Do

Cigarettes

Tobacco is an interesting subject given the force of opinion forming against smoking. The fact remains however that a huge portion of the population smoke and are not about to give it up so if you do not sell cigarettes and other tobacco products you are losing thousands of pounds/dollars each year.

Selling cigarettes is a very low margin game and the industry thinking is that you need to make as little as 4% on smokes to attract people to your store. These people in theory will then purchase other items to enhance the sale.

Our experience is that this is not necessarily the case, many people purchase cigarettes and nothing else so a sale with just 4% margin hardly justifies the cost of stocking the cigarettes in the first place. And, if they pay with a card, you can actually lose money.

Not everyone who smokes only buys cigarettes however, so you must stock them or risk losing a valuable customer.

So, what is the answer?

In our case, we mark tobacco products up by 10% so even though our cigarettes are slightly more expensive than other stores, we still provide the service without as big a cost overhead.

When it comes to cigarettes, we only stock 5 varieties and 2 varieties of rolling tobacco. Smokers are funny people, if you do not have their brand, they will usually choose from what you have. This ensures your valuable cash is not sitting in tobacco stock that someone may or may not buy.

An up and coming alternative to Cigarettes is the Electronic Cigarette and I recommend stocking them. They offer the retailer 30% margin as opposed to the industry standard 4 or 5%.

They are also a healthier alternative to traditional cigarettes so you make more profit whilst helping your customers back to good health. A classic Win/Win situation.

C-Store Success