It’s difficult for EG America to compete for talent in the Northeast, particularly in the Boston area, where major tech companies such as Meta, Google, Amazon, Chewy and Wayfair attract top graduates from nearby institutions like MIT.
That’s according to Kieran Carr (pictured left), director of talent acquisition at EG America, Westborough, Massachusetts, who spoke at C-StoreTEC on Wednesday with Art Sebastian (right), founder and CEO of NexChapter, a c-store consulting firm based in Des Moines, Iowa.
These companies offer highly competitive compensation packages, making it difficult for the convenience-store chain to attract and retain top technical talent within the industry, he said.
It doesn’t help that a lot of store management left the industry during COVID, so EG has been building up its management the last two years and is starting to build district and regional leadership, Carr said.
To attract technology talent, Carr said EG’s message is about the value in affecting consumers’ daily lives.
“It's how we are going to empower people's daily journey, their life," he said. "And we've always been part of the community, and now it's trying to get part of the community in the digital age and trying to really partner and pair with the way people are now living. So we've been able to innovate quite a bit over the past five years, and telling that story is crucial.”
Carr acknowledged that potential candidates sometimes question why they would choose to work for a convenience-store brand like Cumberland Farms. He emphasized that the company offers a corporate infrastructure—including finance, marketing, IT and HR functions—similar to larger organizations, and a focus on innovation and vision helps differentiate it as an employer.
“[A tech employee] is going to have more of an impact at our company than at Facebook, Google, Amazon,” Carr said. “They're probably working on a very small piece of technology that most people are never going to see. We have opportunity, if you're working for us, to really touch all aspects of our business, create enterprise-level apps that are viewed by 100,000 people and have your thumbprint directly on that.”
Retention and growth
Mentorship and development are some of the biggest opportunities for growth across talent in the convenience-store industry, Carr said.
“One of the biggest challenges is how to get learning and development down to the team member at the site level and make it be impactful and not take away too much time from being on the floor,” Carr said.
EG America is trying to lean in to figure out how to do that, he said.
Training is often old-school, he said. Sometimes employees don’t work the same shifts as their leaders. C-store retailers need to find pathways to develop frontline staff, Carr said.
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