In about the span of a year, Terri Micklin was promoted to president of GetGo Café + Market and Alimentation Couche-Tard agreed to buy that convenience-store chain from parent company Giant Eagle.
Her biggest learning from this year is not necessarily something new, she tells CSP, but more of a reaffirmation around the importance of empathy in business. As GetGo goes through an immense amount of change, Micklin emphasizes the importance of taking time to listen to her team and her customers, and to offer transparency and clarity.
“It’s been a great reminder of how important it is to keep our people first, but to do that with such a level of empathy that they truly understand the journey that they’re going on with you,” she said.
As the company moves into 2025, Micklin said she couldn’t comment on whether her role would change as of press time in December. Her goals for the new year are to set a tone of optimism and demonstrate what the GetGo team does best.
“That has been the message I've been sending to my whole team: Demonstrate how good you are at what you do today, show how you raise the bar and then think about how you scale the dynamic business model we have,” Micklin said.
GetGo operates approximately 270 convenience retail and fueling locations across Pennsylvania, Ohio, West Virginia, Maryland and Indiana and has approximately 3,500 employees. Circle K-
owner Alimentation Couche-Tard said the GetGo sale is expected to close in 2025.
- Alimentation Couche-Tard is No. 2 on CSP’s 2024 Top 202 ranking of U.S. c-store chains by store count. GetGo is No. 29.
One thing GetGo does best is foodservice, Micklin said, and Couche-Tard is on a definitive food journey. It’s exciting to see how GetGo’s food offers could be scaled nationwide under its new owners, she said.
“We’ve got culinary trained chefs, using fresh supermarket ingredients, bringing it together in this playful, to-go atmosphere, and those three things have been what’s really made us unique,” Micklin said. “Now the challenge is keeping that going as we continue to growth the brand.”
GetGo’s other strengths include its loyalty program, it is dynamic and its focus on guest-service culture, Micklin said.
What Micklin is most excited about for the upcoming year is to see what opportunities will unfold for her team amid the merger.
“When I think about being able to bring the uniqueness of our brand to the second-largest convenience-store operator in the U.S., all I can see are opportunities for our people,” she said. “There’s so much talent that we’ve fostered and that we’ve developed over the years, and I think that they are going to really blossom in this new organization. I think they’re going to be able to bring a lot of scale, a lot of talent, and create a lot of opportunities for growth for both programs.”
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