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Todd Passmore gets it: As your customer base changes, so must you.
When Passmore, district manager for Brentwood, Tenn.-based Mapco Express, realized that Hispanics had rapidly grown to 10% of the population near the company’s stores, his plan-o-gram needed to evolve.
The company started small, launching pan dulce, Spanish for “sweet bread,” at 13 of its 383 stores. Because the products come from a nearby fresh bakery, Mapco is able to control quality and waste, as well as the product’s stability.
Those 13 stores now sell about 5,000 of the pastries a month. “I always start a program with an exit strategy in mind, but I ended up not needing it,” Passmore said at the CSP 2011 Consumer Insights & Engagement Forum.
