TULSA, Okla. -- “It’s better to be lucky than smart, it’s better to be lucky than smart—you can put that on every page,” QuikTrip co-founder Chester Cadieux told CSP magazine during an interview with the convenience-store executive at QuikTrip headquarters in 2007. CSP that year honored Cadieux—and QuikTrip—as Retail Leader of the Year.
Chester Cadieux died March 14 at the age of 84.
In a statement, as reported in a McLane/CSP Daily News Flash, the company said:
"On behalf of the Cadieux family, we are deeply saddened to announce that Chester Cadieux peacefully passed away yesterday evening in his home in Tulsa. Chester's vision, keen wit, insistence on fairness and marvelous ability to mentor people will never be forgotten. He humbly professed to be 'luckier than smart,' and over half a century Chester grew a small neighborhood convenience store into a company that is consistently recognized as one of the nation's best places to work. His secret: Hire good people and promote from within. His greatest love was for his family. Our hearts go out to them and to all who were touched by Chester's extraordinary gifts."
A visit in 1957 to Dallas, where he saw thriving 7-Eleven convenience stores, inspired Burt Holmes with the idea to open a small grocery store--then called bantam stores or drive-in groceries--in his hometown of Tulsa, Okla. In 1958, Holmes convinced a former junior high school classmate, Chester Cadieux, to invest in and operate the store they decide to call QuikTrip.
Today, QuikTrip is a privately held convenience-store and gasoline marketer with headquarters in Tulsa, Okla. It is a more than $11 billion company with approximately 700 stores in 11 states.
Here are some excerpts from CSP's Retail Leader of the Year tribute to Chester Cadieux:
Life Before QT
From the very beginning, Chester was keenly aware of his limitations. His mother wanted him to become a doctor, and as her only child, he did try.
“I took everything but biology in high school because I couldn’t cut a frog up,” Chester said. “I’m just not made to be a doctor.”
He next set his sights on engineer, but there, too, he quickly realized his limits. “In my senior year, I was in this advanced math course and there were like 30 people in the class, and I was not the smartest one in there; in fact, I was the dumbest one in there,” he said with his characteristic modesty. “I decided I shouldn’t be an engineer. So I took a psychological test and it said I ought to be in sales.”
This willingness to know what he didn’t know would later help Chester and QuikTrip through its rise to becoming the pre-eminent convenience retailer in the United States. But back in the 1950s, it just told him how to earn a paycheck.
Cadieux and Holmes
With sales as his charge, Chester pushed goods to housewives door to door and later sold business-form printing. Then in 1958, he ran into an old school acquaintance, Burt Holmes. Holmes, who today is CEO of Tulsa-based Leaders Life Insurance, was already a few steps ahead of Chester in life, with a wife, child, career in insurance and business contacts. He also had an entrepreneurial bent and a new venture in mind.
“So he stopped me one day—we were both wearing our hats and carrying our bags and trying to sell stuff in insurance and printing, and he told me he’d seen 7-Eleven, and wouldn’t this be a great idea?” Chester recalled. “Burt had been trying to put this drive-in grocery store together and he was going to invest $5,000. He had three other people who were going to invest $2,000 each, but he couldn’t find anyone who would leave their job and go work in a grocery store.”
“Burt gave me this opportunity, just gave it to me on a plate,” he said.
Chester borrowed $5,000 from his father and, with that, became a retailer.
Luck and Humility
“Humility” is a word comes up again and again among friends and peers attempting to describe Chester Cadieux and his preference to credit success to random luck rather than business smarts or strategy.
“Although he plays down how smart he is and what his business acumen is, he sees himself as being very fortunate and being at the right place and right time, and so he doesn’t take credit that isn’t due to him, and sometimes he takes less credit than he really deserves,” said William Tabbernee, Ph.D., president of Phillips Theological Seminary, of which Chester was chairman.
“I don’t totally agree with him on some of this, because one makes one’s own luck. Somebody else in exactly the same situation would not be able to pull off what Chester has been able to pull off. And some of those skills, values he’s developed—like making sure he’s gotten the right people in the right place, having the highest quality of stores, knowing exactly where to put them, close ones if necessary—it’s not just luck.”
It made Chester part of a breed that management guru Jim Collins, author of “Built to Last” and “Good to Great,” refers to as the “level 5 leader.” With a combination of personal humility and professional will, these leaders are ambitious, not for themselves but for the company’s success. In a day of rock-star CEOs, it’s a grace missing from many of the business elite.
“Chester has the kind of personality that makes people want to do well for him,” said Stephen Cropper, a QuikTrip board member and retired president and CEO of Williams Energy Services, a division of The Williams Cos., Tulsa, Okla. “He’s very deliberate and very patient. He is absolutely one of the slowest people to anger I’ve ever known. He’s just a quiet man who, when he speaks, people listen.”
“The values of always doing the right thing, doing what’s right with QuikTrip, never being satisfied, being the best—these are not words on a piece of paper. Chester lives these values and everything he does every day, even his work in the community, reflects those values,” said Michael Johnson, a QuikTrip board member and chief administrative officer of The Williams Cos. “So when employees see the consistency between what Chester says and what the leaders say, and what the company does, I think they’re willing to give an extra level of commitment and effort.”
“Those core values and purpose of vision are so strong that you could pull the Cadieuxs out of it and that company is built to last,” said Steve Sheetz, chairman of Sheetz Inc. “How many people can be committed to the purpose of providing employees an opportunity to grow and succeed? In the end, that culture is just a real competitive advantage, because it’s not something you turn on or off.”
Click on the link below to view the full CSP magazine story about Chester Cadieux and QuikTrip. And click here to watch Steve Sheetz and current QuikTrip chairperson and CEO Chet Cadieux, Chester's son, discuss the c-store legend's influence on the company and the industry.
An obituary and service details are forthcoming.
CSP sends condolences to Mr. Cadieux's family, friends, colleagues and the many QuikTrip employees he mentored and befriended over the years.
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