By Lauren Shanesy
Urban Value Corner Store caters to a unique customer base: residents of urban, high-density apartment communities in the Dallas area. With 11 locations, this convenience chain is an essential amenity for residents and a proven value enhancer for building owners.
“We have a very focused mission—we’re not trying to appeal to everyone, and that’s been a key to our success,” said Steve McKinley, CEO and founder of Urban Value Corner Store. “Our mission is simple, and it’s to improve the living experience of the residents. We show up each day with that mindset.”
McKinley founded Urban Value more than five years ago and has 30-plus years of retail experience. He opened the first Urban Value in the vacant first-floor space of the Parkside apartment building in McKinney, Texas.
At the time, he was looking for his next venture, and the building’s developer told him he was planning to stick vending machines in the first-floor space that had been empty for years.
“That was the genesis of Urban Value. I learned about the pain points of developers and their need to create a great living experience for residents by providing an apartment amenity that would be well used,” McKinley said.
Personalized Product Selection
Each Urban Value store offers a highly curated product selection specifically tailored to the preferences and needs of its residents. “If an average convenience store has thousands of SKUs, for example, our stores have more like 900 SKUs. But our product turns really fast—it literally flies off the shelves because it’s what our residents are asking for,” McKinley said. “We listen very intently to what the residents are telling us and will source a product if they ask for it enough. Unlike a major chain where everything is done through strict planograms, we have a general planogram framework but are very fluid with our products and are able to adjust based on each community’s demands.”
He said it’s also important to empower employees to listen to customers and make decisions for their locations. If a manager says residents keep asking for a particular brand of beer, salty snack or dog treats, for example, “We will order it,” said McKinley. “We might test it, and it has to be a product that makes sense, but it all comes back to that mission of improving the living experience of the residents. Any time we do something different, we ask ourselves if it will do that, and if the answer is yes, we go for it.”
Urban Value doesn’t sell lottery and keeps its 20-25 high-velocity SKUs of tobacco products behind a “nondescript armoire,” said McKinley.
An Attractive Amenity
McKinley said developers see Urban Value as a differentiator that helps boost occupancy and retention rates by offering a highly desirable and frequently used amenity. The presence of the store, in some cases, has been a deciding factor in why a resident chose that apartment building over another.
“Developers spend a lot of time and money figuring out what amenities to put in a community, and sometimes even the most exciting ones rarely get used. In some communities we took over previous amenity spaces that weren’t getting used by residents,” said McKinley. “Not only are we having success in an urban market as a c-store without fuel, but we also don’t need a traditional retail space—we can adapt our format to what’s available.”
Urban Value has a prominent location in Legacy West, a mixed-use development in Plano, Texas, featuring over 800 apartments, commercial offices, dining options and luxury retailers like Gucci, Coach, Tesla and Louis Vuitton. “We do very well there, because in addition to resident customers, a lot of the restaurant or retail workers come in to get their energy drinks or protein bars before shifts. We are a complimentary retail business to this premier community.”
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