Rodney Blanton, who was a vice president across several areas for Alimentation Couche-Tard over the past decade, has been named director of category management for Amazon Go, a spokesperson from Amazon confirmed on Monday.
Blanton announced his career change via LinkedIn on Monday, noting that his role with Amazon began on July 1.
“It is with mixed emotions that I bid farewell to a fulfilling career,” Blanton said in his announcement. “I am deeply grateful for the mentorship and support from exceptional leaders that have played a pivotal role in my personal and professional development.”
Blanton’s pivot to Amazon Go comes on the heels of a difficult period for Amazon’s retail outlets. Last year, the tech company scaled back its brick-and-mortar operations, as it closed nearly a third of its Go locations and halted the rollout of its Amazon Fresh grocery stores, only resuming opening new stores last month.
For the past six years, Blanton spearheaded Couche-Tard’s private label team. He became vice president of proprietary brands and reverse synergies in 2018 and was promoted to global head of proprietary brands in 2021, according to his LinkedIn bio.
In those roles, Blanton created the business strategy and organizational model to structure Couche-Tard’s global private brands business and use it to boost consumer engagement, he noted in his profile. He built the product development and brand teams in this area of the company, implemented merchandising solutions to optimize Couche-Tard’s private label products’ store performance and created marketing strategies and advertising campaigns for these products.
Between 2016 and 2018, Blanton was Couche-Tard’s vice president of global categories, where he created the company's first global functional support team within merchandising and category management, he noted in his LinkedIn bio. For three years before that, he was VP of convenience in Europe, where he led Couche-Tard’s fuel and retail programs in nine countries.
Blanton had been with Couche-Tard since 2006, when he became foodservice and dispensed beverages category manager for Mac’s Convenience Stores, which has since been rebranded to Circle K. Blanton went on to become director of operations for Mac’s, as well as director of merchandising, marketing and category management for Couche-Tard, before reaching his VP-level positions.
“I extend my heartfelt gratitude to all the incredible individuals I had the privilege to work alongside at Couche-Tard, both inside and outside of the company,” Blanton said. “Your camaraderie and collaboration have been instrumental in my success.”
Laval, Quebec-based Couche-Tard operates more than 5,700 c-stores in the U.S. It is the second-largest c-store company in North America behind 7-Eleven.
