LAVAL, Quebec -- “I want to know what we can learn.”
Beyond growing Alimentation Couche-Tard’s business, education is the best thing that can come out of an acquisition, president and CEO Brian Hannasch told Forbes recently.
“We don’t just look for strategic opportunities, but also what pieces of a business are better than ours,” Hannasch said. Think less brand roll up, and more operational improvement, Forbes said.
Currently, Couche-Tard is in the process of rebranding all its c-stores to a reimagined Circle K retail brand.
Citing Couche-Tard’s purchases of about 2,300 Statoil Fuel & Retail locations in Europe in 2012 and more than 1,500 convenience stores from The Pantry in 2015, the Forbes’ report notes the following advancements learned from acquired companies.
Labor and the Consumer
When Couche-Tard makes an acquisition, its executives visit numerous—even hundreds, the report noted—of stores and ask detailed questions that include the cost of trash pickup or how much labor is required to successfully run the store. They also study customer in-store behavior and what parking looked like at various times during the day.
“The people working in those stores could tell we wanted to learn, and that we were interested in preserving their entrepreneurship,” Hannasch told the magazine.
Comparing Numbers
In the case of Statoil, a finance person spent two years benchmarking company practices, both for Statoil and legacy Couche-Tard. Opportunities to standardize back office activities such as accounting or procurement at Statoil were implemented more quickly than anything that touched customers. Some elements, like the Scandinavians’ expertise in planning, were incorporated into Couche-Tard’s global governance.
Proven Locally …
When it came time to start working on consumer-facing promotions, Statoil-branded outlets started testing programs and category management practices first proven in North America and, in the cases of a coffee promotion and loyalty program management, those ideas were gleaned in Scandinavia and applied globally.
… Extended Globally
Couche-Tard has structured its field organization to allow it to preserve local innovation with the goal of engendering future ideas that it can extend globally, according to the report. Its business unit leaders, each supported by a full management team, manage no more than 500 stores. This allows them to operate like their own companies, and to visit every one of their stores at least once a year.
The Value Proposition
Where Couche-Tard insists on conformity is with its vision for the business and a common value proposition or, as Hannasch put it, “What we want Circle K customers to say about us.”
As of Oct. 11, 2015, Laval, Quebec-based Couche-Tard's network comprises 8,006 convenience stores throughout North America, including 6,579 stores offering fuel. Its North American network consists of 15 business units, including 11 in the United States covering 41 states—mainly under the Circle K and Kangaroo Express (The Pantry) brands—and four in Canada covering all 10 provinces—mainly under the Mac's and Couche-Tard brands.
In Europe, Couche-Tard operates a broad retail network across Scandinavia (Norway, Sweden and Denmark), Poland, the Baltics (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and Russia under the Statoil and Ingo brands. As of Oct. 11, 2015, it comprised 2,217 stores, the majority of which offer fuel and convenience-store products, while the others are unmanned automated gas stations that offer fuel only.
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