For those attending the AWMA Summit and/or the Summit & Business Exchange (ABX), please review the final schedule.  The AWMA Summit begins on Monday evening, continues with the Tuesday Summit program, and the Tuesday evening Summit & ABX reception.  The ABX program will begin with meetings on Tuesday afternoon after the Summit lunch and continue Wednesday & Thursday. 

MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 12
8:00 AM TO 3:30 PM
AWMA Committee Meetings
Ritz-Carlton, 2nd Floor

9:00 AM TO 6:00 PM
Registration
Salon Foyer, 1st Floor

4:00 PM TO 6:00 PM
AWMA Board of Directors Meeting
Salon 1, 1st Floor

6:30 PM TO 7:30 PM
Summit Welcome Reception
The Gallery, 1st Floor

TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 13 - Summit & ABX Participants

7:00 AM TO 5:30 PM
Registration
Salon Foyer, 1st Floor

7:00 AM TO 7:45 AM
Summit Continental Breakfast
Salon 1, 1st Floor

7:45 AM TO 8:00 AM
Welcome—Opening Remarks
Salon 2, 1st Floor

8:00 AM TO 9:00 AM
Helping Your Customers Help You
Salon 2, 1st Floor

Al Bates, President, Profit Planning Group
Too many distributors spend all of their effort trying to live off of perpetually lower gross margin percentages. They keep trying to sell more at ever lower prices. To make this work, they also must keep lowering operating expenses at the same time. Over time, it proves to be a futile effort. Distributors need to start thinking in terms of helping their customers improve profitability at the retail level. Programs must be put in place, goals set and performance monitored on an on-going basis. By doing so, they can begin to slowly differentiate themselves from other distributors. Join Al Bates, Profit Planning Group, for this presentation which focuses on the value and profitability of this very important process.

9:00 AM TO 9:45 AM
The Future of the Tobacco Industry
Salon 2, 1st Floor

Nik Modi, Household Products, Cosmetics, and Tobacco Global Consumer Staples Coordinator, UBS Investment Research
In this session, Nik Modi, stock analyst with UBS Investment Research, will provide a peek into the future of the tobacco industry within the context of the rapidly evolving regulatory environment under the FDA, changing consumer behavior, aspirations of the tobacco manufacturers and demographic changes. Modi will specifically discuss his views on the debate around menthol and why he believes it will remain a viable ingredient within the FDA regulatory framework, why the C-store industry could become significantly larger in the future, and why the tobacco industry in the year 2025 will look more like the 1900s than the 2000s.

9:45 AM TO 10:00 AM
Break

10:00 AM TO 10:15 AM
The Core, Efficient Assortment & Category Management— A Focus on Execution
Salon 2, 1st Floor

Kit Dietz, President, Dietz Consulting
The Warehouse Delivered Snacks Committee has done extensive research based on the Candy and Snack Study, which leveraged insights from the Willard Bishop/Dietz Consulting Convenience SuperStudy. Kit Dietz, president of Dietz Consulting, will set the stage for program speakers by discussing the importance of the following topics:

Core SKUs are very profitable yet are not available in all convenience
stores. Filling the distribution voids in candy and snacks alone is a
billion-dollar channel opportunity.

The importance of optimizing existing space within the center store.
The center store and convenience serve multiple purposes. There is an opportunity to leverage the high margins and impulsivity of the candy and snacks categories. The center store is also comprised of “emergency fill-in categories,” which are ripe with opportunities to better rationalize assortment according to how the consumer shops the stores.

10:15 AM TO 10:45 AM
If You’re Hungry or Thirsty— We’ve Got You Covered or “Too Much Good Stuff”
Salon 2, 1st Floor

James Hachtel, Senior Category Manager  of Center Store, BP/ARCO ampm
Join Jim Hachtel, senior category manager of center store at BP/ARCO ampm, as he shares ideas on leveraging foot traffic. Beverages, cigarettes and other tobacco products are key destination categories in convenience and the primary drivers of foot traffic in the store. How does ampm translate foot traffic to drive sales and higher margin opportunities? Hachtel will share details on ampm’s focus on instant consumption and their focus on candy and snacks as a center store strategy to leverage the impulsivity and high margins in these two categories. It starts with the consumer—how they shop the store and how they shop the category. Hatchel will share how ampm plans to translate new insights on true profit to further enhance category plans. Attend this very important session on how to approach center store categories to increase higher-margin sales and better leverage consumer shopping patterns.

10:45 AM TO 11:15 AM
Helping Our Customers Win “Data Driven Assortment Decisions”
Salon 2, 1st Floor

Tom Cinnamon, Vice President Merchandising, Eby-Brown Company
Eby-Brown is being proactive instead of reactive and has embraced category management from the outside in. Providing accurate orders on a timely basis at a competitive price is something distributors do pretty well. While that will always be a focal point for Eby-Brown, it was recognized that the company could help its retailers sell more of the “right products” by investing time and resources to develop a proprietary category management solution. SmartProcess is Eby-Brown’s initiative to assure the broad distribution of core SKUs across its customer base and to more effectively harmonize its assortment, which will pay dividends for customers and help Eby-Brown better manage assortment in its distribution centers. Join Tom Cinnamon, VP Merchandising at Eby-Brown Company, as he discusses this highly collaborative process between Eby-Brown, its manufacturer partners and its retail customers. See how Eby-Brown can now help customers make better assortment decisions by recommending SKU replacements in every category and segment in the store. When the customers win, we all win.

11:15 AM TO 11:45 AM
Wrap-Up
Salon 2, 1st Floor

Rob Sincavich, President, Sledd Company
Kit Dietz, President, Dietz Consulting
Kit Dietz, president of Dietz Consulting, and Rob Sincavich, president of Sledd Company, will tee up discussion points regarding core SKUs, efficient assortment opportunities and data driven category management solutions.

12:15 PM TO 1:15 PM
AWMA Summit Lunch
Salon 1, 1st Floor

The InfoMetrics Solution
Mike Dion, Vice President, Sales, InfoRhythm, Inc.
InfoMetrics C-store solution is the single largest C-store store/SKU level database in the United States covering 90K+ stores and 100K+ products with 104 weeks of historical data updated weekly. The InfoMetrics system provides significant insights for C-store category management including: core-item distribution, SKU rationalization, C-store tracking, wholesale, retail and broker rebate program management, and many other functions that can grow your business and increase your profitability in the convenience channel.

1:30 PM TO 5:50 PM
ABX Meetings
Floors 1, 2, 3, 4

6:00 PM TO 7:00 PM
Summit & ABX Reception
The Gallery, 1st Floor

WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 14 - ABX Participants Only

6:45 AM TO 8:30 AM
ABX Breakfast
The Café, 1st Floor

6:45 AM TO 5:00 PM
ABX Registration
Salon Foyer, 1st Floor

7:00 AM TO 5:00 PM
ABX Hospitality Room
Salon 1, 1st Floor

7:15 AM TO 5:35 PM
ABX Meetings
Floors 1, 2, 3, 4

11:30 AM TO 2:00 PM
ABX Lunch
The Café, 1st Floor

9:00 PM TO 11:00 PM
ABX After-Hours Reception
The Gallery, 1st Floor

THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 15 - ABX Participants Only

6:45 AM TO 8:30 AM
ABX Breakfast
The Café, 1st Floor

7:00 AM TO 12:00 NOON
ABX Hospitality Room
Salon 1, 1st Floor

7:15 AM TO 2:35 PM
ABX Meetings
Floors 1, 2, 3, 4

11:30 AM TO 1:30 PM
ABX Lunch
The Café, 1st Floor

2:35 PM
Summit & ABX Program Adjourns