There’s a question every operator should be willing to ask about their best store: Is it as good as it should be?
For RH Foster and the Freshies brand, that question wasn’t born out of underperformance. Freshies is arguably the best of class in northern Maine — strong brand equity, loyal customers, a real food program operating at a high level. The kind of operation most operators would be perfectly content to protect. But Robert Tracy, Executive Vice President at R.H. Foster Energy, isn’t most operators. He understood something that takes real discipline to act on: the time to evolve is when you’re winning, not when you’re scrambling to catch up.
That forward-thinking mindset is what drove Freshies 2.0. And what we learned in the process says something useful about how category elevation actually works — and why good enough never becomes destination.
The Research Changed Everything
Before we designed a single element of the new store, we went out and listened. Shop-alongs at three separate Freshies locations, current customers, lapsed customers, quick interceptions. Real conversations, not just surveys.
The findings were illuminating — and a little uncomfortable.
The most common word customers used unprompted to describe Freshies was “clean.” Then “bright” and “variety.” Nobody said “fresh.” When we asked people what Freshies was, almost everyone said the same thing: a convenience store that sells gas.
Not a food destination. Not a deli. A c-store.
Meanwhile, Freshies is literally making food fresh on-site every day. They have a great food program — the kind most chains are trying to build from scratch. And not all of their customers knew it.
The fresh message wasn’t landing across any channel. Food was present but it wasn’t the hero — it was competing with everything else for attention and losing. That finding became the stake in the ground for everything that followed: food had to be the hero. Not implied. Not assumed. Expressed at every touchpoint, from the forecourt to the foodservice counter.
To their credit, Freshies leadership acted on that quickly. Following our research presentation in 2024, the brand did an impressive job of elevating every channel to reinforce the fresh message — social media, the website, in-store point of purchase. All of it was revised and elevated before the new store ever opened. That work set the stage for everything the 2.0 design then had to deliver.
Design Decisions That Changed the Whole Paradigm
The first was separating the cashier from the foodservice area. In the original Freshies model, cashier and food service were connected. It sounds logical — you’re ringing transactions and handing off food in the same zone. But what it actually did was force food into competition with the transaction. Food never got to stand on its own. It was always an add-on to checkout, never a destination in its own right.
By moving the cashier to the front of the store and giving foodservice ownership of the back of house, the whole dynamic changed. Food got its own space, its own presence, its own moment in the customer journey. That sounds like an operational decision, but it’s really a brand decision. It says: food is what this store is about. Not an afterthought. Not a category. The reason you’re here.
The second move took that idea even further: an open kitchen. The entire food preparation operation is now visible to customers when they walk in the door. We branded the space Freshies Kitchen — giving it a name and identity that anchors the food story at the heart of the store. When customers can see food being made, the promise of fresh isn’t something they have to take on faith. It’s something they can see the moment they walk in. That’s the most direct answer to our research finding we could have designed.
The third decision happened before any of that — at the site planning stage. The fueling canopy at Hammond Street in Bangor, Maine is positioned to the side of the store rather than in front of it. That’s not the default in convenience retail, where the canopy typically dominates the street presence and the building reads as secondary. Here, the store faces the street directly. It’s the first thing you see. That site decision is a brand statement: this is a food destination that also sells fuel, not a gas station that happens to have food.
Category by Category, Brand by Brand
Freshies had good products across bakery, cold case, roller grill, and pizza. The opportunity wasn’t the food. It was the presentation. For some categories the supplier branding was owning the space. Categories were blending into each other. The products deserved better, and so did the brand.
The grab-and-go program became a collection of ownable brand expressions. Sweet Treats Bakery. Frankly Fresh Hot Dogs. A branded Hot & Fresh Pizza destination built around grab & go whole boxed pies — a new format that created a new revenue stream, not just a new sign. The hot and cold merchandisers got elevated signing, better lighting, brand messaging that told a story. Every category got a name, its own identity, and its own defined space.
One category at this location deserved special consideration: the salad bar. Customers at Hammond Street had grown accustomed to it, and carrying it forward wasn’t just a smart food decision — it was a community decision. The salad bar now sits as a freestanding island at the center of the store, directly in front of the Freshies Kitchen counter. Fresh made-to-order food visible behind it, fresh ready-to-eat options right in front — the two reinforce each other. The branded signage says it well: “Lettuce Enjoy Fresh.” Playful, ownable, and doing exactly what every element in this store is designed to do: tell the fresh story at a glance. It has performed extremely well since opening.
The Bigger Lesson
Standing in the finished store, what I’m most proud of is the cohesion. The 2.0 store puts it all together. The fresh promise is expressed at every touchpoint, not just one category or one sign.
That’s the work. Not any single element. The whole thing pulling in the same direction.
The framework behind this project — and the one we’d apply to any category in any store — is straightforward: brand first, experience second, execution third. Start by asking what the category says about you and whether you’re telling your story. Then ask whether the space matches the product quality and whether your touchpoints own the moment. Then get the equipment, training, and operations right to deliver it consistently. At Freshies, all three moved together. Brand alignment drove the design. The design elevated the experience. The experience set the standard for execution.
What Freshies proves is that the gap, almost always, is between what you’re doing and what you’re communicating. Between your brand promise and your in-store reality.
Close that gap, and good becomes destination.
