In this episode of “At Your Convenience,” CSP Editor Rachel Gignac talks to Whitney Johnson, senior vice president of marketing at EG America, Westborough, Massachusetts, about her involvement in launching both a retail media network and a new loyalty program in the first few months of the year.
Johnson spoke at CSP’s Retail Media Network Forum, which took place April 28-30 in Dallas.
She was hired at EG in June of 2024, and in February, she was promoted to her current role.
- EG America is No. 6 on CSP’s 2025 Top 40 Update to the 2024 Top 202 ranking of U.S. c-store chains by store count. Watch for the full 2025 Top 202 ranking in the June issue of CSP magazine and in CSP Daily News.
Founded in 2001 by the Issa family, Blackburn, United Kingdom-based EG Group is a gasoline forecourt and retail convenience operator with more than 6,200 sites across the United Kingdom and Ireland, Europe, the United States and Australia. In 2018, EG Group established itself in the United States as EG America by acquiring Kroger’s 762-site c-store network, which included the Turkey Hill, Loaf 'N Jug, Kwik Shop, Tom Thumb and Quik Stop banners. It acquired TravelCenters of America’s Minit Mart convenience-store business in 2018. The portfolio included 225 c-stores. And in 2019, among other acquisitions, EG Group acquired Cumberland Farms and its nearly 660 c-stores in the Northeast and Florida.
This transcript has been edited for length and clarity.
Rachel Gignac: Hi, Whitney, how are you today?
Whitney Johnson: Hi, Rachel. I'm doing wonderful. Thank you so much for having me.
Gignac: Yeah, of course. I heard you speak a little bit earlier today at the Retail Media Network Forum about EG America's retail media network and loyalty program. Whitney, you are the senior vice president of marketing at EG America. So I just have a few questions for you. You joined the company about nine months ago, you said?
Johnson: Yeah, that's right.
Gignac: Within those nine months, EG America has launched a loyalty program and a retail media network. So tell me a little bit about how you got that off the ground and running.
Johnson: I love that question, Rachel. Well, it's progress, not perfection. Our [former] CEO, John Carey, constantly tells us, culture eats strategy for breakfast. And I love that quote. I'm going to say it one more time. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. We believe at EGA that you can codify a durable strategy in a week. And if you can't, your scope is too large. So we worked really hard on building a strategic objective for our digital ecosystem transformation. And we spent all of our time after that first week building, so running RFPs, finding the best tech partners in the country. Finding the best network in the country to hire full-time staff, finding amazing CPG partners to launch with. And we spent most of the past nine months building versus just creating strategies. And we're really proud at how quickly we launched our loyalty program and how quickly we launched our retail media network. And from what I've learned, retail media is all about working together with different groups of people. So you have the CPGs. You have the technology companies, merchandising.
Gignac: How do you work with all those different people?
Johnson: It's such a good question. Collaboration is really important. Something I'm very proud of at EGA is both our marketing and our merchandising team rolls up to Brian Ferguson, our chief merchandising officer. And honestly, when every department that supports CPG vendors, and as I like to call them, CPG clients, rules up to one leader. It makes decision rights really easy at EGA. So I think that collaboration and joint goaling, all coming from our CMO, setting clear strategies, is wildly important. Outside of the four walls of EGA, you touched upon how important external collaboration is. I think the RFP process at EGA is extremely rigorous, and our procurement department is able to quickly identify what tech partners are fit for EGA and what ones just aren't fit for us right now. So we run really thorough and rigorous RFP processes to determine who those right tech partners are for us.
Gignac: Is there any other advice that you have for retailers that are looking to get started with retail media?
Johnson: I think when you're looking to start a retail media network, I would encourage other retailers to think about what can they own, right? In marketing, there's something called a strategic targeted position. What is a retailer's STP and how can they start and launch an RMN with that strategic positioning? Retailers don't need to boil the ocean, right? We hear all these ambitious but also almost nerve-racking KPIs from incredibly successful retail medias like Amazon and Walmart Connect and Uber and they're so ambitious. We think we need to get there in 90, 120 days. That's unrealistic. Just start somewhere with what is ownable.
Gignac: What are EG America's goals for the future of retail media?
Johnson: We have really ambitious retail media goals, but it all starts with our consumer. We want to deliver at the speed of culture what our consumers need from us. We're an extremely customer-obsessed culture. And what our customers tell us, either through our guest services network, focus panels, or through social listening tools, will determine what our roadmap from a product and marketing technology standpoint is.
Gignac: You said something really interesting during your presentation about how you took some phone calls for customer service just to learn more about what those customers were needing. Why did you do that?
Johnson: So at EGA, my first 60 days on the job, I asked to take the guest services phone calls on Saturdays and Sundays. And I dedicated four hours a day to listening to our customers. When I joined EGA, we didn't necessarily have a focus panel budget for the year of 2024. So between social listening and audit tools, as well as speaking to customers directly through our guest services channels, I was able to get firsthand feedback from our customers on what they loved about our network, where they wanted to see improvements, and where we weren't meeting their expectation. What that did for me was that underlined my roadmap for our digital transformation here at EGA versus me just crafting a roadmap without that consumer closed loop listening.
Gignac: That's really smart and something I'm sure a lot of people wouldn't be willing to do. Well, thank you so much, Whitney. This was fantastic.
Johnson: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me here today.
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