Tote AI launches HQ Genie AI, an agent for convenience store operations

Tote AI launched HQ Genie AI on September 30, an AI agent that works alongside store operators, studying their business with them and finding answers deep in their data through natural language, according to a PR Newswire release.

The release is available now to Tote customers and marks what Tote calls the start of a new era of AI-native, natural-language operations for convenience retail. Tote says it designed HQ Genie from the ground up for the industry, with the realities of running a c-store in mind.

HQ Genie replaces traditional back-office reporting — where finding an answer often means digging through menus, filters and static reports — with a prompt box. Users can ask, for example, what the latest discount on Diet Soda is, how many Monster Energy drinks a given store has left, what daily sales looked like over the last ten days, or the status of a specific card refund, and get an answer in seconds.

Because Tote runs the point of sale, HQ Genie goes beyond sales analytics. It draws on operational data from across the store, including devices connected through Tote Device Cloud, which lets corporate help desk teams use it to spot and diagnose problems — for instance, asking which devices across the chain need attention and seeing where issues occur, store by store.

Agentic workflows, now in beta, are built into HQ Genie and work proactively to automate recurring tasks. Through scheduling, operators can run checks such as a morning sales brief for every store, an hourly terminal health check, an end-of-day close check that flags an unclosed drawer, or a standing watch on large refunds, with results posting back to the chat on a set cadence.

Chats are private by default but can be shared so a colleague can pick up a troubleshooting thread, and work keeps running after a browser tab is closed. HQ Genie also supports voice interaction, respects each user's existing permissions so answers draw only on authorized data, and requires human approval for any action that changes data.

"Operators get answers in seconds instead of digging through reports, and HQ Genie handles the recurring checks so they don't have to," said Shyam Rao, founder and CEO of Tote. He said that because Tote's point of sale connects to everything in the store through Device Cloud, HQ Genie can diagnose why afternoon fuel flow rates dipped, not just report how sales performed yesterday.

Varish Goyal, CEO of Loop Neighborhood Markets, said associates already work with Genie every day at the counter, and bringing the same plain-language access to operations data is the obvious next step.

HQ Genie arrives alongside updates to two existing Tote AI offerings: Associate Genie AI adds usage analytics that flag unanswered questions, support for more file types in its knowledge base, and feedback that improves accuracy over time, while Consumer Genie AI, the shopper-facing assistant, expands its customer support handling.