How to Make a Career Change With a Convenience Store Franchise

Elliott Fudge, writer

Published at 07/09/2021, Updated on 04/05/2022 , Reading time: 4 min

How to Make a Career Change With a Convenience Store Franchise — Photo © How-to-Make-a-Career-Change-With-a-Convenience-Store-Franchise.jpg

If you’re wanting more from your job, you may be one of the many thousands of people looking to make a career change. And, when it comes to working in a busy and demanding sector, there are few career changes more exciting than a convenience store.

There are thousands of convenience, forecourt and supermarket franchises in the UK. With many operating 24/7/365, it’s clear that these stores have huge levels of demand, as well as good rates of profitability. When it comes to making an exciting career change, convenience stores could be the perfect opportunity for you.

Why make a career change with a convenience store franchise?

While many sectors were shut down temporarily throughout national lockdowns, supermarkets and convenience stores were categorised as essential businesses. As a key services provider, you’ll have a lot of job and income security that many other industries don’t currently have. Aside from this, as a franchisee, you’ll also have:

A pre-existing brand reputation and customer base
Plenty of training and support, before and after you launch
All the support you need with marketing and advertising
The freedom to be your own boss

Convenience stores have proven themselves to be important to British consumers for many years, so not only will you be busy from day one, you can also expect to make some big profits in the process.

“The ‘little and often’ top-up shopping trend is becoming more popular. Some 92 percent of all shoppers conducted a top-up shop last month, up from 83 percent in 2014. These types of shoppers are vital for the success of convenience stores, as it is the go-to channel for top-up shopping. Almost two-thirds (63 percent) of all shoppers have used a convenience store for a top-up shop in the past month, while 44 percent used a supermarket.” - Michael Freedman, IGD.

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How to make a career change with a convenience store franchise

1. Decide if a convenience store is the right option for you

It’s no secret that customer-facing industries such as these can be challenging and aren’t necessarily for everyone. There are some important skills you’ll need to make sure you are fully capable of working in this industry day-in and day-out. You you will need to be:

Patient
Understanding
Empathetic
Have good communication
Able to prioritise your customers needs
Tolerant

While these are skills that you will need in any kind of customer-facing role, you can also expect to be pushed professionally in other ways. As the main driving force behind the management side of the business, you will also need a number of transferable skills to help you run the franchise business smoothly.

2. Research opportunities

Convenience stores all follow a common theme: selling products to customers. Within this though, there are a number of specialisms that you may find yourself a good match for. You’ll need to do some ground research to figure out which franchise opportunities are the best options for you.

First of all, look at whether you feel yourself to be a better fit for in-person, digital or hybrid stores. Partly thanks to the pandemic, more and more convenience stores and supermarkets are looking to embrace elements of digital technology to help make their shopping experience as smooth as possible. You may decide you want to run a franchise that fully embraces these new kinds of technology, so look for a business that offers hybrid and digital opportunities.

The Just Walk Out system uses overhead cameras, weight sensors and deep learning technology to detect merchandise that shoppers take from or return to shelves and track items selected in a virtual cart. - Russell Redman, Supermarket News.

Then, decide which franchise is the best opportunity for you. Some will work across multiple sectors while others will specialise in one or two sectors. When you come to research which franchises are the right opportunities for you, feel free to narrow down your search to the sectors that most motivate you.

3. Prepare a business plan

Once you’ve decided which franchise is the right option for you, you’ll be in a perfect position to get your convenience store franchise up and running. The next step is to put all your research and knowledge of the sector into a business plan that highlights your ambitions for your new venture.

There are always a number of key details that each business plan should include. Things like executive summaries, financial projections and potential locations for your business will always need to be included. But to really show off your ambition, you could also look to include details about:

Your unique selling point
How you can draw customers to your business and away from your competitors
A prospective inventory
Future growth ambitions
Marketing suggestions

Your business plan is a great way to show off your ambition and determination, so don’t be afraid to go above and beyond when it comes to detailing plans for your franchise.

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Become a convenience store franchise today

Convenience stores have proven themselves to be resilient and profitable businesses to run - now more than ever. If you’ve decided to make a career change and run your own business in this profitable sector, you can look forward to earning some big profits.

It isn’t just convenience stores that are profitable options though. If you prefer working in a B2B environment, there are also plenty of ecommerce franchising opportunities to explore. Or, to really focus your efforts on the tried-and-tested supermarket business model, you may be more interested in researching supermarket franchising opportunities. If none of the above are a good match, the UK franchise directory has a complete list of opportunities in all other sectors.