In a space where most innovation teams drown in slide decks, deep file structures, and backlog purgatory, Sheetz did something different.

They launched an AI-powered agent designed to actually do the work—and in just 90 days, it’s already redefining what’s possible inside a $10 billion retail operation.

Built by Bait Shop, this agent isn't just another chatbot or fancy dashboard. It's a research and acceleration layer, trained to surface, structure, and stress-test innovation concepts with the precision and speed that modern strategy demands.

From Idea to Intelligence in 90 Days

Three months ago, the Sheetz Innovation Centers had a common challenge:

“We know the customer segments we care about. We know the revenue thresholds we need to hit. But we’re still too slow turning raw ideas into focused, testable opportunities.”

Bait Shop stepped in to build a solution from scratch—an internal-facing, AI-powered agent capable of:

Mining prior concept work, briefs, chat logs, and backchannel insights
Generating structured innovation ideas designed to hit $100M+ revenue targets
Assigning Strategyzer-style test cards to every concept (hypothesis, test, metric, success criteria)
Scoring and ranking each concept by confidence, scalability, and ease of implementation
Exporting to spreadsheets, slides, or dashboards in seconds

The result?
A living pipeline of benchmark-quality ideas—each one launchable, testable, and revenue-validated.

What the Agent Does

Think of it as a strategist who never sleeps and reads everything.

Current Capabilities:

Rapid Research + Synthesis: Given a prompt (e.g., "What’s a new platform for blue-collar workers?" or "How could Sheetz win mornings for low-income families?"), the agent taps into internal knowledge and public domain insight to propose well-formed concepts.
Test Card Generator: For each idea, it creates a clear Strategyzer-style Test Card with hypothesis, validation plan, success metric, and criteria for go/no-go.
Opportunity Scoring Engine: Every concept is ranked using a weighted score across Confidence, Scalability, and Ease of Implementation—helping teams triage effort toward high-potential bets.
Format Ready Output: Results can be exported as a spreadsheet, a pitch deck, or an innovation backlog for review—no formatting headaches or cleanup needed.

This isn’t a novelty. It’s already driving decisions and replacing old R&D decks with action-ready concepts.

What’s Next on the Roadmap

We’re not stopping here. The next 90 days are about going deeper and faster.

Roadmap Vision:

Multi-Agent Collaboration: Agents that debate and refine concepts by simulating team dynamics (Design vs Ops vs Finance)
Live Stakeholder Feedback Loop: Integration with feedback forms and meeting transcripts to evolve concepts post-pitch
Costing + Feasibility Layer: Early-stage cost models based on internal ops data, helping assess implementation timelines
Dynamic Landscape Scanning: Autonomous tracking of competitors, VC investments, TikTok food trends, and startup models feeding new insights into the idea engine weekly

Why It Matters

Innovation teams today are expected to act like startups while navigating the complexity of Fortune 500 systems. That’s a losing game—unless they build tools that match the ambition.

This agent is not a replacement for human insight—it’s a weaponized extension of it.
It frees up strategists to focus on judgment, not just formatting or Googling. It turns weeks of “maybe” into days of “let’s test it.”

And most importantly, it ensures that big ideas don’t get buried—they get built.

Built by Bait Shop. Designed for scale. Tuned for impact.
If your innovation team is ready to deploy intelligence that actually prioritizes and ships, let’s talk!

Innovation Engine: How Bait Shop Developed a Benchmark-Setting Agent for a $10B Retail Chain in 90 Days