The journey towards pure convenience gathers pace

One of the core global trends that we highlighted for 2026 and beyond was what we termed the ‘convenience revolution’. While the term might be considered a tad bombastic, the more that time goes on, the more that it seems like a pretty spot-on prognosis.

As we wrote in our global trends report in late 2025, “convenience retail is entering a pivotal phase. Historically fluid and responsive, the channel is now diverging into two distinct models. One remains rooted in neighbourhood-style stores, often operated by supermarket groups, serving local communities with top-up grocery missions and modest food-for-now options. The other is evolving rapidly: specialist convenience operators, frequently linked to fuel retailing, are pivoting toward immediate consumption, reshaping their formats and assortments to meet the demand for out-of-home calories.

The latter cohort, with global and regional names like Oxxo, Zabka, Couche-Tard and 7-Eleven springing to mind, will continue their shift into ‘pure convenience’, increasingly focusing on food and drink to be consumed in minutes, not days, and gradually eroding take-home grocery assortments to zero or the bare minimum. This process will see them introduce new food and drink brands – either in-house or third party – as they complete their metamorphosis from small supermarkets to something more akin to a QSR.”

There are a a couple of timely reasons for exhuming such a chunky bit of text from a report:

The most significant is the recently announced acquisition of Zabka by Couche-Tarde, two of the major innovative players that we called out above. The deal – the largest acquisition in Couche-Tard’s history – brings together two absolute trailblazers in the global convenience sector. Couche-Tard has amassed a global empire around the Circle K brand and has also built a reputation for excellence in areas like loyalty, gamification, private label and hydration (one of its strategic cornerstones is to ‘own thirst’.)

Zabka – which started out, in all honesty, as a bunch of fairly drab kiosks – has since metamorphosed into a true pioneer in store concepts, systems and shopper ecosystems. It has a variety of store formats that tap into a well-defined set of shopper missions with an extremely pronounced leaning towards immediate consumption. One of the killer charts from the acquisition presentation showed how Zabka stores are heavily weighted towards items that will be consumed imminently or within four hours. This chimes with a claim that Couche-Tard made that 80% of what it sells is consumed within an hour of purchase. It will be fascinating to watch how Zabka integrates into the Couche-Tard global family, but we are willing to wager that the learning process will be a genuinely two-way street.    

Another spot that validated our global trends work was a little closer to home – the opening of the latest Greggs Express unit in an MFG / Londis forecourt store in Buntingford. The trial format is a self-service concept for Greggs, bringing together coffee, savouries and sweet treats, and has so far been opened in several MFG petrol station c-stores.

For the host store, the Greggs unit brings another way of serving on-the-go food and drink missions, while for Greggs it represents a low-capex (and low payroll) way of expanding its already considerable footprint. The Londis store in Buntingford already had a Subway counter as well as a full food-to-go assortment and its take-home grocery range was very tight and well-curated: just one more step on the way to the reinvention of convenience retailing towards immediate and imminent consumption.   

Which brings us to a nice reminder: there is still a chance to book a ticket for IGD’s Unlocking Convenience Growth learning session, a chance for FMCG professionals to better hone their skills in the one of the industry’s most high-growth and a dynamic channels.