Question-and-Answer Session
Operator
Thank you sir. (Operator instructions) Our first question is from John Lawrence with Morgan Keegan. Please go ahead.
John Lawrence – Morgan Keegan
Good morning.
Sam Susser
Hi John.
John Lawrence – Morgan Keegan
Sam, would you start off a little bit with I guess on the merchandise side, it was strong, just talk about some of the categories if you could give us a little bit more break out of Laredo a little bit, what's happening in those markets with new stores etc on the food side and we'll start there.
Sam Susser
Sure. There was a pretty even distribution of growth in terms of which categories were the big drivers. The top drivers were packaged drinks, food service, cigarettes, snacks and beer. We saw healthy growth in Laredo Taco and in the Country Cookin’ concept out in West Texas, that's one area where we're very pleased that since the acquisition we've been able to create some positive sales momentum in the food service business out West. A lot of that is coming from improved staffing. We’ve really focused on the people’s side, we've been able to increase the hours of operation and I think the biggest change has been we've enhanced in-stock conditions. We've got more food, made fresh, available, ready to go. We also have begun recently to test our Laredo Tacos out West and I'm certainly not ready to declare victory. I think this is a long term project for the business, but we're pleased with the initial results and we expect to keep learning and responding to what the consumer tells us. Our new stores continue to open very well on the food side, and we really are excited about Laredo Tacos still. We think there's a lot of upside left in the business. It's still a fairly new concept for our Company and we continue to fine-tune it. Some of the properties that we've been working on especially out of the Town & Country land bank have a lot of platting and zoning, curb cut kind of issues that have delayed our plans to start construction a little bit, but we're very, very bullish on how our new stores are performing , mainly focused on the integration, and making sure that our balance sheet is in solid shape and at this point, I can definitely say we are in very solid shape and we're making plans for growth for next year. Across the board all our core categories are performing really strong. The increased scale that we got out of Town & Country has put us in a position to negotiate for stronger deals, more promotional support, more service from our DSD vendors and that's impacting not just Town & Country but also Stripes.
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