Welcome to How Leaders Lead, where every week you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I break down the key learning so that by the end of the episode, you'll have something simple you can apply as you develop into a better leader. That's what this podcast is all about. Today's guest is Chris Geissens, the president and CEO of Wawa. Now depending on where you live, you might be wondering what the heck is Wawa. If you spent time in the Philadelphia area and in the Northeast, you know that Wawa is one of the most beloved convenience store chains in America. Chris has been with Wawa for more than 25 years and let me tell you, he has played a huge role in growing Wawa and creating a culture that is second to none. You see, Chris believes in putting customers and employees first. I mean, truly taking care of people. It's the key to scaling a successful business. As I like to say, when you do the right thing, the right things happen and it's inspiring to see that that truly plays out at Wawa. If you want to learn how to operationalize that concept, if you want to build a people-first culture, if you're trying to scale something without losing that human element, well, you are listening to the right podcast. Here's my conversation with my good friend and soon to be yours, Chris Geissens . I really can't wait to get into how you lead, but I know you've grown up as a huge Philadelphia sports fan. Looking back, what's a highlight that you'll always remember? Oh boy, we just had some this year going to the World Series unexpectedly. We're in the middle of one with the Philadelphia Eagles and the run that they 're having, but for me, it had to be the Eagles and the Super Bowl. The reason I'm such a fan is grew up with three older brothers and a father who would take us off into Philadelphia for games and grew up going to veteran stadium in the 700th level. If you're familiar with that in Philadelphia, that was the culmination of a childhood memory of winning the Super Bowl just now four years ago. Philadelphia fans never thought what happened and was phenomenal. I just actually was looking at some tapes of that just recently, some of the plays that just reliving it. That was an amazing Super Bowl. I'll always remember that one. That Nick Foles comes from nowhere and has the game of his century against Tom Brady. I mean, this guy was making plays that I couldn't believe. That's a highlight in my sports days too as well. That was awesome. He will always be folklore hero here in Philadelphia. And deservedly so. Chris, I know Wawa Well for my days as working as the chief operating officer at Pepsi Cola Company. And you are one of our biggest customers. You're regional, but not everybody's familiar with Wawa. Could you give us a snapshot of your company? Yeah. We often get like, what the heck's a Wawa? Other parts of the country because we are regional. We're only in six states and Washington, D.C. So if you're in the Mid-Atlantic area from Pennsylvania, Jersey, Maryland, Delaware, Virginia, or in Florida, you pretty much know what a Wawa is. And what Wawa is, we're about a thousand store, convenience store chain. But it's funny, David, as CEO, you would think I have this nailed. And the reality is it's hard to explain a Wawa. And I've gotten comfortable trying to muddle through explaining what a Wawa is because I'll say convenience store because that's classically what you would call us. But the reality is we sell our own food, freshly prepared food. We would sell as much food as McDonald's does, but yet we sell as much coffee and more than a Dunkin' Donuts does with the six largest coffee retailer in the country. And we have all of the conveniences that you would think of like a Pepsi or a Coke and sell gas. And we sell more gas per location than any retailer in the country as well. So it's this unique sort of place that you can stop and have that one-stop shop for what you need, whether you're thirsty, whether you're hungry and want something good , a huge variety of menu. And all of that is underpinned by what we think is some of the best service in the retail industry. Well, you're definitely reputed for that. And I want to talk to you more about how you really do that. But as we mentioned, you grew up in Philadelphia. Can you remember the first time you ever walked into a Wawa? I can. I grew up just on the other side of the river in Southern New Jersey. And I remember it vividly, actually, my father, I grew up in the carwash business with my father. So I would go with him often there and collect quarters, sweep up that kind of thing, you know, talking at a very young age. And he would then take the quarters down to this deli, not far away from his carwash. And he would exchange the quarters for dollars. He was the de facto bank for the deli. And one day the deli owner said, "Look, we're selling to a place called Wawa." And I thought that was the worst thing in the world. Because I loved the deli owner. I loved the deli experience long story short when Wawa opened finally. My father took me and I saw the size of the candy aisle and I said, "Okay, I forget what the deli was. This is my new favorite place." And that was in Vineland, New Jersey. I remember it vividly. And I hear you are. You're the CEO. And as I understand it, you're identified in the company as the lead goose on your business card. What the heck is that all about? That is true. My business card says exactly that. And the reality is, when I became CEO, I don't take myself terribly seriously. I take the role and the responsibility of leadership seriously. But CEO and president felt like a boring title, David, as crazy as that might sound. So to know Wawa and to understand Wawa, the term comes from a Native American term for Canada goose. And so it's our mascot, it's in all of our branding. And the reality is we talk about lessons from geese quite a bit at Wawa. And one of the lessons is at times, somebody is the lead goose in that V formation. And other times you fall back in formation and honk with encouragement. And for now, I guess overall, I'm the lead goose. It just, that riff on our terminology makes a lot more sense and a lot more fun . You know, that's interesting. You know, I came up in the PepsiCo system and Wayne Calloway was the chairman of PepsiCo and he always talked about how, you know, you had to have that lead goose and, you know, you need to fly in formation. But I always love the honking, the honking part, you know, and that's the recognition part. How important is recognition in your culture, Chris? It's really important. And frankly, in any service industry, I think it's really important because, you know, people have to get that constant reassurance that what they're doing is the right thing. It is the honking, literally from the back. And that's what Geese, apparently, are physically doing is honking with encouragement and recognition. So for us at Wawa, and the different surveys we use, any of that methodology, try and understand engagement satisfaction. It all boils down to you really caring about people and they are recognizing the work they're doing often. And for us, it's terribly important. We do a lot of storytelling, a lot of institutions are built at Wawa just around recognition. You know, you say that roles are different, but the status is the same. How do you reinforce that belief? That's something I've heard from a great college basketball coach, Jay Wright. I borrowed that from him. And for us, I expect it to be really hard when you walk into a room, a large meeting at Wawa for someone to know who's the real boss or not. And when we are here, it really is about sharing the same goal, the organization first, putting people first. Ego's and your own personal agendas don't exist really at Wawa, or if they do, they don't exist for long. And frankly, when we're in stores, we're in the retail business. It's not about me or a senior leader arriving in a store to point out what's going wrong. It's really about us trying to remove obstacles for our store associates. What can we help them do to make the customer experience better? And so you walk into a store, if there's trash on the ground and you're walking in, you pick it up, just like a store associate would. When you walk in, if the coffee island needs to be restocked, you restock it. You just don't sort of point to an associate that, hey, you haven't done your job. So for us, that's a really important element. Frankly, I think it comes from our founding family, our wood family, that Qu aker background that they have, that humility, consensus building, and consensus and collaboration is a really important thing here in our culture. And I'd say that's another way that we really show that status is the same. It's just our roles are different at this time, at this day. You really say that the collaboration is the force multiplier in your culture. Can you give us an example of where you've seen that collaboration really lead to something that's really benefited your customers? Absolutely. I can give you our general manager council that I have outside of my office. I have a conference room called the general manager council room, council conference room, and that with each of their pictures on the walls. So it's one general manager, which is a store manager from each of our 10 geographic regions. I meet with them monthly and just me and they. And we walk through what are their issues that they're experiencing and their stores with their peers are experiencing. And we collaborate on solutions live in the moment. And you can imagine there's quite a few levels between me and the store general managers that would want to be in that meeting or would really want to try to solve that in a different way. But for us, it's really about the paying customer or the associated store level . What are the issues that we can solve right there? So the collaboration is tremendous because you hear leaders are general managers from different areas of the organization collaborating together to come up with solutions. And then we'll implement and communicate them out almost the same day at times. So that to me is just a powerful example of listening to our customers, our internal customers, and as well our paying customers, but then coming up with solutions and quickly really going to market with them. That's interesting because it's just you and your store managers. So you wipe out a lot of the layers there and go directly to what I always call them the number one leaders in the company, the store managers, because they create the culture in the stores. What did your people that work for you feel about that? We've had a long history at Wawa of having a store tour process, we call it, where leaders would go out each month and really a broad set of leaders into the stores and tour stores and talk to general managers. We still do that. That used to culminate in a meeting that was, well, maybe a little bit even uncomfortable at the time where the former CEO would bring in some of those general managers, you know, fall in sort of the business unit leads and point out the problems they had to make them fix it. So it's an evolution of that process, but you know, frankly, it's been a challenge. I think getting it off the ground early on about 10 years ago, but now when they're in this building and they're meeting with me, I got to tell you, there's a thousand people in this building that know that they're here and they're waiting for the output of what's going to happen. The ultimate thing is what exactly you said. The general manager of the store is running a $20 million business. They have 30, 40, 50, sometimes 80 people on the payroll. They're serving thousands of customers a week. They're the ones that create the culture, make the hiring and firing decisions, do all the things that are really important in that store to keep our business running . Everyone in our support office needs to know they're the most important people in the company. It's just one visible way of doing it. When you think about your best store managers, what do you see in them? What do they do in terms of building the brand? What's their mindset? It's funny. I probably learned more from our general managers, maybe than any other group, because what they do is quite amazing. I'd say there's different breeds or they lean on different attributes. We have some that are wonderful operators that will have the best conditions, the best service, the best scores of any of our metrics. People have others that are the best people and culture leaders that maybe aren 't the best at making money inside the box, but are the best at creating a culture that is creating a farm system for future leaders that are unlike any other. It's a balance. We think about it and talk about our groups of GMs in those ways. They're not all one or the other. A lot are really good at all of that. The best of the best in our stores, they can deliver an experience that is really complex, that will deliver super high volume in our stores, but one that has everyone singing off the same book. You can feel it. Just like I'm sure you walk into a wah-wah, I can't quite tell if they're over staffed or maybe understaffed. I can't quite tell if everything's working. You can tell and feel the culture in that store. When you feel that and see the interaction between customers and associates, that's when things are good and you have a good leadership team there. You have a motto that is basically, I think it's serving your friends and neighbors. That's how you look at your customers. It's not often you hear a business talk about their customers like that, but what changes in your organization when you look at your customer that way? I give my predecessor Howard Stokle the credit for that. Friends and neighbors serving friends and neighbors. It really talks to and it's the idea of where we got our higher purpose in calling. It's not about showing up at wah-wah and making sandwiches or keeping the floors clean or running register. It really is a place that becomes the town center for many of the communities that we serve. You are going to see your friends, your neighbors, the people that you go to church with or go to soccer with or friends with. They're going to see each other and it creates this really unique environment. We talk about and analyze a lot inside of our stores. It becomes the town hall. That higher calling for our associates is, make this the best three, four, five minutes of your friends and neighbors day. That's your higher calling. Join in that over a couple million people a day visit a wah-wah across our company. Wouldn't it be a wonderful thing if those communities had this place where they could come and take a breath from and break from the hectic world they're in just to get that little recharge, not just functionally food and drink, but also emotionally. Trust me when I say that there are thousands of evidence points around that that we really create this emotional connection that transcends anything that a business should do, but it's wonderful people at wah-wah doing that every day. Well you're obviously doing something right because in Philadelphia itself there's actually a wah-wah day. How do you celebrate that day as a company internally? So that started with just some fun and giving back. So April 16th is our anniversary of the first wah-wah that opened in 1964. And we years ago started to create the Wah-wah Foundation and really channel our philanthropy that was all grassroots. And it gave us a day and opportunity to recognize some of the great nonprofit charitable partners in the region in Philadelphia, give them a little lift to their cause and put them on center stage. And as well it was free coffee day. Well David we get a lot of interest in free coffee day. And when you give away free coffee and you help support some of the great organizations doing wonderful things it becomes a pretty recognizable day and it's been great to continue that each and every year and throughout all of the markets that we're in now. So yeah it's fun. We like to have and find opportunities to have fun with our customers, fun with our communities where we can. You know speaking of customers you obviously have an intimate relationship with your customers and you study them very closely and I read somewhere that your customers actually hold the door for people behind them longer. You know you've actually studied this and what does that tell you? I was just with a group of senior leaders for dinner. We had this exact conversation. To a person they will tell you if they're Wawa regulars this is a real thing. They feel it, they see it. And it's the exchange of thank yous. And the way I say it internally or even when I speak with folks externally is you just get an extra step or two is what we would tell you. So you know that sort of time when you walk in you open a door anywhere in the world around you and you look to see if someone's coming behind you. And there's that period of time it's a grey space of do you hold it or do you go in and let the door close and the next person gets it. At Wawa you get a couple extra steps. That's what I like to say that the person is a little further away but they know when they get in the store that they're going to see them around the coffee island. They're going to be waiting for a sandwich that they just ordered together. And odds are like I said earlier that they're going to know each other from town or know where they're going to start talking sports. So they're going to start talking about the current events of the day but in a way that is terribly comfortable, casual, open. And so Wawa it's almost a fail if you just walk in and close the door behind you or let it close behind you without looking. It's an amazing thing. We actually I want to study this and I want to get a billboard that sort of counts how many times the door has been held at Wawa but we're working on the visual analytics to make that happen. We'll see if it's possible. Well you're famous for your customer experiences and one of your famous customer experience happened to include country star Keith Urban. Can you tell us about that one? Yeah that was just in a small nondescript what we would call legacy, older non- fuel Wawa store in southern New Jersey and apparently he was in town for a concert and wanted to go visit something over there. And I believe he needed a little help money wise or the person next to him did but anyway he made a great connection right there at the store in line with a customer walked outside, took a picture with the customer and of course made the customers day. She was a huge fan and it just goes to show you that connection that happens in the store can happen with anyone. And the really great thing is is my understanding wonderful person really was just open and sincere and that's exactly what the Wawa customer experience and really what customers bring when they show up at Wawa. Yeah I understand that he forgot his wallet and the customer paid for it. I love that. I think that's great. I was thinking by myself if you measure how long your customers hold the doors for others I got to ask you and I bet you know the answer to this. How much time do your customers spend in the store? On the day part in the occasion the one we track the most closely is the morning and it's a hair under four minutes. It's just between three minutes 50 seconds and four minutes from when they walk in the door and walk out the door. That one's important. Research says if they're in the store more than five minutes as good as we are and no matter how great we make the experience after five minutes what we stand for is quick in and out the experience that the satisfaction goes down. How do customers, curiously how do they define fast today and how do you look at speed of service versus getting to getting to know your customers because you want to have this customer experience and yet you want to be fast. How do you balance those two things? Yeah we have some moments of truth we call them inside the store and they're the opportunities where you don't have at a Wawa of course that long intimate relationship where you can have a five minute conversation. It does happen sometimes but not often and the reality is we train but also hire for culture and empower our associates in those moments of truth to just connect with customers in a small way. What's a moment of truth? I'm walking down an aisle to go and address something and I walk past the customer. Just say hello how are you how's your day how you've been. If you're at the hoegy area making hoegies and customers are waiting just engage with a little eye contact and again with the customer there because that's a point where there's downtime. When it comes to time overall you know that is a challenge get people in and out quickly but also make an experience that will remember and for us it starts with the idea of just convenience. Care for their time. What customers tell us is look we get it sometimes it's busy sometimes something doesn't go right I might have to wait a little longer. What I don't like is if you don't really respect my time so if you're not going to open up that second or third or fourth register and I see associates that are just over there in the corner sort of it never happens really at a while I'm not doing something that looks important just respect our time. So that's what we try to do is deploy associates and have them recognize those cues so that we're respecting customers times and when it all comes together in our perfect days you can get in and out of a while really quickly especially with some new technology that we've introduced. All right David before you get back to your conversation with Chris Geissens I want to talk to you about the importance of self awareness and I know that you believe it's one of the key characteristics of successful leaders and I've learned so much from you about how to continue developing self awareness why is it so important that leaders have this trait. You know there's many truisms but one of them for sure is that you have to know yourself to grow yourself and the only way you can do that is have a high self awareness of who you are today and that'll help guide you to where you want to go tomorrow. You know it's one of the reasons why I wrote the book Take Charge of You How Self Coaching Can Transform Your Life and Career. Basically I want to give people the self coaching tools that can help them maximize their potential and building self awareness is one of those major things that we all have to do as leaders. We talk about this a lot among our team but when you lack self awareness really you kind of stay blind from the things that can really hold you back and if you don't understand where your blind spots are it's easy to get caught up in habits or behaviors that just aren't really productive and don't contribute to your growth and personal development. And the best leaders take accountability for making this happen themselves and again that's what Take Charge of You helps you do. It gives you the tools that you need to own your career and your development. So I really hope everybody takes the time out to not only read Take Charge of You but share it with their team and talk about the learnings within it because it can really be a major driver of team success and individual success. And you know what all the proceeds go to leadership development because we're passionate that how leaders lead to making the world a better place by developing better leaders. So go to Amazon or wherever you buy books and get a copy and see what happens when you take accountability for developing yourself. You also have an iconic product that you mentioned. Your hogi is wildly popular. Tell us the story behind that success. Like most things at Wawa, if you go back 30, 40 years ago, Wawa was similar to other convenience stores. We existed with third other parties inside of our stores Pizza Hut, yes, Dunkin and others that we were bringing in to try to build and bring food service credibility to our stores by using others brands. And what customers eventually told us was you don't need to do that. We trust who you are because of your dairy heritage, because of the operation that you run. Why don't you introduce your own products. And that's where really the hogi and our breakfast sandwiches were launched which are two of our iconic platforms. And now today if you're going to get a fresh made drink like a smoothie or an espresso based drink, cold or hot or you're going to get a sandwich, a hogi or a soup or you're going to get a breakfast sandwich, all of those are Wawa branded products. There's no more other parties inside of our stores. That was really from our customers giving us the credibility we had earned with them to give us the right to go and try that. So I would say we've iterated on the hogi platform for a long time and it still remains sort of the workhorse for us. As hogies go, frankly, our business goes and they've done well. That sounds funny. As hogies go, so does our business go. Speaking of funny, Tina Fey, as I understand, she actually did a skid on Saturday Night Live on your hogi. Tell us about that. She did. David, I was with our board of directors and a general manager from a North Jersey store right outside of New York calls and says, "The Saturday Night Live producers are just in the store." They said there's a huge skid about Wawa. They just bought a whole bunch of hogies and that's all they told us. Their heart sort of sinks because you're not sure how that's going to play out. She knows the brand and she had a lot of fun with it. They've done that a few times now. They've had a lot of fun with Wawa hogies. The whole basis is just around Philadelphia. When they have a skid that's based around Philadelphia or the notion of Philadelphia, it's hard not to pull off the Philadelphia sort of image without having Wawa or the Wawa hogi in it, which is pretty exciting for us. They worked out fine. It was awesome and we haven't had one, I guess, in a few years, but that's okay . You mentioned your coffee business a little bit earlier and I had your coffee the last time I was in Philadelphia and I had to tell you, it's very good. How important is this category to you and how do you compete with the likes of Starbucks and Dunkin' Donuts, which is a big brand in the Northeast. How do you really compete in such a competitive category? Coffee is super competitive. You're exactly right. In our markets, we do have number one share in drip coffee in the Philadelphia DMA for sure and most of our other markets. It takes a long time to build that business. Luckily for us, coffee is very habitual. When your taste profile accepts a coffee like Wawa, it's hard to get you to leave your brand and what you've grown up with. For us, it's been a long time. We've invested tremendously into our coffee business in terms of from water fil tration to the equipment we use, so the science, if you will, behind the coffee, the beans, the roasting is really, really high quality and we put a lot around that to make sure quality stays the same. We have some innovations happening now that are really fantastic for us, but we watch that category tremendously. I'll tell you, David, in the height of the pandemic, our coffee business went down over 30%. If you had told me before COVID that we lost 30% of our units for some reason in coffee, I couldn't imagine Wawa being Wawa without that. But what's happened is the diversity of our business that built the order, which in Wawa is in a touch screen, espresso, those cold drinks that are espresso based or all of these energy drinks have really replaced and are still continuing to replace the drip coffee business in a way that really is hit an inflection point. So for us, it remains tremendously important, but that built the order drink that you would think of a la Starbucks is becoming even more important for us now. You mentioned innovation in this category. What's happening that you're most excited about there? The innovation on the drip coffee business, we have some equipment that we're bringing to market and you've probably seen most listeners have probably experienced where you press a button and it'll grind, even have at home, grind and brew a single cup of coffee, which is a good experience. At Wawa, we don't have that largely because our volumes are so high, we need so much equipment or the weight would be too long. That's an important day part as we've talked about in terms of convenience. And then on that built the order beverage business, you have to be innovative there. You see it each season, whether it's fall with pumpkin flavors, whether it's candy cane or other with around the holidays now that we're in. So those are important innovations. We're going to launch our own branded energy line next year with a healthy, good for you energy base that you'll be able to get built to order your specifications. And that's really where a lot of the market is going. So we're excited about that and have a bunch in the hopper beyond that. As I listened to you talk, one of the things that really strikes me is that you 've evolved from leveraging a pizza hut brand to now saying, hey, we don't need to tap into pizza at its heritage. Let's create our own pizza if we're going to make a pizza. Let's create our own products. That had to be a huge strategic shift for you. What changes did it require for you as CEO to make so that you could move into all these categories? Because you're a product company now. Yep. Lucky for me, while I've been here 25 years, a lot of that heavy lifting happened with the previous CEO Howard. And he was the one that really started a lot of these platforms for growth and we're continuing to innovate on. What it means for us internally is we have to have product development, sensory , food scientists, culinary team that are just as good as any restaurant that we compete with and better. And so we have those skills and competencies internally. Our test kitchen is a place that the magic happens. It's a lot we've invested in there. So if you think of Wawa from that regard, we have that culinary side, but then it has to be married up with the operations engineering side. We are a pack to the gills, excel of freight train running all the time. That's the visual we have internally of we not just can create great products. They got to taste really good, but we have to deliver them in a time frame where it really meets a convenience customers need state. So we have engineers that are then using equipment, spacing, creating work cells that allow our stores to deliver things consistently every time, every store, every day. Because that's part of the magic of Wawa, whether I go in in New Jersey or Florida, whether I go in at midnight or if I go in first thing in the morning, it's got to be the same with I order that product. So for us, all of that comes together in a pretty unique way and we continue to invest in those platforms. We are launching a new pizza on our own next year and the tests have been quite phenomenal. We've tried pizza many times in the past. This is our first try. I would say it was a traditional pizza that you would really compare against what you would find in a pizza or dominoes. And I think it's going to have a good shot of being better. You've been doing this since the 60s and what does it look like to live in the tension between honoring how things have been and innovating and changing for a better tomorrow. It's a tough one. You really do want to honor certain things, but you also recognize change is constant. And so for us, what we try to focus on is keeping our purpose, our core, our values really focused in and that tradition of what those values are. We talk about them. We celebrate them constantly. That really does need to stay the same. That culture that's founded in values that are people first, that needs to remain the same. But what you can innovate, what you need to change is what you do. So the why and the center of everything, while that is your anchor, what you do around it can change because consumers are finicky and they're going to change and they 're going to want new things and new experiences and services. And so we focus innovation on the what. There's certain elements of the what that probably are somewhat sacred. Are we going to always sell hogies? Probably. But there's other elements of our business, the what we sell and what we do today that are going to change. We didn't do catering. We didn't do delivery. We didn't have services like that. We didn't even have a built to order espresso based platform 10, 12 years ago. And those things will change. So that's where we innovate. We innovate where we have credibility and can be authentic with our customers and where they want us to move to. So that's where I think we try to draw the staying in the traditions of the past and our values, culture and purpose, but really innovating around what we are and the services and offer we provide. New units, a big part of any retail equation and you're you have a bowl goal to double your store count from 900 to 1800 stores by 2030. What's the biggest challenge that you have going into new markets? Our biggest new market is just one we went into 10 years ago in Florida. We've learned a tremendous amount there and it provides us some confidence and also a playbook for jumping into other new markets. So I think when we look at our box, we look at our offer, the culture we have, we think we have plenty of opportunity, like you said, to double the number of stores within about a decade from where we sit here now. The biggest challenges can our culture keep up with that. And so when you have a people first culture, one that internally feels a bit like family, it's high touch, consensus, collaborative, as you grow, you don't want to out pace that. And so a lot of our energy is going into trying to make sure that we have the right leaders, that we're planning the seeds of culture in our new builds and new markets. And at the same time that some of the really unique institutions that we have, we can scale them and not do away with them and not scale them in a way they feel impersonal , but also really still carry that cultural, that personal feeling as we go into whether it's the Midwest, whether we push into North Carolina, Georgia from the markets we're in now. But I think we have a lot of great success in some of the markets we've been in recently that'll provide us a pretty good playbook for that. Yeah, how would a store be different in Florida versus Philly? Do you carry the same products? And let's say, I imagine you went from the Northeast to Florida because there's a lot of transplants in Florida. So what happens if you're a Florida customer, you come into your Wawa and you don't have what you had in Philly? Has that ever happened? And how do you respond to that? The first day, the first store in Florida, all the best research, everything and that you do to go in with your best offer out of the gate. And when we looked at the Florida market, the incidence of iced tea, for example, was not a very high usage, certainly compared to the consumption of it in the Mid- Atlantic. So we did not bring down our Wawa iced tea, which is a branded iced tea we sell the most of in our stores up here that comes right out of our dairy and beverage center. The first store we opened, SeaWorld, Orlando, Florida, huge turnout. And I remember looking at people observing, they're walking up and down our cold box aisle and they looked a bit baffled. And I remember I stopped a few of them and they said, well, I came from your iced tea and I said, oh boy, I'm sorry, we don't have it. And finally, David, there was a young brother and sister and as they were walking out of the store without anything, is there anything I can help you find? And they said, well, we came for your iced tea, but I don't see it. I said, I'm so sorry, I gave the same answer. And they said, look, we just drove three hours to get your iced tea. I got on the phone. I called up here. I said, get iced tea down here tomorrow. And they did. And that was one of those big changes that you needed to make. We realized that our branded products carried a lot more weight, even in a new market than we ever thought. And so we have a core set of products, our branded products, food service beverage, that we have in every location. When you go down to Florida, our assortment will vary within those categories a bit. So if you're in Florida, for example, you like a breakfast sandwich on a croiss ant, but if you're in New Jersey, it's got to be on a bagel. Those are the types of things that vary, but not really offer terribly much. Chris, we were going to do this podcast and Ian, the hurricane Ian hit Florida and you rightly said, hey, I've got to go to Florida. And you're known for serving first, leading second. As a CEO, how important is that in terms of you representing the culture and what are some of the things you do to make sure that you are expanding wah-wah with the cultural values that are critical? It's really important to me. Personally, it's important to the senior leadership team. And it's not, these aren't just, you know, get on a plane and go take a couple of photo ops. As a matter of fact, we told the team they couldn't have a photographer with us . This is really about getting on the ground to show you care and to see what we can do to make the lives of our associates better. We had to be their first hand. So our entire leadership team flew down. We spent the full day. We visited 25 stores, really the stores that were hardest hit from Hurricane Ian. We wanted to see what was happening just a few days after in terms of the lives of our associates. How were they impacted and what did we need to do as an organization to support them at home? That was really job one. And two was what did they need at the store level to sort of help with whether it's suppliers, products, services that our customers needed. And, you know, we were one of the first organizations to reopen after the storm had passed. And you're talking the next day and the stories of heroics from our associates were phenomenal. But, you know, those are the types of things that, and the storytelling around that, that really garners culture. And we came back and we made some pretty big changes quickly and with our associates and with our staffing schedules. But, you know, the best thing about our culture and what we saw live is when we talked to a lot of the people that were working, our associates in those stores, they were from across the other side of the state. They had already mobilized and were driving two to three hours a day because there was no hotels to stay in just to support their coworkers on the other side of the state, many of which they didn't know. They just carried the same brand and umbrella called Wawa and that culture ex uded. So that was the most rewarding thing. Yes, you saw a lot of damage. Yes, you heard some really bad stories. But you also saw our culture in action and storytelling around that in a market that's only 10 years old for us, but yet that culture is already captured. That I think is one of the good ways of trying to share the culture and continuing to propagate through as our growth continues. I've heard you say that stores run the show here. There are no cash registers at the corporate office. What's been your personal journey as a leader for this to go from something that you might say to a really heartfelt conviction? To understand, I think a lot of my leadership philosophy, it really looked at my background. I think one, I grew up with a father that had car washes and worked hard, didn 't have a strong deep educational background, but he just knew to work hard and treat people well. I witnessed that all the time. Frankly, much of my leadership formation was here at Wawa. Much of that witnessed Dick Wood, our founder, modern day founder and CEO for decades and Howard Stokkel have this idea that if you put people first, it's always going to win in the long run. Specifically, Dick was the one that would go to the stores and really make sure that they were heard, listened to, and propped up as the most important in the business. That just always stuck with me. Throughout my time here at Wawa of 25 years, I've had opportunities to work closely with our store general managers at various times. I always walked away seeing just such great convictions, such resolve, such strong leadership, such loyalty, that it's hard to run from people like that. You just want to run towards them and make sure that you're supporting and giving everything you can. That's only grown for me because we're a pretty small company when it comes to overhead and we're pretty centralized. Corporate offices as they grow, they can tend to believe that they're the center of the universe. I just never really want that to happen. A lot of good things happen in our corporate office. A lot of great ideas and strategies get born here, but they just don't work and they won't come to life without great execution. I think that's what's made Wawa successful of the years great execution and that rests right on the general managers across almost a thousand stores. We'll be back with the rest of my conversation with Chris Geisens in just a moment. Well, I don't know about you, but I got chills on Sunday afternoon watching my good friend John Ron win the 2023 Masters. What a performance and what a moment seeing him win on the birthday of his fellow Spaniard, the late, great Sevi Balisteros. It was also the 40th anniversary of Sevi's win at the Masters. It was sometimes the stars are just aligned and they were aligned for John Rom to win this year's Masters. The history that we're talking about here is just tremendous and it's exactly what John Rom talked about when he joined me on the podcast last year. For him, history is a guide and a teacher and when you can draw lessons and insights from the past, you give yourself a massive advantage. I like to know who paid the ground before me and be thankful for what they've done. Clearly, there's been some great examples of how people have excelled in the game of golf and how they've done what they've done. You don't have to bring in that wheel here. You just try to be the best player you can be and I think you can learn a lot from this past player. Obviously, the game has changed, but by knowing what's happened in the past and what they've done in tournaments, even getting just little one quotes you might get in an interview, you might get something that might help you be a better player. This whole conversation is full of insights into how John plays and coaches himself and there's a ton of takeaways for anyone who wants to be at the very top of their game. Scroll back in the feed and give it a listen. It's episode 87 here on Howl Eaters Lead. One of the things that really reinforces your people first mindset is that I know your company's privately held, his family owned, and about half of the stock, as I understand, is actually owned by the employees. How did that come about? That has to be a huge competitive advantage for you. It is. We're one of the largest employee owned companies in the country. We have about 40% of Wawa, so our biggest shareholders owned by a trust that exists for over 20,000 of our Wawa associates. We're just now expanding the eligibility to reduce the requirements so that you can really become an owner almost day one starting at Wawa now. What that does is a couple of things. One, the history there goes back. We're 30 years with that plan. It's one of the oldest plans in the country with the laws that have changed in the early 90s. It allows us to share ownership and give line of sight to the people that make it all happen every day, our associates throughout the company. For me, David, I work with a family, a founding family who still has a big chunk of ownership, and they're still vested in Wawa. What they said years ago was we want to share that with our associates. You have associates that work at Wawa for 20 years, 30 years. It's not unusual for us to celebrate anniversaries of 50 years at Wawa. We take a big chunk of our profits. We put it into Wawa stock each year. We divvy it up to the ESOP and give it for free to our associates that work for us. It's just great alignment. When you have a culture and a service industry that has people first, that has this warm family feeling on our best days, and then you also have alignment with when you execute at store level, when you take that extra leap of customer service, you're not just doing Wawa, this organization good. You're doing your own self-good because it really builds your own wealth long- term. We've taught people here that wealth creation through ownership in a company is an important thing. What they will do in terms of culture and going the extra mile is simply over the top. It has a huge impact. Harvard studied it, others have studied it, Rutgers as an employee ownership center that studied it, and there's real value that we get from it. That's the icing on the cake. You do it because it's the right thing to do for people to take care of them over the long term. Chris, you started out as an accountant as I understand it, Deloitte. Then you came to Wawa's CFO. Tell us the story of how you evolved from a financial person into such a customer and culture focused executive. You've broken the mold here, at least in terms of the stereotypes that people might have. In fairness, I didn't start here as chief financial officer, but I started in finance and accounting and saw many roles over a number of years and ascended to chief financial officer about 15 years ago. David, I don't know whether I fully lost, if you will, all of the CPA in me. When I worked at Deloitte, I think the best way to say it is I never really felt fulfilled with that role. It's nothing against that organization and what they do. There's wonderful people there. It was always centered around people for me and not really numbers. I think my brain works in numbers at time, but my heart tends to win the day. As I grew here, and like I said earlier, just had the opportunity to see leadership. Someone who ran store operations early in my career tapped me to go and work alongside of him, Harry McHugh. I learned that there's just this whole other world, to some extent, finance, accounting type people have a certain way of leadership at times. I learned that this person had the biggest heart and really was about leading groups of people and motivating groups of people. That was just fascinating to me early in my career. I think I was just blessed to just have an opportunity to be mentored, coach, and observe great leaders here. That's what I think just helped propel my career to the extent it has. One of the leaders that I had the privilege of working with at Young Brands was Scott Bergren. He's on your board and he has said that there's no leader that he's ever seen that's been so philanthropic and such a believer in giving back to the community. You do that from your heart and it's obviously paying big dividends. What drives that? I talk about a heart. Scott Bergren is so an I admire tremendously because of the size of his heart and his innovative spirit that he has. I know you've worked closely with him in your career. It's funny, David, when I was promoted and announced back in 2012 that I've become the next CEO, people knew me as a CFO. They immediately thought, "We're going to go into a cost-cutting mode. We're going to slow down everything. Wages won't grow as much because that's the stereotype." I like to think the opposite. I knew the whole landscape pretty deeply from a financial picture at Wawa. I know what makes our economics tick really well. At the same time, I learned in that journey what makes me and this organization tick. It's not cutting. You don't cut your way to success and growth. You need it sometimes, but it's really investing. It's investing in people. It's investing in the communities you serve. Frankly, I think one's measure of success isn't the stock price growth they had as CEO or it's not the revenue growth. The impact they left on the people and the communities they served when they're done. That's all I'm trying to measure my success. I think luckily, I'm at a place where the values and the culture at Wawa fits that pretty good. I think the interesting thing, Chris, for all our listeners is that you're doing that. If you benchmark your financial performance versus all your competitors, you blow them out of the water. Your financial metrics are better than all of the people who are trying to save their way to success. So good on you. It's amazing to think that a convenience store could be a Colt brand. Chick-fil-A is a Colt brand. Southwest Airlines is a Colt brand. What advice would you have for someone who wants to make that an objective? Thank you for that. We strive for that every day. You can never take any of that for granted. Tremendous respect for Chick-fil-A. We've benchmarked with Southwest in the past. For me, I think in the retail business, when you think about a Colt brand, it starts with a few things. One, you have to take care of inside the business first. Your associates have to realize and grow to be part of something special. It's not just about next quarter for us. He's a private company, I got to tell you, we're as rigorous and have governance just like a public company, but we tend to look long-term and we invest in our associates more than what maybe some of our competitors would do. That would be one. You got to make them believe there's a higher purpose here, that it's not just a functional experience. It's not transactional. That's got to be really good, though. We have this customer relationship ladder that we've shown internally, and it starts with satisfaction and convenience. You do have to do the basics really well and do them well all the time. Not that we do, but you got to strive for that. Then you got to find moments and opportunities to create an emotional connection. That's where I think if it's authentic, if it comes from the bottom up, from your culture, from within, you can really create something special over a long period of time . It doesn't happen overnight. I think we've had a wonderful foundation here with an offer that resonates. Now we have a culture and we have a group of associates that really show up every day to follow that purpose of fulfilling someone's life, making it just a little bit better in the time I have. Those opportunities, when you can stitch them together and find the moments of making an emotional connection, be the cheerleader that they need that day, be someone where they can hug or cry on your shoulder, which happens quite a bit at O'ahuah, they tend to make your organization find a place in a customer's heart a little differently than just a place I can go and get something good to eat. That's what I think our associates at Store Level have done, that frankly, we 've just created a platform for them to do it and be their authentic selves and it's pretty amazing to watch. Chris, this conversation has been so much fun and I want to have some more with my lightning round of Q&A. Are you ready for this? Yes, ready. What is one word that best describes you? Purpose. You could be one person for a day beside yourself, who would it be and why? I'd want to walk in the president's footsteps for a day and just see how the constituents and how that plays out. It's just a calling of more responsibility around leadership. What's your biggest pet peeve? Lack of ownership. If you don't take ownership in a personal accountability. What's been your most unique trip to the island of Anguilla? I thought she was going to be the visit to the Pope. No, you know what, I have to take that back. You're right. It's got to be the trip to Rome, which actually took my daughters, the delegation of the world meeting of families in preparation for the papal visit here in Philadelphia. That would have been in 2015, I believe, summer of 2015. That was quite fantastic. What's your biggest source for learning? Just the people around me. Learning from individuals, no matter their background, no matter what role they have, that's been my biggest source. Frankly, it's store level, associates and leaders at store level. If you turned on your radio in your car, what would we hear? You would hear KYW news radio almost constantly, which is our local news, which you only need 20 minutes of it, but I have about a 45 minute commute. It's still there the whole time. What's your favorite? I can't believe this is happening to me moment. When I met the Pope in person in Philadelphia, that was definitely one of those forever. What's something about you? Few people would know. I grew up working on boats during the summer, so much so that I got, I was one of the youngest captains at 19 and I bought a boat and had a captain's license for 100 tons up to 100 miles offshore and I ran my own business through college. Great. That's the end of the lightning round, but curiously, do you have anything? Anything in your office that you keep to remind you of what the business is all about? I have a lot of them. The thing that comes to mind for me is there's a patient family at Children's Hospital of Philadelphia that I've gotten a chance to meet because of a, I'm involved there as well as Wawa has been and they wrote a letter of just how important Wawa was to them when they were traveling from out of town up to Philadelphia for their visits. They needed to be for not great reasons at the hospital often and what role W awa played in just making their daughters day and life during that time so much better. So that I hold as a pretty high standard of how much we need to nurture this brand and culture. Awesome. You know, I follow you on Twitter and I see that your son is a darn good basketball player. How do you balance the family and the need to be present when it matters? David, I hope one day I look back and hope I did a good job at that. My older son is a very good basketball player and I've had the opportunity when he was younger to even help coach. Again, always with if I can be there type of mantra, but I made it quite a bit and it's been just an amazing experience between me and I and a lot of our relationships from a basketball court. So you know, it's hard to balance. There are just things you need to say no to. I think you would know if I said yes to every request I'd be out of the office every night of the week, every day of the year and you just need to find the time, the things that are really important to the business, really important to you and save those other times and protect your family time because you're never going to get it back. All right. Last question. What's the one most important bit of advice you'd give to aspiring leaders? You know, the one I go to try to intrude is you really have to know yourself. You really, and it takes time, especially younger leaders, know who you are, know what you stand for, understand your authentic self and find an organization where your public voice and your private voice can be the same because your values after knowing yourself and really understanding them, they really have to match the organization that you work in that you're a part of because if they don't, you'll see separation in your public and private voice and so will others. That's not going to work. That's great advice. And Chris, I want to thank you so much because you mentioned it. You know, you have to say no to some things or you would be working 24/7. There aren't enough hours in the day. And I can tell you how thankful I am that you took the time to spend an hour with us because I think that there's some gold here. There's some great gold here. There's wisdom in the way how you run that company and what you and your team and the founders have really created. So congratulations and thanks for sharing it so freely. Absolutely. Appreciate that. Thank you. It was good. The lightning round was tough. Now I'm going to have to think about some of those questions and that'll be my ride home later tonight thinking about what should I have said on that one. But I appreciate it. This has been really fun and the time flew. Well, I don't know about you, but I hope Wawa comes to my neck of the woods here in Louisville soon so I can get hands on one of those legendary hogies. But hey, even without the hogies, I really admire what Chris and his team are building a Wawa. I hope you've seen today just how important it is to invest in your team. When you train them and develop them and tie them into the success of your business, you get all kinds of benefits, better customer service, higher productivity, more growth, more profitability. I've seen it happen over and over again and it's true. When you do the right thing, the right things happen. Prioritize people's well-being and happiness and you'll build a culture of trust, loyalty and excellence that will pay off in the long term. It really is a win-win. So let me ask you, what opportunities do you have to lean into this idea with your customers and your team members? Ask yourself this week, where can you prioritize your culture and invest in people or your community? How could that strengthen your business overall? So do you want to know how leaders lead? What we learned today is that great leaders know that when you do the right thing, the right things happen. Coming up next on How Leaders Lead is Annie Young-Scrivener, CEO of Wawa. You know, I've always known that I have opportunities in certain areas and strengthen others and that's like everybody. And I think that when you create a team, you can actually create that perfect person and it has to be a team that's diverse. Otherwise you'll have the same opportunity areas. And so people that challenge me in an uncomfortable way do the best on helping me grow the business and rethink what we're going to go do. So be sure to come back again next week to hear our entire conversation. Thanks again for tuning in to another episode of How Leaders Lead, where every Thursday you get to listen in while I interview some of the very best leaders in the world. I make it a point to give you something simple on each episode that you can apply to your business so that you will become the best leader you can be. [BLANK_AUDIO] [BLANK_AUDIO]