Arno Buijs on Shell’s Globally Successful Foodvenience

Shell has reshaped its forecourts around the idea that great coffee, fresh food, and a clean restroom now carry as much weight with travelers as the price at the pump, and its global foodservice leader believes the shift is only beginning.

On this week’s episode of The Future of Convenience podcast, host Dan Munford is joined by guest co-host Matt Redwood, vice president of the Global Solutions and Consulting Group at Diebold Nixdorf, and Arno Buijs, global head of foodservice, convenience retail partnerships alliances and CR pricing in the downstream international team at Shell, to discuss what it takes to build a foodservice destination on a mobility network. Buijs said foodservice is now the centerpiece of the business, and in the Netherlands Shell serves more foodservice and store customers than fuel customers on its highway sites.

Buijs said travelers are changing the way they judge a stop along the journey, and he believes that trend will continue to spread across markets. “I truly believe that customers increasingly judge the forecourt side more and more by its coffee, food, cleanliness of the store, toilets, and the convenience that they will receive in that space,” he said.

Getting that right requires a balance between global and local decisions, with coffee sourcing, equipment, and brand standards managed centrally while hiring, training, and roughly 80% of the menu stay local. Buijs added that AI should free baristas to serve customers instead of replacing them.

Redwood, who works with retailers on technology strategy, said the same customer-first discipline should guide automation across the industry. “I think coming back to Arno’s point of first principles, defining what good looks like for the consumers should be absolutely where we start and then deploying the right technology to support those good consumer journeys and really stay away from innovation for innovation’s sake,” he said.

When asked for the one message he hoped listeners would take away, Buijs summed up the conversation in a way that tied every topic together. “My key message would be that foodservice is a business with people at the heart of this business to deliver a consistently great foodservice offer in a convenient way that is fully integrated with all other elements that we have as forecourt retail players,” he said.

The Future of Convenience Podcast is available on all major podcast platforms including Spotify and Apple Podcasts, with new episodes featuring global convenience retail leaders released every other Tuesday.