7-Eleven has named c-store veteran Benjamin Lucky its new senior director of fresh food development, Lucky confirmed Wednesday evening.
Lucky’s first day with the convenience retailer is Oct. 10, and he is flying to Dallas on Thursday to begin his onboarding process, he told C-Store Dive via LinkedIn. He couldn’t lay out many of his new responsibilities, but added that he will have “a 10,000-foot view” of 7-Eleven’s fresh food programs with a focus on strategic development.
Lucky has spent the past five months as strategic director of retail and foodservice for food design agency King Retail Solutions. He shared with C-Store Dive at the NACS Show this week that he mainly focused on food-focused store layouts at King Retail, but had been looking to get back into a menu development and strategy role with a retailer.
Lucky brings over two decades worth of convenience retail food experience to 7-Eleven, starting with his days as a foodservice category manager with ExxonMobil, Chevron, Kroger’s convenience division, and Murphy USA in the 2000’s and early 2010s, according to his LinkedIn bio. Between 2013 and 2019, Lucky held food-focused directorial and managerial positions with Sprint Foods, Ampm, Maverik and Puma Energy.
In 2019, Lucky became senior category manager of foodservice and dispensed beverages for the Wills Group, which operates the Dash In convenience store chain. He held that role for four years before moving to Cal’s Convenience, operator of the Stripes c-store chain, where he was vice president of foodservice. He left Cal’s after nine months following the sale of Cal’s to 7-Eleven.
It’s unclear how Lucky will work alongside Raymond Yantosh, who became 7-Eleven’s director of fresh food earlier this year. Yantosh’s promotion came soon after the departure of Jack Stout, formerly 7-Eleven’s executive vice president of fresh foods, at the end of 2023.
Irving, Texas-based 7-Eleven operates, franchises and/or licenses more than 13,000 stores in the U.S. and Canada.
