Murphy USA President and CEO Mindy West, who succeeded Andrew Clyde in January, said there are some things that will stay the same under her leadership.
The convenience-store chain’s everyday low-price strategy, its continuous improvement mindset and its capital allocation will remain unchanged, West said in Murphy’s fourth-quarter 2025 earnings call on Feb. 5.
What will change is the company’s culture, she said.
“We're pushing for things like quicker collaboration, more nimble decision making. … We’ve already made some leadership changes to help us work better together, remove some inefficient reporting structures and increase accountability,” West said.
- Murphy USA is No. 4 on CSP’s 2025 Top 202 ranking of U.S. convenience-store chains by store count.
While West didn’t mention specific leadership roles on the call, Murphy USA told CSP promotions that took effect as of January include:
- Keith Emery, formerly vice president of fuels, is now senior vice president of fuels.
- Scott Woodward, formerly vice president of merchandising, is now senior vice president of merchandising and food & beverage.
- Eric Bartko, formerly vice president of analytics, is now senior vice president and chief customer officer.
- Sundeep Patel, formerly senior director of strategy, is now vice president of strategy.
- Don Williams, formerly senior director of analytics and most recently senior director of QuickChek sales and operations, is now vice president of QuickChek sales and operations.
- Donald Smith has been serving as Murphy USA’s interim CFO and treasurer since October, when CFO Galagher Jeff left the company to work for Arko.
The culture shift is necessary, West said, to make sure that Murphy USA is agile, adaptable and unafraid to challenge itself and try new things.
“You may see us be—and I hope you will see us be—a bit more innovative going forward than we [were] in the past,” West said. “And as we have these macro conditions pressuring our stores, we have accelerated competition, I think that's a smart thing to do. We need to be able to fight back in our business model, reducing our reliance on fuel and tobacco where we can, but still preserving the strength in both of those. We need to figure out how to attract and retain new customers, how to grow trips and spend, and how to make our store's teams life easier and our stores more productive. And then what are those niches of opportunities of value that we can exploit?”
El Dorado, Arkansas-based Murphy USA had a total of 1,800 stores as of Dec. 31—1,649 Murphy USA and Murphy Express stores, and 151 QuickChek stores.
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