Derek Gaskins has been a key leader in the convenience store industry since he first joined Giant Eagle’s team in 2002 as the company’s director of marketing. Following an almost nine-year stint at Giant Eagle where he was responsible for all marketing activities, including GetGo Fuel and Convenience Stores, Gaskins began a new chapter at the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS) as its vice president of marketing in 2009.
Then in September 2011, he took a new position as senior vice president of merchandising and marketing at Mid-Atlantic Convenience Stores (MACS), where he served as the marketing lead for the more than 300-store chain.
From 2013-2018, Gaskins served as the chief customer officer for York, Pa.-based Rutter’s, before assuming the role of chief marketing officer at Fort Worth, Texas-based Yesway.
His most recent c-store position was as the head of guest experience at bp — a role he served in from March 2025 to August 2026.
Now, Gaskins is beginning a new chapter as the head of retail at Mars-owned Hotel Chocolat.
CStore Decisions recently sat down with Gaskins to hear about some of his career highlights, lessons learned and strategies that he’ll be taking with him as he begins this new chapter.
CStore Decisions (CSD): Looking back on your time in the c-store industry, what are the biggest lessons you’ve learned that you’ll carry into this next chapter?
Derek Gaskins (DG): The biggest lesson is that brands are a team sport. Every result I’d point to — GetGo’s climb to $2+ billion in sales, Rutter’s becoming NACS International Retailer of the Year, Yesway’s ascension to Chain of the Year honors, Epic Goods’ Gold Medal at bp — was built by a team, not an individual. I’ve been fortunate to learn from people like the late Joe Petrowski, whose belief in mutual, win-win partnerships between retailers and suppliers shaped how I lead. My adage has always been “Win With Winners” — find great people, build genuine partnerships with your supplier base, and get out of the way. That principle travels intact from c-stores to premium chocolate retail — the categories change, the discipline doesn’t.
CSD: What accomplishments are you most proud of?
DG: Loyalty, without question. From Fuelperks! at GetGo, to Rutter’s Rewards — which the National Retail Federation named the best retailer app in the country — to Yesway’s Stack & Save, to bp’s Earnify. I’ve spent my career partnering with world-class CPG brands to fund rewards that actually work: fully-funded fuel, beverage and food offers that grew revenue, protected margin and built real lifetime value with guests. It’s not loyalty for loyalty’s sake — its loyalty engineered as a P&L lever.
I’m just as proud of the talent legacy. Building teams where winning becomes contagious, developing people who go on to lead their own organizations, creating the kind of culture where star performers want to stay and compete — that’s the part of the job I’ll carry with me the longest.
CSD: What moments stand out as the most defining of your time in the c-store industry?
DG: The rise of mobile, social, digital, and loyalty technology — and what it did to consumer behavior — is the defining shift of my career. It set the table for everything that followed: machine learning, AI, retail media networks and eventually whatever quantum computing brings to personalization at scale.
Underneath the technology, though, the category drivers held remarkably steady. I’ve always thought about convenience through the lens of the “Five Ines” — gasoline, nicotine, caffeine, protein, and, more recently, terpenes — and trip-mission-based occasions. Those fundamentals evolved but never disappeared.
A few other moments reshaped the landscape permanently: NACS’ fight on swipe fees, the Federal Hemp Bill and the emergence of hemp-derived and terpene alternatives, the better-for-you and health movement, and the early impact of GLP-1s on basket composition. Convenience has never had a fixed definition — it’s constantly being rewritten by the consumer, and that’s exactly what keeps the channel interesting.
CSD: Tell me a bit about your new position and some of your initial goals as you step into the role. How is your c-store experience helping you accomplish these goals?
DG: I’m thrilled to step into Head of Retail, US, for Hotel Chocolat. Mars acquired the brand in January 2024, and we’re positioned to scale it meaningfully across the U.S. My job is to bring rigorous retail acumen — not just convenience acumen — to that growth: excellence in retail translates across channels, whether you’re selling fuel and fountain drinks or ethically sourced, premium cacao.
Hotel Chocolat wins on product and experience: signature gifting chocolates, seasonal collections, the at-home Velvetiser system, our Wall of Chocolate and cafes serving Velvetised hot and cold drinking chocolate, and our Ice Cream of the Gods soft-serve. My early priorities are the same disciplines that built every brand I’ve scaled before: get the operating fundamentals right store by store, scale the loyalty program and CRM engine — that turns our tens of thousands of Velvetiser households into lifetime guests, and develop the people and playbook that let us grow while maintaining what makes the brand special.
That’s directly where years in convenience retail payoff: multi-site P&L ownership, building brands from the ground up (GetGo and Yesway), scaling loyalty programs that actually move guest behavior, and running food and beverage programs at a high bar. I’m a builder of people, products and processes, and I couldn’t be more excited about bringing that to Hotel Chocolat as we chase our growth ambitions.
CSD: What advice would you give someone just beginning a career in the c-store industry?
DG: Embrace the dynamism. Convenience is the highest-velocity retail there is — thousands of transactions a day, per store — and it rewards people who can hold two things at once: it’s a relationship business and a data business. Learn the P&L cold, but also learn your regulars by name. The people who succeed longest in this industry are the ones who can read a transaction report in the morning and read a guest’s need state in the afternoon, then use both to capture more trip missions, grow the basket and do it profitably. Master that combination early, and it will serve you in any retail category you land in — it certainly has for me.
