CASE STUDY

How a Nationwide Convenience Retailer reduced stockouts from 11% to 5.7%

How The Throughline Studio fixed repeated food waste, inconsistent food quality and recurring customer complaints for a 1,200-location convenience retailer by fixing the operating system behind them.

Client	Multi-state convenience retailer with made-to-order food counters and fuel
Industry	Convenience retail and quick-service food
Scale	1,200 locations, planning major expansion
Evidence reviewed	18,000 customer reviews, videos, texts, the client’s complaint archive and ERP operating records
Primary results	Expired stock down 19%. Stockouts down from 11% to 5.7%. Sales per labor hour up from $200 to about $270.

What the company saw vs. what we found

What the company saw	What we found
Expired stock in kitchensWritten off as part of the food business.	Every location received the same weekly allocation regardless of demand. Some ran short while others watched stock expire.
Inconsistent foodTreated as a conduct problem, with pamphlets and disciplinary warnings.	No standard recipes and no uniform cook training. Each cook worked from what they had picked up alone.
Dirty floors and smellsPut down to staffing.	Some stores were thinly staffed, and duties weren’t clearly defined, so cleaning competed with cooking, serving and stock checks.

How we found it

Customer voice18,000 reviews, videos, texts and the complaint archive, sorted by product, store, time and type of failure

InterviewsLocation managers and leadership, over Google Meet: how work really gets done and what managers can decide

Process reviewsPolicies, training materials, procedures and workflows checked against what staff described

ERP recordsInventory, waste, staffing, scheduling and transactions, proving the link between allocations, shortages and expiry

Gap mapWhat leadership believed vs. what customers and managers described, tested against the records

What we rebuilt

Problems we needed to fix

Stock expiring before use

Some stores short, some overstocked

Food and portions vary by store

No uniform cook training

Dirty stores, stretched shifts

Unclear ownership of duties

Stock expiring in some stores, running out in others

Cause: one flat weekly allocation for every store.

Before	After
Same quota everywhere	Ordering driven by each store’s own daily stock counts
No store-level limits	Minimum and maximum stock levels per product, reorder points tied to delivery times, and set limits on what a store can adjust
Oldest stock lost at the back	Shelf rotation and labeling rebuilt, so the oldest stock is used first
Problems found after expiry	Alerts when a store is overstocked, hit by a demand surge or gets a late delivery, each with a named person to act

Expiry, write-offs, availability and stockouts were tracked together, so waste couldn’t be cut by under-supplying stores.

Expired stock down 19%. Stockouts down from 11% to 5.7%.

Food varying from store to store

Cause: no standard recipes and no uniform training.

1. Recipe cardsExact quantities, portions, times and temperatures, in writing and on video

2. Video training libraryBuilt around the company’s best performers

3. Competency checkBefore a new cook works unsupervised

4. Quality checksAt the steps where inconsistency starts

Equipment settings and ingredient specifications were standardized too. When a product keeps failing a check, we find whether the cause is training, equipment, workload or preparation, and confirm the fix.

One recipe standard in every kitchen. The best cook trains every new cook.

Dirty stores and stretched shifts

Cause: thin staffing and unclear ownership.

What we changed	How it works
Named owner for every cleaning task, every shift	Each role’s duties are defined, so inventory, customer care and cleaning each have one owner
Cleaning timed around peak service	Routine cleaning moved out of rush periods. Spills and safety issues are still handled immediately
Staffing gaps surface early	A store that can’t finish its cleaning for lack of staff or supplies escalates to the area manager. A quarterly review spots shortages and surpluses early.
Sales per labor hour lifted	Practices from stores well above the $200 average were carried into the weakest stores, alongside the new scheduling and ownership systems

Average sales per labor hour up from $200 to about $270.

How we rolled it out

1. BaselineMeasures set before any change

2. 30-store pilot15 best-rated and 15 worst-rated stores across the USA, chosen jointly with the client

3. First 3 monthsNumbers improving across the pilot

4. Nationwide go-aheadRolled out to every store

The logic: if the gap between the two extremes closes, the stores in the middle are manageable. Standards that must be the same everywhere were separated from those that should fit local demand.

Results

Stockout rate

Before

11%

After

5.7%

Average sales per labor hour

Before

$200

After

~$270

19% less expired stock

For every 100 items that used to expire, 19 no longer do.

All figures cover the six-month engagement, across all stores, from the client’s ERP data.

What we left alone

We didn’t touch the company’s automated daily delivery for fresh food, dairy and fuel, or its customer CRM. Both were working well, so they remained untouched.

“We kept asking how to fix our people. Throughline asked why our people were set up to struggle. That question changed everything.”

Vice President – Multi-state convenience retailer

Do you recognize these signs?

Tick the ones that sound like your operation.

Do some of your locations waste stock while others run short? Does the same product taste different from store to store? Are complaints answered with conduct reminders? Can anyone say exactly who owns which task in a store? Does leadership call waste “part of the business”?

Not sure what’s behind your numbers? Let’s talk.

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The Throughline Studio fixes the internal processes that affect your customer service. Client details are anonymized.