Circle K Turns Store Data Into Daily Action | Fast Five Shorts
This Omni Talk Retail Fast Five segment, sponsored by the A&M Consumer and Retail Group, Mirakl, Ocampo Capital, Infios, Quorso, and Veloq, explores Circle K’s expansion of Quorso’s intelligent management platform across more than 7,800 U.S. stores.
Chris and Anne explain why turning data into daily action is mission-critical, how AI improves store-level execution, and why this partnership stood out at NRF 2026.
⏩ Tune in for the full episode here.
#RetailExecution #AIinRetail #CircleK #Quorso #OmniTalk
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Transcript
Circle K is expanding its partnership with Corso to consolidate tasks, surveys, performance analytics and exception reporting to more than 7, 800 US locations.
Speaker A:According to CSP Daily News, Circle K is expanding after successfully deploying across Circle K's European network of more than 4,000 stores last year.
Speaker A:The platform creates one spot for store managers to handle tasks, surveys, performance analytics and exception reporting, eliminating siloed solutions.
Speaker A:Corso CEO Julian Mills stated that they will soon be live in over 12,000 Circle K stores across the world, with the platform helping store managers, quote, save time, act on data driven insights and identify opportunities, end quote.
Speaker A:Delivering volume at stores using Corso has tripled in the last six months.
Speaker A: nered with Corso at more than: Speaker A:Chris, what else can you say about Corso, who I will caveat is also a partner and sponsor of the show and somebody that we've long, long been watching.
Speaker A:So this is exciting news for us.
Speaker A:But what can you say about Corso that we haven't already said?
Speaker B:Yeah, that's a good way to put the question, Ed.
Speaker B:Not all that much if you're a loyal fan of the show, but for that reason we've got a lot of new fans each and every week too.
Speaker B:So I think it's important to reiterate the importance of this announcement.
Speaker B: their CFO Phil Thorne back in: Speaker B:The tech is, the tech is smart, it's low lift, it pays back immediately, both financially but most importantly for your store employees as well, because store teams want tools to help them do their jobs better instead of just being handed down to to do lists from headquarters, which oftentimes we don't even know if those to do lists are valuable.
Speaker B:You know, we had Julian Mills, the CEO, of course, so on our show at NRF talking about that very thing.
Speaker B:So I've always said leadership.
Speaker B:Leadership to me comes down to three things.
Speaker B:As a leader, you've got to instill three things in your employees.
Speaker B:You've got to give them complexity.
Speaker B:So you have to make their jobs interesting.
Speaker B:That's what that means.
Speaker B:The second thing is you have to give them autonomy.
Speaker B:Like do they feel like they're in control of their own area of responsibility?
Speaker B:And third, and finally attachment.
Speaker B:Do they care about what they do.
Speaker B:Do they have inherent like care and concern about their performance.
Speaker B:Those three things, complexity, autonomy and attachment.
Speaker B:Corso tech drives efficiency while also giving all of those three things and making it easier for the leaders to manage their teams and make their employees happier.
Speaker B:So that's why I love it.
Speaker A:Yeah, I mean I think the other thing to call out like Corso was certainly one of the darlings of this nrf.
Speaker A:I mean I felt like we were, they were in conversations with people, they were in the Microsoft booth.
Speaker A:You know, we had them on with Fusion.
Speaker A:And I think it gets back to what we were talking about the very beginning is now that AI is being deployed operationally across multiple retail organizations.
Speaker A:What do you now have the power to do?
Speaker A:And I think that now Corso is able to plug into a lot of the other operating systems that are already in stores that you know, are being superpowered by AI to be able to process data and now give those very important and ROI producing, producing activities for the store level employees.
Speaker A:I think one other thing that I find really interesting and especially about this being a European, you know, all over the world, especially in Europe, we had Jacob on the CEO of Strongpoint yesterday.
Speaker A:He was talking about how if you can do this in areas like Europe, like the Nordic countries, where the minimum wage is so high and you are limited to how much you can do and how much you can pay for employees to be in store, if you have something like Corsa deployed, I think now you're looking at having in that, you know, with limited employees, with limited amounts of time, the amount of things that they will be able to get done and that you'll be able to accomplish and is so much more streamlined and focused now that I think retailers, you know, that are, that are testing this concept in Europe and now as it comes, you know, more where it expands across the US market too.
Speaker A:You know, they're really testing for the worst case scenario, the highest paid employee.
Speaker A:And now I think it'll be interesting to see as this expands through the U.S. you know, how much more efficiency they're able to drive out of these stores.
Speaker A:And especially in Circle K stores too, as they, they now have Corso in their utility belt.
Speaker B:Yeah, I mean 12,000 stores is a lot of stores too.
Speaker B:Like that's a lot of storage.
Speaker B:So of course it's going to learn a ton from this deployment.
Speaker B:100%.
