Jeff Lenard:
Welcome to Convenience Matters. My name is Jeff Lenard with NACS.

Chris Blasinsky:
And I’m Chris Blasinsky with NACS.

Jeff Lenard:
Chris and I today are gonna talk to Jared Scheeler. He is not only NACS Chairman for 2021 – 2022, he exemplifies small business and he has five stores—The Hub stores in North Dakota. That’s about all I’ll say about him, it’s his story to tell but he’s really passionate about how to lift up the small operator. And what we’d like to do today is talk about his journey and see how it all ties together with what everybody else in the industry is doing or wants to do. And maybe there’s a certain path that we can all learn together. So first off let’s welcome Jared. Jared, thanks for joining us today.

Jared Scheeler:
Jeff, Chris, so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Chris Blasinsky:
So Jared, we were kind of thinking—Jeff and I both know you, I think we’re edging up on two decades here, so to see you as chairman, that’s a proud moment for us but also for the podcast listeners, maybe not everybody knows who you are. So this is a great introduction, I think, to our audience to who you are and what you’re all about. And one of the questions we were thinking about was what’s your earliest memory of convenience stores?

Jared Scheeler:
Well, Chris, there’s a lot in there but starting with two decades, my goodness aging us all a little bit here. I suppose if I look back, I probably had hair when I originally met all of you, things changed a little bit.

Chris Blasinsky:
Same with Jeff.

Jeff Lenard:
Hey, I’m here! I can hear this!

Jared Scheeler:
Boy. So, I got my start in this industry 23 years ago. And, originally, before I had The Hub, I worked for a different company and I learned my trade through that company, a company called Bobby and Steve’s Auto World out of Minneapolis. And I’m sure we may talk about them later. However I look back at my childhood. I mean, I loved convenience stores. What kind of child doesn’t love convenience stores, because they’re such a, a big part of the fabric of everybody’s lives. And I remember very vividly in my hometown of Dickinson, North Dakota, there was a store called Jessen’s owned by the Jessen family in Dickinson, North Dakota. And on occasion, maybe about once a week, I was kind of spoiled, I feel in hindsight, my dad would pull into Jessen’s after school one day on the way taking us home. And we’d walk in there and he’d say, all right, everybody gets to pick out two things. Two things, meaning two things from the candy section. So those are my earliest memories of convenience stores. And I’m not sure that’s unlike anybody else because of the prevalence of convenience stores in all the communities across the country.

Jeff Lenard:
I’d say it’s probably the same for me. I’ll let you go next, Chris, but just thinking it usually involved the bike and for me, the reason when you were young that you went to a convenience store is number one, it was close. Although there was a grocery store just as close I didn’t really wanna go buy carrots or something like that. I did wanna buy those treats. So it absolutely fits, I think, with a lot of the narrative. And it’s probably a good story that we can tell as an industry.

Chris Blasinsky:
Yeah, absolutely. I grew up in Maryland, so ours was the local High’s store and it was after soccer practice, T-ball practice, baseball, what have you, we’d go to the convenience store, get a treat, get candy and the same on Sundays on the way home from service It was going to the convenience store, get a treat, get something, eat, get milk. That was the big thing too. So yeah, the whole idea around community and putting the “C” in c-store and putting the “C” in community store. We’ve thrown that out in the last couple years as taglines, but they really do hold true, absolutely.

Jeff Lenard:
And then I guess that’s a perfect name thinking about how everything ties together – the name of your store. And do you wanna take us through how it went from loving convenience stores to working in one to operating one?

Jared Scheeler:
You bet. Well, I mean, there’s a lot to unpack there, but I’ll try to be as efficient as possible. Like I said, I’ve always had a love for retail. In fact, my grandfather on my dad’s side owned and operated two grocery stores in Dickinson, North Dakota, and that was a multi-generational business. And unfortunately I never got to see them. However, retail’s been in the Scheeler blood for as long as anybody can remember. So that naturally translated over to my first high school job, which was working at a local grocery store, stocking shelves, helping customers and I loved retail and that translated to college. When I moved to from North Dakota to Minneapolis to attend college at the University of Minnesota, I took part-time job. And that’s how I got involved in the convenience industry. I took a job at a company called Bobby and Steve’s Auto World just to put a few bucks in my pocket for spending during college.

Jared Scheeler:
And I really fell in love with the industry while working there. I mean, that is not why I went to college to get into convenience retail but I haven’t left because of the passion that grew inside of me really from day one, working at Bobby and Steve’s Auto World. Learning about so many new things from how to build a great business, how to build yourself as a leader, how to develop others in leadership. Just every day was so different. And it didn’t take me long to decide that as long as this industry was gonna have me, I’m gonna stay with it. And you know, I learned so much with Bobby and Steve’s Auto World throughout the years, worked there for 15 years in many positions.

Jared Scheeler:
And it just came time to make a decision for my life, for my family and talking to my wife and we really cherished and valued where we grew up in Western, North Dakota. Just the culture and the way of life in the small town in a rural area. And we combined our desire that was growing in us to move back home and combined it with a business opportunity. And I met up with some investment partners and pitched a plan to them on building a new convenience chain based in Western North Dakota. We did that in 2015, opened our first store called The Hub Convenience Stores. The Hub was one of those things where we didn’t know what to call the business, so I just started with a list of about a hundred names.

Chris Blasinsky:
I’m assuming it doesn’t stand for hubcap?

Jared Scheeler:
Not hubcap no. In fact the idea of The Hub, which was out of that list of a hundred, we narrowed that down pretty quickly. And The Hub always stood out to me as number one almost from the beginning, because I wanted our businesses to be the hub of our communities in so many different ways, from being the convenience destination within the communities that we served, to being the hub of the community as far as our involvement in the community, our donations to the community, as far as being a great place to work. And then being something that the consumers in our area didn’t expect out of convenience. So The Hub really stood. It just stuck with us. We ran with that name. We built our logo around it using a gear as an iconic part of our logo. And I love it. It’s part of our imaging inside of our stores. It’s part of who we are. And it’s not just a word anymore, it’s really our lifeblood.

Jeff Lenard:
So with the naming, I know when the larger you get, the more you think about it or overthink names. You look it up. Does it mean something bad in a foreign language? Is the URL bought, what else can you do? What was the process? Was it really that fast where it’s just all of a sudden and then the light bulb goes off and we just eliminated the list here and got The Hub and we’re going there. No focus groups, right?

Jared Scheeler:
No, no focus groups at all. This was all internal. Well, I take that back because we did wanna build a look and image both from our logo and internally from our interior design standpoint that appealed to the working mom. So I did reach out to many working moms I know. So that was my little internal self-made focus group that gave me the thumbs up or thumbs down on the various designs that I’ve put in front of them. But yeah, starting with that list of a hundred, went through almost any type of word that you could think of from, from Greek gods to Naval call signs that have been popular throughout the years. And like I said, The Hub was…it made the top 10 with a bullet right away. And as we were narrowing down the top 10, it just stood out because it was, again, we knew that’s what we wanted to be.

Chris Blasinsky:
Yeah. There’s a lot of positive connotation to what that word means. Just as you described, it is a hub. It is a hub for the community. And, we felt that. Jeff and I had the honor of coming to visit you several years ago and we could feel it. Dickinson isn’t the largest city we’ve ever been to, but certainly your store exactly, where it was, from what I could tell that was the spot. That the spot in town where everybody is coming and going probably multiple times a day.

Jared Scheeler:
Certainly. And we started from one store, Chris, the store that you’re talking about, the store that you and Jeff did visit a few years ago, which was fantastic. And you know, the process of building the reputation as the hub of the community, it’s ongoing. You continuously have to reinvent yourself. You continuously have to become better and offer more and more to the consumer based on what they want. But fortunately, since that visit, we’ve had the opportunity to grow our business to expand to other communities in Western North Dakota to get up to five locations. And just like our first store, the process of building that reputation as a hub, it’s a different process in each community that we do business in. And that’s really the fun part because each community’s different. Each community has different expectations, different needs. And what we do looks different from city to city. And that’s another part that I just love about this industry, that each of our stores, though, it carries that Hub personality, it has its own unique personality. And I don’t think that’s unlike many companies within our industry.

Chris Blasinsky:
And Jared, you excel at finding ideas and looking for innovative solutions. You could have gone absolutely anywhere to find innovation, but in 2019, you decided to go to China to attend a NACS event. And from what I know from conversations, that last event had a very lasting impression on you.

Jared Scheeler:
It did. Convenience Summit Asia in Shanghai was an absolutely amazing experience. And a little bit of a trivia about me, I have some Chinese in my blood and most people don’t know that about me. My grandfather on my mom’s side actually was born in Macau. So he immigrated the United States as an 18 year-old and had a career in the United States Air Force, it was the only job he ever had. There was a little bit of draw when I found out that event was in Shanghai. Flying overseas, seeing our industry from a completely different lens…it didn’t even help me see the forest through the trees, I saw a different forest over there because of how innovative that country and that area of the world has been when it comes to convenience. And most of it really was built around technology. I mean, first of all, there’s stores, small footprints, many deliveries per day per store just because of the density that they have. A lot of fresh foods, a lot of hot foods, really unique ways of merchandising. You kind of think how many ways can you really merchandise a store, but I loved how they did it there. The stores were just tight, not a lot of product on the shelves because they were getting replenished three times per day, but the technology is what really stuck out to me. Society really revolves around a mobile phone in China and especially Shanghai in the developed areas.

Jared Scheeler:
And I was blown away by not only the dependence but all the applications and usages of a mobile phone. And that just opened my eyes of the opportunities that we have here in the United States. Obviously there’s a lot of headwinds when it comes to adopting those sorts of technologies from money, finances to security and things like that. But the fact that they could use a mobile phone in such efficient ways…it really opened my eyes to what convenience should be and could be here in the United States.

Jeff Lenard:
We’ve talked about a couple things today, we talked essentially about your entry point to convenience retail, and we all have different stories about when we were kids. We talked about your entry point in the industry, working the industry, and founding a thriving business. And then we jumped ahead, you’re chairman and you’re going to Shanghai. So let’s go back to one more entry point: your entry into NACS. We talked earlier about there’s 90,000 plus smaller operators out there, and your story I think really resonates with them or should resonate with them. Now you’re chair but you didn’t start as chair. Where was your first introduction to NACS and what lessons can be learned for anybody else that’s wondering, ‘Well, how can that possibly work for me? I have X stores in X community,’ and that’s not something anybody would ever think is important.

Jared Scheeler:
Well, Jeff, I’m still a small operator and early on in working in this industry, I realized that there’s so much that goes on on a day-to-day basis that sometimes it’s hard to see beyond the end of the working day, let alone three to five years in advance. But I learned very quickly that a forward-looking view was critical to being successful in the industry for the long term. And I attended my first NACS Show in 2001, right after 9-11 in Las Vegas and I was just blown away.

Jeff Lenard:
So what made you go from, ‘Oh, I saw an ad’ or ‘I heard about it’ to, ‘I’m gonna go!’ Was it just that you wanted to get new ideas?

Jared Scheeler:
So, I was working for Bobby and Steve’s Auto World at the time. And one of the owners of the company, Mr. Steve Williams said, ‘Jared, you are coming along in this industry, you’re coming along in this company, you need to go to the NACS Show.’ And he was a previous attendee of the NACS Show and he brought me in 2001. I had no idea what it was, so I was introduced to the NACS Show by somebody else. And as, it turns out, I haven’t missed a Show since, save for the year 2020 when we didn’t have a Show, so, I’ve had 20 consecutive shows and I was introduced by somebody else in the industry.

Jeff Lenard:
And I didn’t mean to cut you off, you’re blown away. What blew you away most about it? And then how did that lead to the next thing?

Jared Scheeler:
Well, the Show provided sensory overload. I loved the expo. I went to so many educational sessions and that was kind of my trigger of wanting to get involved in NACS. I went to some educational sessions back in 2001 and 2002, 2003 and on. And some of them I liked some of them, I thought, boy, these are okay. But you know what, I think if we presented one and talked about what we did at Bobby and Steve’s Auto World from a service and a culture and a leadership standpoint, we could bring some value to the NACS Show. So I actually reached out to the education team at the time and pitched an idea to present an educational session at the NACS Show.

Jared Scheeler:
As it turned out, we actually never ended up doing that. We did get asked to present at the NACS HR forum in 2005. And then we were featured in NACS Magazine in 2006 with a cover story on the service culture. So that kind of brought me into the fold a little bit with NACS as far as getting to know the people and what NACS was all about. And then fast forward to 2009, I was attending in Minneapolis a NACS Industry Update Luncheon, which are there’s about 10 to 15 of them per year where NACS President and CEO Henry Armour comes around the country and presents an update on what’s going on with NACS, what’s going on with the industry, and I was at one of these luncheons in Minneapolis and low and behold, I ended up at Mr. Armour’s table and I just took the opportunity afterwards when he lined up for questions, gave him my business card and I asked how does this NACS Board and how does the Board of Directors process work? He says, ‘Are you interested?’ I said, ‘I am.’ He took my card and a couple years later I received an invitation to the Board, and I think the rest is pretty much history.

Chris Blasinsky:
You tell a good story. To get involved in NACS is not necessarily how high you jump, it’s just that you make the effort to jump. The people who wanna be involved can get involved. You need to, like you did, step up and say, ‘Hey, I’m interested.’ And you’re a really good example of taking things as they came. You went with the flow completely.

Jared Scheeler:
When you have small operators, I think anybody who acknowledges the fact that a healthy industry is good for all of us and being part of that process is super important. Whether it’s in a big way or a small way, we all have a responsibility to elevate this industry and accelerate our industry’s growth. And that was my way of doing it. And maybe that’s not for everybody, but I think for those people out there who just look at that as a long-time dream or a goal or something that’s maybe achievable or not, well it really comes down to engagement. How much do you wanna get involved? How much difference do you wanna make and anybody can do it. If I can do it, anybody can do it.

Jeff Lenard:
Well we don’t have the NACS chairman on every episode, but when we do, we have people who are always interested in asking questions and I’ll let Chris say the rest.

Chris Blasinsky:
All right. So I have three questions for you, and I’ll just give you some hints as to who asked them. You know them all very well. One person is from Washington state, one person is from is from Minneapolis and the other person is from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. So you can probably guess who says what. So the first question from one of these in individuals is: Where do you see the independent retailer in 10 years?

Jared Scheeler:
It’s a heck of a question. And I think with all the consolidation that’s gone on really over the past five years there’s some hesitancy or a little bit of fear as far as where the small retailer is going to fall. When everything kind of settles down, and my strong belief, because most of our small operators reside in small communities and we’ve been such an important part of the lifeline of all of those communities, I think that’s gonna get stronger. So, whereas the big get bigger, those of us—though the competitive landscape is going to change, the ability to compete on price is going to change a little bit—we have to remember that’s not how we’ve staked our claim in this industry through price. So, we might have gasoline or a candy bar that’s a little bit more than a competitor down the street or up the road or a few miles away, but it’s what we are and who we are to our communities—that’s always gonna be important. And as the big get bigger, they might lose that a little bit. I think there’s opportunity for the small operator to own that—to be the hub of their community, just like we are.

Chris Blasinsky:
Yeah, you touched on a good point though, like the localization of the local convenience store, right? Local always comes up as this top trend of the year whether it’s local product, local services, local, local, local. So I think the small…the independent operator I mean…that’s as local as you can possibly get.

Jared Scheeler:
And we’ve always been that way.

Jeff Lenard:
And I’m sure you’ll make that list available of the 99 other names that probably all focus on local, if somebody wants to arrange a trade.

Jared Scheeler:
Everything has a price.

Chris Blasinsky:
Your second question is—first you have to pick one of the three, which is cabernet, bourbon or IPA—and once you make your choice, you can only choose one, who in the industry would you sit down with to enjoy that cocktail?

Jared Scheeler:
You’re really putting me in a tough spot here. That’s like that’s like putting a big plate of chocolate in front of me and just saying pick one. So if I had to pick one…I like IPAs, I don’t love them. I love wine. But if I had to pick one, I think I would have to go with a good bourbon. And if I could sit down with anybody in the industry, that’s a difficult list to water down. I have great respect for so many people, but I look at the operators in the industry that have transformed how consumers look at us, and he’s a good friend of mine, but the first name that comes to mind is Mr. Joe Sheetz from Sheetz in Pennsylvania.

Jared Scheeler:
He is at least the third generation leader of that company who just handed off the reins of the company to his brother, Travis. But Joe is a dynamic leader, forward-thinking, a genuine person, and his company has blazed a path for this industry that without them I’m not sure where we would be because they’ve set the standard and I would relish any opportunity—friend or not—to sit down with a guy like Joe because of the person he is and what he’s done for the industry.

Jeff Lenard:
Well, if we can set that up, we’ll pay for the bourbon and it could be more than one if you want.

Chris Blasinsky:
Your third question’s a little…well it’s probably insider and you’ll get it more so than I will when I say it: What is your favorite animal and what made you decide it was an alligator?

Jared Scheeler:
It’s actually a crocodile. Oh, there is a difference. I’m not into the cute and fluffy, per se. That’s not a knock on a cute and fluffy puppy or a kitten. But I like aggressive animals. I like animals a lot, and they have to….

Chris Blasinsky:
Well you do live in North Dakota.

Jared Scheeler:
Well, we have a shortage of crocodiles in North Dakota. I can tell you that they’re on the endangered species list.

Jeff Lenard:
You gotta restock that moat!

Jared Scheeler:
Just what they represent, they’re kind of the king of their domain. They rule the roost where they live. And you have to respect that.

Chris Blasinsky:
I was gonna say, did you guess who asked which question?

Jared Scheeler:
I’ll Go Lonnie, Don, then Lisa.

Chris Blasinsky:
Yep, exactly.

Jeff Lenard:
So my final comment is…interesting you pick crocodile and the crocodile is Australia, alligators more the U.S., but you’re very passionate about change and evolution and the creature that you most identify with hasn’t evolved in millions of years…

Chris Blasinsky:
Like at all.

Jared Scheeler:
But they’ve found a way to make it through life. They found a way to endure and there’s something to be said about that.

Jeff Lenard:
And people like their shoes, the Crocs.

Chris Blasinsky:
So Jared, before we let you go, what are you looking forward to most this year as your time as chairman of NACS?

Jared Scheeler:
I appreciate you asking that. If there’s any benefit I could get out of this next year, it would be to personally meet as many forward-thinking small operators as possible. I would like to do whatever I can within my power to help as many people take their businesses to the next level. I’m willing to share where I’ve been, what I’ve done and where I’m going so that it can help other people. I wanna see this industry grow. I want see our small operators get better because we need to get better. We look at, like I mentioned earlier, the big companies are doing some really, really nice things right now and we have to keep up with them. And in many ways I think we have an opportunity to jump ahead of them in some areas.

Jared Scheeler:
So we have a responsibility to small operators and I want to meet you. I want to meet as many as possible. In fact, I’ve actually had a small operator come visit me already, since I took over as NACS Chairman, right before Thanksgiving, a gentleman named Jolly Walia drove up here with his family from the Dallas/Fort Worth area and it was a tremendous experience. Not only was I able to share what I’ve done and the mistakes I’ve made and the things that have done well, I learned so much from him and his family during those two days that we got to spend together. And I really treasured that time and I hope to get more opportunities to do things like that over this next year. I will take the time. But again, Jolly came to learn from me and I think I might have learned more from him throughout the process. And that’s the beauty of us small operators working together to help each other to not only help our businesses, but to help accelerate this industry.

Chris Blasinsky:
I see a road trip in your future, Jared.

Jeff Lenard:
And a future podcast where we can get some questions from small operators. And next time we’ll ask a little bit beyond animals.

Jared Scheeler:
And fortunately there’s a lot of great places to stop along the way on those road trips.

Chris Blasinsky:
Absolutely. Well, Jared, thank you for your time today. And we, we absolutely look forward to working with you this year and beyond. And so with that, we’re gonna let you go and get back to your stores and your operations. And I just want to thank everyone for listening and thanks Jeff for co-hosting. And for those of you who are listening, you can download or rather subscribe to our podcast.

Convenience Matters Intro:
Convenience Matters is brought to you by NACS and produced in partnership with Human Factor. For more information, visit convenience.org.

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