meal, as well as Impossible Sausage for breakfast.

The Dash In menu features all-day breakfast that includes fresh bacon, sausage and shaved ribeye steak cooked inhouse. Those fresh-cooked meats are also available across the lunch and dinner menus on sandwiches.

The menu also includes flatbreads as a signature item, as well as quesadillas, Stackadillas, salads and bowls.

“Those bowls can be breakfast bowls — with bases like tater tots — to lunch and dinner bowls with field greens as a base or even quinoa as a base,” Wills said.

“We think we’ve got a little something for everyone, and (they’re) very friendly and familiar foodservice items for the segment,” he added.

The beverage area also received a facelift in terms of design and product selection. Dash In offers bean-to-cup coffee across its footprint, but Series 3 stores will also incorporate a tap wall for both traditional and craft sodas.

“We partnered with Tractor Beverage to offer several organic sodas,” Wills said. Among the many options are organic root beer, organic cherry cream soda and cucumber lime soda, which Wills noted are new flavors to Dash In’s market area.

Dash In has also added an extensive tea program that features a line of proprietary limeades, lemonades and aguas frescas beverages, as well as three natural energy drinks that include green coffee and guaranas.

The dispensed beverage area features a 22-foot wall, along which all beverage products from the coffee to the bubbler machines to the tap wall are displayed.

The design is a significant change from older Dash In locations where the coffee, fountain and frozen sections are positioned separately in different areas of the store.

“We really wanted to put that all together as one continuous run,” Wills said.

A team member is stationed by the beverage tap wall to assist customers and explain the drink menu.

“We have a concierge team almost set up in this new store, where someone’s role is to literally just float around the store and talk to guests and help guests,” he said.

Technology Forward

Technology is also a key component for Dash In moving forward. This summer, Dash In is set to debut its new app complete with mobile ordering, mobile payment, delivery and a loyalty program.

While Dash In had an app several years ago, Wills noted it wasn’t a good value proposition for the customer, so they retired the app and went back to the drawing board.

This new app is set to feature a wide range of capabilities. Customers will be able to purchase fuel, convenience items, foodservice and a car wash, all through the app. The mobile ordering and payment features will be available on the first day of the launch.

Dash In partnered with Punch on the loyalty program, where customers can earn points across fuels, convenience and car wash and redeem them across all three segments as well.

“After the launch, we have a roadmap of additional features that we’re going to launch over time,” Wills said. The next round of app features is expected to debut three to four months following the initial launch, with more features added each quarter after that.

The delivery feature isn’t new for Dash In, which has been offering it at select stores, but now it will become more widely available through the app.

“We’re partnering with Olo, and the big third-party delivery companies — Grubhub, Seamless, DoorDash and Uber Eats. We’ll turn that on as we roll out the app market-by-market, store-by-store,” Wills said.

Dash In is also in the midst of a back-office and ERP (enterprise resource planning) implementation. And, it’s rebuilding the e-commerce website for its car wash membership program.

“We eventually want to take the car wash membership e-commerce website and migrate toward car wash membership within our mobile app. That’s the next step,” Wills said.

Dash In also plans to expand its self-checkout service going forward. Dash In first introduced self-checkout in 2019, in partnership with NCR, and a total of six Dash In locations include self-checkout kiosks today. The new Loudoun County site offers three self-checkout lanes and two full-service lanes.

“In some ways, we’re trying to create what we feel is a fairly frictionless experience, but a high-touch experience,” Wills said. “We want our associates to interact with our guests. We want to build relationships. The new Dash In brand is really about creating the sense of local, personal connection with our guests.”

As the Loudoun County store is a neighborhood site as opposed to an interstate location, it does not feature electric vehicle (EV) chargers, but Dash In is testing the technology. A second-generation site that at press time was set to open in late April in Richmond, Va., includes four direct-current fast chargers.

“There, we thought it made good sense because we’re immediately off of Interstate 95. We’re a quarter mile off the interchange. So we are starting to test EV charging, but we’re really focused more on interstate locations as opposed to more of a neighborhood or urban location,” he said.

Splash In Expansion

Car wash remains an important initiative for the company, which operates 54 Splash In ECO Car Washes — 51 are traditional rollover car washes and three are largeformat tunnel conveyor washes.

“We’re going to be building more tunnel conveyor washes in the future, including co-locating those tunnel washes with the (Series 3) Dash In store and fuel,” Wills said. “We offer car wash memberships today at our tunnel locations. We’re eventually going to be offering memberships across all car wash locations.”

The car wash membership may one day be directly available through the Dash In app.

The company is currently building a standalone Splash In tunnel car wash that is not co-located with a c-store.

“That’s a test for us. We want to see if that is a viable business model for us. Could we have standalone car washes?” Wills said.

Over time, existing Splash In locations will be converted to the new Splash In logo.

Looking Ahead

In 2023, Dash In plans to complete three remodels, six to eight rebuilds and open four NTI stores. While most NTI stores and several of the new builds will feature the Series 3 design, the three remodels won’t include the new prototype, but they will incorporate elements of the new brand and menu.

With the first Series 3 site up and running, Dash In is now evaluating how it can best integrate the concept into legacy sites.

“I think based on the initial experience, everyone is now eager to say, ‘How do we accelerate this? How do we get this into more stores quickly?’” Wills said. “We can’t rebuild every site, but at least let’s take core components of the brand offering and the menu, and let’s start to integrate that over time. Over the next, call it, three to five years, I want to take what we can of this brand concept and incorporate that across all locations.”

Dash In also aspires to double the size of its network within the next seven years.

“We think there’s a lot of opportunity to expand within our current footprint in the Mid-Atlantic,” Wills said. “We also are considering potential geographic expansion. That’s under review right now.”

As it expands, Dash In continues to prioritize employee engagement and customer satisfaction.

Dash In, and its parent company The Wills Group, were recognized in 2022 as a Great Place to Work for the second consecutive year and offer a strong benefits package and paid-time-off policy. The chain also has a concept called “genuine care” as part of its culture that empowers store teams to do everything possible to ensure customers are having the best experience possible.

“We’re very focused on customer experience metrics, customer satisfaction scores, online reviews, brand reputation ratings,” Wills said. “We’re trying to constantly elevate our customer experience, our customer engagement, as well as our employee engagement.”

“We’re trying to raise the bar in terms of what the offering in the store can look like,” Wills continued. “We’re hopeful we can raise the bar on customer service as well.” CSD