Convenience-store retailer Neon Marketplace, a retail brand of Procaccianti Cos., has appointed Adi Dhandhania as chief executive officer. As CEO, Dhandhania will assume day-to-day leadership of the company, its growth strategy and the continued evolution of the brand.
He will also join Neon’s board of directors.
“The board and I are confident that Adi is the right person to lead Neon at this exciting time in our growth to build valuable momentum as we scale up the business,” said Jim Procaccianti, president and CEO of Procaccianti Cos., Cranston, Rhode Island. “He is a driven leader with significant experience working in retail, technology and operating efficiently at scale. We are pleased to have him as our next CEO.”
The chain has seven locations, five Neon Marketplace stores in Providence and Warwick, Rhode Island, and Quincy, Seekonk and Freetown, Massachusetts, and two Neon Marketplace Express locations in Middletown and Portsmouth, Rhode Island.
The Neon Marketplace stores are open 24 hours a day and feature a made-to-order kitchen, also open 24 hours a day. They also feature a premium café with customized espresso drinks and bean-to-cup coffee, as well as hot express breakfast, a fresh bakery, prepackaged fresh salads, healthy food selections and brick oven pizza. The stores have a drive-thru, an ATM and a Bitcoin ATM.
The Neon Marketplace Express locations are open 6 a.m. to 11 p.m., feature hot express breakfast, a fresh bakery, an ATM and a Bitcoin ATM.
Neon is also an “energy marketplace,” offering traditional motor fuel as well as Tesla electric-vehicle (EV) charging.
Before joining Neon, Dhandhania served as COO for North America at Bally’s Interactive, a gaming and hospitality company where he led the transition and expansion into interactive gaming. During his tenure there, Dhandhania held several senior leadership positions and was involved in numerous merger-and-acquisition transactions totaling more than $3.5 billion. Prior to Bally’s, Dhandhania held various strategy and operations leadership roles at Brightstar Corp., a wireless device services company backed by Softbank.
From 2010 to 2016, Dhandhania worked at GTECH, where he started as an engineer and later held several senior management roles in business operations and retail. At IGT, he led retail sales and operations for the company in New Jersey serving more than 7,000 retailers while working alongside major convenience-store and gas station chains and several independent locations. Dhandhania also has firsthand experience working in family-owned and -operated convenience stores.
“As an early investor in Neon, I have long been a believer in the company’s vision to redefine the future of convenience. I am delighted to join the talented team at Neon and The Procaccianti Group in this exciting new venture,” Dhandhania said.
Procaccianti Cos. launched the Neon Marketplace c-store brand in 2020. The concept caters to customers’ needs by delivering a “refreshing and stylish experience designed to create a sense of community,” the company said.
The company has a long‐term goal of developing more than 150 stores in the New England market, with a particular focus on Rhode Island and Massachusetts. The company targets areas where it believes the c-store customer is underserved and areas where growing populations or business growth have resulted in increased vehicle traffic and consumer demand.
Neon Marketplace is a proprietary brand of Procaccianti Cos., a private real estate investment and services firms with more than six decades of experience owning and operating retail, hospitality, commercial and other forms of investment real estate.
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