Pit Stop Executive Receives First John MacDougall Leadership Award
By Greg Lindenberg on May 24, 2017SYRACUSE, N.Y. -- The New York Association of Convenience Stores presented Case Marshall, vice president of Pit Stop Convenience Stores, Weedsport, N.Y., with the first John MacDougall Leadership Award.
The association established the award, named for John MacDougall, the late president of Nice N Easy and NYACS co-founder, in cooperation with the John and Elaine MacDougall Foundation this year.
John’s wife, Elaine, and two of her daughters, Sherry Snyder and Debbie Ostrander, were on hand at NYACS’ recent annual convention and trade show for the ceremony. John MacDougall's former colleague Peter Tamburro, now with Marcy, N.Y.-based Cliff’s Local Market, presented Marshall with the award.
At the May 11 event, NYACS also elected Larry Bull and Mike Deuser to the New York Convenience Store Hall of Fame.
Here are more details on the honorees …
Legacy of Leadership: John MacDougall
John MacDougall, CEO of Nice N Easy Grocery Shoppes, Canastota, N.Y., died on June 21, 2014. He is remembered for a business he built from the ground up, and for a chain that embraced foodservice long before many others in the c-store industry. But he is most fondly recalled for his generous, larger-than-life personality and spirit, for his leadership and for his relationship with his customers.
The annual John MacDougall Leadership Award goes to the individual or company who best demonstrates the qualities that characterized MacDougall's storied career: Leadership in the industry, a commitment to relationship building, success in the c-store business and active involvement in NYACS.
- MacDougall was CSP’s Retail Leader of the Year in 2013. Click here for more.
Case Marshall
Case Marshall, the inaugural recipient of the John MacDougall Leadership Award, has been on the NYACS retail board since 1995. He became its chairman in 2001 at age 30, the youngest chairman in NYACS history. He has served as treasurer ever since and has chaired the convention committee since 2011, in addition to acting unofficially as “systems analyst” for the NYACS office. He is a member of the New York Convenience Store Hall of Fame.
In addition to 18 Pit Stop locations throughout the Finger Lakes region of New York, Case and his family operate E&V Energy, a heating-oil and propane distribution company; Patriot Tank Lines, a petroleum-trucking company; and Pyrus Energy, an alternative-energy company.
Pictured: Sherry Snyder (left), Debbie Ostrander, Case Marshall, Elaine MacDougall
Larry Bull
NYACS’ C-Store Hall of Fame honors individual retailers and suppliers for exceptional achievement in and service to the c-store industry.
Larry Bull is president and CEO of Bull Brothers. Inc., Utica, N.Y., and a managing director and part owner of Fastrac Markets LLC, based in East Syracuse, N.Y., a c-store chain operating throughout upstate New York.
Bull, along with his brothers Bruce and Marty, purchased Bull Bros. (formerly Herkimer Petroleum) from their parents in 1984 and transformed the heating-oil and motor-fuel company into a c-store operator with retail locations throughout central New York.
In 1998, seeing the need for a greater presence throughout the upstate New York area, Bull Bros., Clark’s Petroleum and Glider Oil merged their c-store operations to form Fastrac Markets. Fastrac currently operates 50 stores under the names Fastrac Markets and Fastrac Cafe from Watertown to the Pennsylvania border and from Buffalo to just west of Albany.
Bull has served on the NYACS board for 12 years, including three years as legislative committee chairman.
Mike Deuser
Mike Deuser is vice president of foodservice for Tripifoods Inc., a family-owned wholesale distributor based in Buffalo, N.Y.
He has spent his entire 50-year career in the food industry, starting as a dishwasher in restaurants and working his way up through the ranks to management while in high school and college.
After graduating from Erie County Technical School with a degree in foodservice administration, he went to work for an industrial feeding company and Bells Supermarkets, first as a deli specialist and then as director of retail foodservice. He joined Tripifoods in 1996 as director of foodservice. The company promoted him to vice president in 2001.
He is an eight-year member of the NYACS associate board and served as its chairman in 2013-14. He has served on the NYACS convention committee since 2001 and produces the Tripifoods-sponsored NYACS Chairman’s Banquet each year. He co-chaired NYACS’ Chairmen’s Open golf tournament in 2014 in Ellicottville, N.Y.
Deuser received the Carl Tripi Award from NYACS in 2015 recognizing his contributions to New York’s c-store industry.