The Pennsylvania chain has a decades-long commitment to employees, customers and the communities it serves, making it the first two-time Chain of the Year winner in the award’s 28-year history.
By John Lofstock, Editor
It’s 6 A.M. Monday morning at the Sheetz store on William Penn Highway in Monroeville, Pa., and the line is already forming for a cup of fresh-brewed Sheetz Bros. coffee. Just to the left, a fresh display of Shweetz Bakery pastries entices the next wave of customers as they wait in eager anticipation for their turn to customize the liquid energy that will help them kick off a new workweek.
On this morning, it’s a typical scene that’s playing out across 564 Sheetz stores in six states. While there is a remarkable cadence and consistency unfolding as customers and employees deftly move about the store, the amount of work that goes into serving the company’s 1.5 million daily customers is just as remarkable.
Behind the scenes operates a finely-tuned machine, which is the product of precise logistics, detailed planning, training, hard work and a team of dedicated employees. Making magic at Sheetz is hardly the work of one person or one family, said Joe Sheetz, the second-generation family member entrusted as president and CEO. Rather, it’s the byproduct of a culture that long precedes him and one that will continue long after he retires.
I asked a customer why he prefers Sheetz and his answer was pretty straightforward. “The food is always fresh, the employees are great and I can get anything I want.” That’s a pretty solid recommendation before daybreak.
“I get asked about the Sheetz culture and what makes us special all the time and it’s very hard to explain. It’s something that is better experienced,” said Sheetz, who took over his current position in 2013 from his cousin, Stan Sheetz. Stan moved into the role of chairman, while Joe’s uncle, Steve Sheetz, vacated the chairman seat to fill the newly-created position of Family Council chairman. “More than anything, the Sheetz culture is a combination of creating a great work environment that is supportive, respectful and trusting of the people we have. We’ve learned to listen more than we talk. In our case that means listening to customers and to employees to make sure we always have our priorities straight.”
Equally important is that the company is not content with being good; it’s goal is excellence every day—and it shows. With an unsurpassed commitment to foodservice and technology, a world-class distribution model for fuel and c-store products and a total commitment to its vast employee base, Sheetz embodies the very best the convenience store industry has to offer.
Over the past year, the Altoona, Pa.-based chain was recognized by Fortune as one of the 100 Best Companies to Work For, a Top 12 Best Places to Work for Women and Top 35 Best Workplaces for Millennials, along with announcing plans to hire 3,400 new employees.
By fiscal year 2019, Sheetz is projected to grow to 600 stores with projected capital investment (including new and rebuilt unit growth) of approximately 6% annually. For some chains, that would be a full year. At Sheetz, it was just another day at the office.
Also in the past year, the company initiated dozens of fundraisers aimed at helping kids, such as its partnerships with Special Olympics and the Make-A-Wish foundation. It overhauled its loyalty card program, professed its ongoing commitment to offering employees sustainable careers built on an inspiring culture and expanded community engagement.
For its accomplishments and dedication to convenience retailing, Convenience Store Decisions is proud to name Sheetz Inc. the 2017 Convenience Store Chain of the Year, considered the gold standard in convenience retailing. Sheetz is the 28th Chain of the Year and the first two-time winner. The company was honored as Chain of the Year in 1994.
“We are very proud to be recognized as the Convenience Store Chain of the Year because this recognition truly belongs to our employees and to the customers who have supported us for the past 65 years,” Sheetz said. “We would not be the company we are today without dedicated employees and loyal customers.”
Founded in 1952 in Altoona, Pa., Sheetz is one of the country’s fastest-growing family-owned and operated convenience store chains, with nearly $6 billion in revenue and approximately 18,000 employees. The company operates throughout Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and North Carolina.
Sheetz remains a beacon of innovation that every convenience store chain can admire. It is a family-owned business that remains true to its employees and the communities it serves, and it’s doing so at a time when big corporations are trying to gain a larger foothold in the convenience store industry.
Long Retail History
Bob Sheetz founded Sheetz 65 years ago when he purchased one of his father’s five dairy stores located in Altoona, Pa. In 1961, Bob hired his brother Steve to work part-time at the store.
It was not until 1963 that the second store was opened under the name “Sheetz Kwik Shopper.” It took another five years to open the third store. In 1969, Steve joined Bob in the business as general manager. The brothers planned to expand at the rate of one store per year with a target of seven stores by 1972. In 1972, the brothers literally doubled the size of the company, expanding from seven to 14 stores. One year later, Sheetz added gasoline pumps and introduced self-serve gasoline to central Pennsylvania.
By 1983, Bob and Steve had opened 100 stores. The following year, Bob retired and handed over the leadership of the company to his trusted business partner Steve.
In 1995, Stan Sheetz, Bob’s son, became president and Steve assumed the position of chairman of the board. Stan led the company through new periods of growth and innovation, introducing Sheetz fans to touchscreen ordering, Sheetz Bros. Coffeez, Made-To-Go foods and Shweetz Bakery products, while redefining the concept of getting quality food at a convenience store.
Steady Greatness
When Convenience Store Decisions first honored Sheetz as Chain of the Year in 1994, Steve, Stan, Bob, Louie Sheetz, and Joe Sheetz Sr., were all involved in transforming the business after a rough period in the 1980s. Joe Sheetz and his brother Travis Sheetz wouldn’t join the company till a year later in 1995.
CSD highlighted the chain’s remarkable turnaround thanks to several initiatives that resonated with customers. For example, though the Sheetz Total Customer Focus (TCF) initiative was in its relative nascency in 1994, it was having a transformative effect. Store customer counts had doubled from the previous 10 years and fuel gallons sold surged on average of 4,000 gallons per store per month. Also around this time, the company’s marketing efforts under Louie Sheetz expanded as did the emphasis on hiring and retaining great employees and the Made To Order (MTO) foodservice program.
As with TCF, MTO was rolled out across the entire chain moving well beyond sandwiches and deli fare to encompass a wide variety of food items, specialty drinks and gourmet desserts.
Today, the Sheetz Bros. Kitchen, a $46 million state-of-the-art facility, also produces fresh, ready-to-eat products for all of the company’s stores. After 23 years, the company has not strayed from this winning formula. Rather, it has mastered it.
For example, Sheetz senior management is required to cover a district’s worth of stores every six weeks. “That amounts to eight visits a year where they’re going to go to anywhere from seven to nine stores, based on how big the district is,” Joe Sheetz said. “The intent of these visits is not to be a store inspection, but rather to find out what is working well, what’s not going well and what we can be doing better at corporate to support the team out in the field.”
As you would imagine, focusing on making improvements over such a long period of time has created a well-oiled machine. Furthermore, it’s become a part of the Sheetz culture and has empowered employees to speak up to help improve operations. “We take feedback from store employees very seriously. Sometimes they have questions about the way things are done, which tells us we need to communicate with them a little better, but other times they drive a change in processes,” Sheetz said. “One of the agenda items at every senior management meeting is who had store visits last week and what do you want to share. Everyone takes notes from the field and we discuss it in person every week. It’s part of our continuous improvement process.”
Taking Risks
One area where Sheetz has refined its brand is foodservice. Convenience stores are increasingly taking a larger slice out of the quick-serve pie with fresh food offerings. At Sheetz, the company’s iconic MTO program has become the industry model many other operators are chasing. It has become such an integral part of the Sheetz brand that the company is introducing stores designed more as fast casual convenience restaurants without gas pumps.
Two years ago, Sheetz unveiled a new fuel-free concept near the campuses of West Virginia University, Penn State University, Indiana University of Pennsylvania (IUP) and the University of Virginia. These four locations focus more on fast-casual dining options with made-to-order foods, an expanded dining area and a beer cave. The fuel-free stores will account for only a small part of the brand’s expansion and will be concentrated in areas where market penetration is difficult. It’s precisely this type of innovation and willingness to try something new that makes Sheetz the industry leader it is today.
“We are able to succeed in nontraditional areas because we have outstanding employees with a commitment to Total Customer Focus and our Sheetz culture,” Joe Sheetz said. “Our employees are dependable, positive, productive and friendly, which we believe is what keeps our customers coming back. Our brand promise is that we give our customers what they want, how they want it, when they want it—24/7. This promise is what sets us apart from the competition.”
The brand’s array of MTO sandwiches, salads, burritos, burgers, and more is the culmination of its long-standing plan to deliver outstanding food, value and upscale locations. Today, it continues to evolve beyond the menu items themselves with online ordering and delivery available in select markets.
MTO also allows the company to target demographics. For example, over the past year, Sheetz has rolled out a LiveWell menu of healthy items and a Classic Kidz menu aimed at younger consumers.
“Foodservice is a growing category but it’s also a difficult category because of the diverse appetites of your customers,” Joe Sheetz said. “Our focus is on great food, served fresh and fast, but we also listen carefully to understand what the customers really want. This has helped move into areas like espresso-based beverages, healthier meal options and food items designed with kids in mind. It’s another part of the process that connects Sheetz with our customers.”
This shift toward foodservice is very much part of the company’s culture and dairy roots which extend back to the early 1900s, and the results speak for themselves. Its annual foodservice sales at the MTO touchscreens alone exceed $1.5 million annually.
The People Advantage
Over the past year, Sheetz has received numerous accolades as an employer of choice nationally, but it was recognized as one of the Best Places to Work by state groups in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina.
Sheetz aims to keep this momentum going by recently announcing plans to hire 8,000 new employees companywide and increase wages by $15 million over the next 12 months. As part of this strategy, the company announced that salaried employees will earn a minimum base salary of $47,500.
For 2016, the company awarded employee bonuses of more than $53 million.
The Family Leadership Advantage
Joe Sheetz said that the company is committed to investing in its people, rewarding employees and attracting the best talent for the job, whether it’s in the distribution centers, kitchens, corporate office, or at any one of its store locations.
“As a family-owned business, we’re committed to attracting, retaining and developing the best people. We believe that paying wages at the upper end of the retail scale is necessary to achieve that goal,” Joe Sheetz said. “In addition to paying competitive wages, we provide our employees with increases based upon tenure, access to health insurance, quarterly bonuses, college tuition reimbursement, adoption assistance and paid time off, among many other benefits, continuing to prove that Sheetz strives to be a great place to work.”
As a featured speaker at the 2017 National Advisory Group (NAG) Conference in September, Joe Sheetz pointed out that the consistency in family leadership has been a major competitive advantage for providing an outstanding work environment. When your name is over the door, it’s different. Sheetz is still family owned, and this is the core of the company, but it’s not a given that because your last name is Sheetz you will obtain a leadership role.
Today, three Sheetz family members currently hold executive positions and all of them have worked their way up that ladder in a variety of positions after first earning their MBA and working away from the company for at least fiveyears. That means when a family member does return home to work for the family business, they are prepared. The result, Joe said, is that “we have a focused senior management team that genuinely understands, respects and cares about employees and customers.”
While there are several other family members working their way through the pipeline, in the company’s 65 years, just 12 family members have held executive positions. This reflects outstanding consistency in leadership, while also ensuring a steady stream of new ideas.
“When I was a kid it felt like our business was four walls with decent people running the stores. It seemed all you had to do was pick the right stuff, load it, price it right, sell it and then do it again. So much of that has changed and that’s where consistency in leadership has helped,” Joe Sheetz said. “The business now is all about logistics—being your own supply chain, moving your own fuel, distributing your own groceries, centrally making your own foodservice products and delivering them on a daily basis, running your own maintenance crews so that things get fixed any hour of the day, any day of the week. This stuff didn’t exist when I was a kid. This business is a lot more complicated, but it also offers new opportunities to grow the business.”
It also creates new opportunities for Sheetz family members. “Our family is getting bigger. It used to be if you really didn’t love retail then you probably needed to go work somewhere else,” Joe Sheetz said. “But as the company grows, we have new positions. If you’re an engineer, we have plenty of places for you. If you’re an architect, we’ve got positions. If you want to get into the supply chain, there are opportunities. Even if you’re a nurse, you can come and work at the wellness center. So the diversity of the people we employ is so much greater than it used to be, and I find that really cool and sometimes a little overwhelming.”
Sheetz in the Community
As you would expect from a company that has such a heavy emphasis on employees, Sheetz is also a substantial supporter of numerous charities. The company has donated millions of dollars over the past 65 years to charities that the family holds dear. It has two corporate charities, the Sheetz Family Charities and Special Olympics. Every penny raised for Sheetz Family Charities goes to the For the Kidz Holiday Event and the Make-A-Wish Foundation.
Sheetz For the Kidz, is a unique charitable organization in that it is operated by Sheetz employees. In 2016, it, provided $1.6 million to ensure 9,000 children in need had gifts at Christmas. The program has helped more than 100,000 children since 1992 raising $22.9 million. Through Make-A-Wish, Sheetz sponsors approximately 50 family trips to Walt Disney World annually. Since 2005, it has been able to grant more than 450 wishes.
In 2017, with the help of generous customers, the company is on track to donate more than $650,000 to the Special Olympics. Sheetz remains Pennsylvania’s largest contributor to the organization and was an inductee into the Special Olympics Hall of Fame in 2000.
In addition, Sheetz donates millions of dollars in cash and products to other community endeavors each year such as the Boy and Girl Scouts, libraries, education and youth development and athletic and arts programs.
Sheetz has never been afraid to take risks and dares to be great. Please join us in saluting the 2017 Convenience Store Chain of the Year.
Sheetz Inc. Snapshot
• Headquartered in Altoona, Pa., the company has nearly 564 stores in six states (Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and North Carolina) and 18,000 employees.
• Serves 1.5 million customers per day.
• Family owned and celebrating its 65th anniversary in 2017.
• 40 new and rebuilt stores in 2017.
• Total yearly sales of nearly $6 billion.
• Employee bonuses paid in 2016: More than $53 million.
• Listed in 2016 as a Fortune Best Workplace for Women (Top 12).
• Selected by Fortune in 2016 as a Best Workplace for Millennials (Top 35)
• Named by Fortune in 2016 as one of the Best Workplaces in Retail (Top 10)
• Named one of the Best Places to Work in Pennsylvania, Maryland, Virginia, Ohio and North Carolina.
Rewarding Loyalty
Sheetz has many loyal, repeat customers. As a way to reward these customers, the company earlier this year felt the time was right to launch a loyalty card program worthy of the Sheetz brand. With the MySheetz loyalty program, cardholders receive points on nearly all in-store purchases and can choose customized rewards to get more of what they purchase most.
Racking up points with every swipe of their MySheetz Card, customers can climb the Sheetz Rewardz ranks from Fan to Friend to Freak. Cardholders receive five points per dollar, and the more points earned, the better the reward. Points can also be redeemed on the new Sheetz app, which allows customers to make mobile payment, order food online and view nutrition information. Customers who register their MySheetz Card will also receive birthday rewards, surprise offers and random giveaways.
“The No. 1 request from our customers has been to earn rewards on all of their purchases,” said Joe Sheetz, president and CEO of Sheetz Inc. “We heard them and responded with bigger, better and more rewards— it’s our way of showing the love to our most loyal customers.”
Exclusive My Sheetz Card perks include:
• Gas Rewardz: Three cents off every gallon of gas every day.
• Customized Rewardz: Customers choose what they want.
• Tasty Treatz: Points can be redeemed for items ranging from free fountain drinks, MTO items, Sheetz Bros. Coffeez, Shweetz Bakery doughnuts and cookies.
• On-the-Spot Savings: Special discounts and combo offers.
• Sheetz Shwag: Free T-shirts, hats, mugs, cups and more.
