Dive Brief:
- Alimentation Couche-Tard has promoted Hélène Drolet to vice president of food and retail for its convenience store business in Canada, Drolet announced via a LinkedIn post on Wednesday.
- Drolet is at least the fourth Couche-Tard exec stepping into a food-focused role with the company since the start of the year. Her role is brand new, she said in her announcement.
- These hirings come amid an ongoing reset of Couche-Tard’s approach to its Fresh Food, Fast program as the company focuses more heavily on foodservice in North America.d.
Dive Insight:
By beefing up its foodservice leadership team, Couche-Tard is setting itself up more securely to reach its growth targets on that side of the business. Company leaders have said that they want to grow food revenues at four times the pace of merchandise revenues in the U.S.
Drolet has spent more than six years with Couche-Tard across two stints, between which she spent around a year and a half as senior vice president of operations and general merchandise for retail with MacEwen Petroleum, which owns the Quickie c-store chain in Ontario and Quebec, according to her LinkedIn profile.
Before taking on her new role, she served for more than three years as VP of operational excellence for North America.
She also spent four years in multiple roles with Parkland Corp., which was acquired by Sunoco last year.
“I look forward to building on the strong foundation already in place, supporting our teams in the field, and delivering consistent value and convenience to our customers,” Drolet said in the post.
She joins a foodservice program that is growing increasingly layered. Couche-Tard closed its acquisition of GetGo Cafe + Market, along with its fresh food program, from grocer Giant Eagle last summer. The company also rolled out value meal deals in September 2024. In its fiscal Q2 earnings report in November, President and CEO Alex Miller credited this program for Couche-Tard’s foodservice success.
In addition to Drolet, Couche-Tard has appointed Grant Morris as head of QSRs and made-to-order foodservice for Circle K convenience stores in the U.S., hired Family Dollar alum Dan Larmondra as U.S. head of food merchandising and named Trey Powell as senior vice president of food and retail for its U.S. business since the start of the year.
