While New England is home to a number of strong c-store brands with quality food and coffee, Neon Marketplace saw an opportunity to combine a high-quality coffee offering and proprietary food concept while raising the bar on convenience and omnichannel accessibility - all in one shop. “We have four great general managers on board now that worked in those two stores, and we’re excited that they’ll have at least six months of experience with Neon Marketplace before they lead our flagship models,” Rasmussen said. Simultaneously, the chain has been training and developing its employees. But Neon Marketplace knew it needed a place to solve any glitches before scaling its footprint. “These are never investments you would make if you just had two stores,” Rasmussen said. That includes building out and testing the infrastructure in its existing stores, from its supply chain partners to its PDI back-office system to its Radiant point-of-sale interface, among other core elements. Over the past year, Neon Marketplace has been incorporating that expertise and using its two existing stores as testing grounds to develop its modern convenience concept that will roll out with its protype in Q4. Neon Marketplace’s corporate leadership team as a whole has more than 45 collective years of Wawa experience. Rasmussen brings with him 17 years of experience from Wawa, where he held various executive positions and played a key role in the c-store chain’s Florida expansion. “They handle real estate development as well as construction, and because they operate a large number of hotels across the country, we leverage a lot of their resources until it makes sense for us to bring them in internally ourselves,” noted industry veteran Peter Rasmussen, who joined the Neon Marketplace team as director of operations in Neon Marketplace is its own standalone company, but it works in close partnership with Procaccianti Cos., which is the owner and developer of the chain’s real estate. to Procaccianti Cos., which rebranded them in July and September 2020, launching the Neon Marketplace banner. In 2020, the Giacobbi family divested their two existing locations - one in Middleton, R.I., and one in Portsmouth, R.I. Nick Giacobbi went on to become the director of development for the Procaccianti Cos., a privately held real estate investment and management company. His sons, Joseph Giacobbi and Nick Giacobbi, became involved in the family business.
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While the Neon Marketplace concept began in 2020, the chain can connect its roots back to the 1970s, when businessman George Giacobbi entered the c-store business, later branding his stores Patriot Petroleum convenience stores.
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Its omnichannel focus spans drive-through, order-ahead, delivery, a rewards app, as well as electric vehicle (EV) charging and, combined with its upscale proprietary food offering, positions Neon Marketplace as a modern convenience store that’s ready to scale. From there, Neon Marketplace is set to aggressively expand to 25 locations in 2022 within Rhode Island and Massachusetts, before growing to 150 sites within the next five years - all via new builds. Neon Marketplace arrived on the scene in mid-2020, opening two stores in New England in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic at a time when most c-store retailers were grappling with a deluge of new and shifting operating practices.Ī year later, the Cranston, R.I.-based chain is finalizing a well-tested prototype design that incorporates its food-centric vision and omnichannel approach, which will roll out in Q4 with the opening of two new-to-industry stores.