Natalie Morhous had recently been promoted to president of RaceTrac when she was having lunch with a friend who asked her what she was most afraid of in the new role.
“I’m most afraid that people will stop telling me what I don’t want to hear,” Morhous responded, prompting her friend to recommend to her a book by Kim Scott, “Radical Candor: Be a Kick-Ass Boss Without Losing Your Humanity.”
The book, which illustrates how leaders can personally care about employees while also challenging them directly with criticism or praise, perfectly illustrated what Morhous wanted RaceTrac’s culture to be.
One of the toughest parts of her job is to create an environment at RaceTrac where everyone feels valued, and where people can respectfully disagree and push back on each other, Morhous says.
“I have learned over the past four and a half years since being president of RaceTrac that just having a title impacts how people are around you,” she says. “And so, it takes real conscious effort for me every single day to create an environment where people at all levels of the organization are willing to push back on me and disagree with me in a room.”
It’s important because Morhous, she admits, has blind spots. She knows that people at other levels of the organization have knowledge and expertise that she doesn’t.
“And so, if they’re not willing to share that and to disagree with me, because of that perspective, my decision-making will be compromised,” she says.
That’s not to say Morhous doesn’t have a comprehensive view of the organization. The third-generation leader of the family-owned business began her career with RaceTrac in 2012. She served as director of strategy and development, executive director of strategy and solutions, executive director of Energy Dispatch and vice president of Energy Dispatch before assuming her role as president of RaceTrac in February 2019.
- RaceTrac is No. 15 on CSP’s 2023 Top 202 ranking of convenience store chains by store count.
Morhous’ grandfather, Carl Bolch Sr., started the company in 1934 when he opened Carl Bolch Trackside Stations in St. Louis. His son, Carl Bolch Jr. (who won CSP’s Retail Leader of the Year award in 2009), took over as CEO in 1967, and Carl Bolch Jr.’s eldest daughter, Allison Moran, was CEO from 2012 to 2017.
While Morhous has taken lessons from her family members who have come before her, she has also forged a path of her own as she leads RaceTrac into the next generation of convenience retail.
Reluctance and Credibility
For much of her life, Morhous never thought she would join the family business. When she was at the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania earning her MBA, her sister and father presented her with the job director of special projects at RaceTrac, headquartered in Atlanta, where she grew up.
“They pitched that in a really good way: ‘We need this, and you have this experience, so could you bring this to RaceTrac?’ And that, for the first time, made me think that I’d be able to build my own personal credibility through doing that in the company,” Morhous says.
She also had been interning at General Mills, working with their cereal brands for strategic growth customers. That experience sowed the seed of interest in retail.
“That experience in itself, and how much I enjoyed it, opened my eyes to things I thought I could love at RaceTrac for the first time,” Morhous says.
AJ Siccardi, president of Metroplex Energy Inc., the fuel supply and commodity trading subsidiary of RaceTrac, says the special projects team was the perfect place for Morhous to start her career at RaceTrac.
“She got to see every section of the business on a cross-functional basis,” says Siccardi, who has worked with Morhous since she joined the company. “Her team was directly responsible for connecting the various different departments and driving strategic initiatives and big important projects at the company. And her teams were fantastic.
They were, at the time, a reflection of her. They were intelligent; they were hardworking. You could count on them, and they were excited to be in the role that they were in.”
After working in special projects for several years, Morhous asked RaceTrac CEO Max McBrayer if she could head up Energy Dispatch, the transportation company that hauls fuel for RaceTrac.
“She’s courageous and is willing to take risks,” McBrayer says of Morhous. “She learns things very quickly so that she becomes confident in her decision-making in a relatively short fashion, [as was] very much demonstrated with Energy Dispatch.”
Success there would lead Morhous to the role of president of the retail chain in February 2019. A year later, the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
“A lot of things changed, and her courage, her confidence in herself and her decision-making were instrumental in us coming through that in a very successful way,” McBrayer says.
Driven by Achievement
Having confidence to be herself was important to Morhous, especially taking over the family business. When she started, Morhous questioned whether she would be able to accomplish her own achievements outside of just being part of the company’s founding family.
“But I haven’t had that experience here, actually,” she says. “I don’t feel that I live in my father’s shadow or any other previous leader of RaceTrac’s shadow. I have somehow been able to absorb and learn a lot from the leaders who came before me but still have enough confidence to be me.”
“And the reality is that, while my father and I certainly share things in common, we also have distinct differences from one another. And I haven’t been afraid to lean into who I really am. I’ve never felt like I needed to pretend to be someone I’m not, and that has helped me chart my own path.”
Natalie’s mother, Susan Bolch, says she and her husband Carl Bolch Jr. thought it was important for their children to get education and experience outside of RaceTrac because when you’re a family member in a family business, people will look at you critically.
“[Morhous] has the ability to step up when you have to have a difficult conversation, but she does it with poise and understanding.”
“Natalie has had the ability to have various roles within the company,” Susan Bolch, who is on the RaceTrac Board of Directors, says. “So she not only completed her education in a stellar way, but she also worked outside the company in consulting for five years and then fulfilled these various roles so that by the time she was chosen as president, she was ready for the job.”
Morhous can also put her own stamp on RaceTrac because the business today is quite different from when her father or grandfather were running it, McBrayer says. Carl Bolch Sr. started the business as a small trackside store that sold gasoline. Carl Bolch Jr. moved into selling “smokes and cokes” products, further developing the business.
Now, Morhous is deciding what the next steps are for RaceTrac, through things like foodservice and diversifying its energy portfolio, McBrayer says.
Morhous is very much her father’s daughter in the sense that they both want to make RaceTrac bigger and better, says McBrayer, who worked with Bolch Jr. for decades.
She also has amazing business acumen and raw intelligence like her father, Siccardi says. But it’s Morhous’ ability to form personal relationships, paired with her ability to give difficult feedback, that really set her apart as a leader, he says.
Radical Candor
Morhous’ beliefs in radical candor have not only helped shape the culture of RaceTrac but also the careers of those she works with.
People appreciate the honest feedback, Siccardi says. “And as difficult as it is for any leader to give difficult feedback, I think it’s really empowering,” he says. “And I think it’s empowering because you actually give somebody an opportunity to do something with it. And they can choose whether they do something with it or not.”
Ben Saylor, who worked at RaceTrac from 2012 to 2022, and spent much of that time in the same department as Morhous, experienced the benefits of the radical candor concept firsthand. While at RaceTrac, Saylor says he had leaders who were willing to have a hard conversation with him and tell him what he wasn’t doing well, what he could do better and asked how they could help him.
“Had they just done the easy thing and say, ‘Hey, yeah, that was great. No problem,’ and I didn’t really get to learn from those things, I never would have become what I became, especially in the time frame in which I was able to. I feel like [Morhous] really brought that concept to the culture,” Saylor says.
Morhous has always been forthright and transparent, her mother says.
“She has the ability to step up when you have to have a difficult conversation, but she does it with poise and understanding,” Susan Bolch says. “You have to have those qualities to get the facts, and a lot of Natalie’s job involves getting the facts from other people.”
Morhous also practices humility, and makes sure everyone at the table’s opinion matters, Saylor says.
“Morhous made it very clear that it was not going to be the C-suite that ultimately dictated the success of the company,” Saylor says. “They were there to help guide, to be listeners, to make a decision; but if we were going to execute as a company, it was going to have to be everyone in every department who was going to help us achieve that.”
Morhous and the company believe in letting the best idea win, regardless of who it came from, Robby Posener, RaceTrac’s chief development officer, says, and that requires listening.
“[Morhous] doesn’t enter into a conversation with an anchored position,” he says. “She is very, very astute at listening to the room and watching others and listening to others before making her voice known or making her position on a topic known.”
While she leads more than 10,000 employees, Morhous doesn’t sit on a pedestal or think she’s better than anyone else, Posener says. She supports people from all walks of life and all backgrounds.
Female Representation
Morhous knows she doesn’t look like the typical c-store leader, or any C-suite leader, for that matter. Only 26% of C-suite leaders in the United States and Canada are women, according to a Women in the Workplace report from Palo Alto, California-based Lean In.
Sometimes she experiences imposter syndrome—or feelings of inadequacy that persist despite evident success—where she’s doubted herself. But she says she’s been fortunate in her career to have leaders who have confidence in her, and she can feel that confidence.
“And feeling that allowed me to become more confident myself, to really believe in myself and my own abilities and decision-making and to use my voice,” she says.
Morhous is proud of the female representation RaceTrac has at its executive level and says diversity and inclusion are very important to the company.
“But I feel it’s important to also say, every single one of those women is in their roles because they earned it,” Morhous says. “We believe in opportunity based on results. They are not where they are because of a focus on diversity. They are where they are because they joined a company where they thrived, and they earned a place at the top.”
There are countless individuals that would name Morhous when they are thinking about leaders who have influenced their careers and growth, her sister Melanie Isbill says. Isbill, who is chief marketing officer of RaceTrac, says mentorship and building up female leaders is very important to Morhous.
Morhous was a founding member and one of the key drivers of RaceTrac’s business resource group—called LEAD (link, empower, achieve, develop)—to help promote female leaders.
While Morhous focuses on RaceTrac’s employees and making the company a better place, she also balances her job with her family—including husband Hunter Morhous and children Wills and Hailey—who she makes dedicated time for, Posener says.
“And I think that’s a great role model and a representation of what a leader at the 22nd largest private company in the United States should do,” he says.
Part of why RaceTrac attracts such a high caliber of talent is because of its culture, Susan Bolch says.
“I think that what makes RaceTrac unique is that we have, on the one hand, a great drive for success and innovation. But that’s never been at the expense of our people,” she says.
Industry as Teacher
One of Morhous’ favorite parts of working at RaceTrac is the lives the company touches, she says, both internally and at a customer level. “One of the most rewarding things that I get to do as a leader is impact the careers of the people around me, mentoring people, helping people grow, promoting people to higher roles,” Morhous says. “I’ve worked at RaceTrac 11 years, and I’ve had the privilege of getting to see people grow from the entry level to the executive level.”
Morhous knows that at any given moment in a RaceTrac store, there are all different types of people.
“I love that our store teams get to be a part of these people’s lives and their routines,” she says. “I love that we get to provide them for whatever it is that they’re looking for in that given moment. And oftentimes, it’s a treat and a pick-me-up. … A smile from our associate, or a taquito from the roller grill, or a frozen treat from Swirl World, or a frozen beverage—these types of things, I think, often can be a bright part of a person’s day. And [what] I love about RaceTrac as a company, and really convenience as an industry, [is] that we get to be that for people.”
One piece of advice from her father that Morhous keeps with her is to “let the marketplace be your teacher.”
“[Carl Bolch Jr.] is a huge proponent of that and always lived that, whether it was looking at other retail or what was going on in the competitive landscape or making sure to have your ear to the ground when talking to our team members and our guests,” Morhous says of her father. “He always did that well and applied what he learned in order to make RaceTrac better. And that’s something we still do constantly today, and I would expect to be a part of RaceTrac hopefully forever in the future.”
“I am really proud of the strategic opportunities that I think will come with [our] acquisition” of Gulf Oil.
Morhous is helping to position RaceTrac in a changing environment, Siccardi says.
There’s a changing landscape for vehicles and fuels of the future, and Morhous is right there with him trying to figure out what RaceTrac’s position is going to be for the future, he says. What exactly the future of RaceTrac is changes every day, Siccardi says.
“If we were talking to Carl right now, he’d tell us that our marketplace is our teacher, so we’re going to respond to what the market's telling us,” Siccardi says. “Right now, we can see that the market’s telling us we need to do things other than fuel. So as the leader of fuel, we’re uber-focused on fuel, but we’re focused on fuel at the same time of saying, ‘Where’s the market evolving and how can we do different things?’ ”
RaceTrac is looking at electric vehicles (EVs). In September, it unveiled its first EV charging station at its c-store in Oxford, Alabama. It’s also looking at new technologies to lower carbonization and what it’s offering inside the store, too, Siccardi says.
“We’re going deeper on portable, grab-and-go food and continuing to evolve our offer based on wherever the guest is telling us to go. Our business will continue to change and adjust based on what we see in the market,” he says.
Strategic Opportunity
Natalie has already had a lasting impact on RaceTrac because she has made sure everyone in the organization understands the “why” behind what they’re doing, Isbill says.
A lot of that vision was in their father’s head, Isbill says, but Morhous has taken it upon herself to articulate that vision in a way the rest of the team members can understand and embrace.
“But what I think Natalie will hope her legacy will be is that the definition of what RaceTrac means today is a sliver of what it will mean when she steps out the door. We really see diversification and growth as a big part of our future,” Isbill says Susan Bolch says no one knows what that future might be—but her daughter’s got it covered.
“We live in very changing times in our industry. … I don’t think anyone knows, in any business, what form that change will necessarily take,” Susan Bolch says. “But I think to carry our business into the next generation, the leadership has to be aware that we will have to change or die.”
Morhous is already leading that change.
She says she’s proud of RaceTrac’s announcement in July that its wholly-owned fuel supply and trading subsidiary, Metroplex Energy, signed an agreement to acquire Gulf Oil LLC. The move, once finalized, will be the c-store operator’s largest acquisition in its history and will drive immediate scale and operating efficiencies with expansion across the U.S. and its territories, RaceTrac said at the time of the announcement.
“We have traditionally been an organic growth company, and I am really proud of the strategic opportunities that I think will come with that acquisition,” Morhous says.
She’s also proud of moving the business into serving the professional driver. RaceTrac has been building travel centers and expanding the diesel offer at its stores; it even has a store with two canopies above the forecourt for the first time.
“And that’s brought an opportunity for us to target an entirely new customer that we really didn’t have access to before,” Morhous says. “And it’s been on the retail side of the business. It’s been an incredible amount of growth, and I think we’re just at the beginning, scratching the surface there.”
In the end, she hopes that she can keep creating long-term value for the family business. What Morhous says she hopes her legacy will be “is we continue to make choices that meet the consumer where they are, and make consumers loyal to us, and to grow the business and the enterprise in a way that continues to provide the family value for generations to come."
CSP's 2023 Retail Leader of the Year
- Name: Natalie Morhous
- Husband: Hunter Morhous
- Children: Wills (7) and Hailey (5)
- Alma maters: Connecticut College, The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania
- Favorite RaceTrac treat: A frozen treat at Swirl World
- Hobbies: Water sports, playing board games, reading
- What she’s most proud of in life: Her husband and her children