Three Lessons from the World's Best Gas Station

My family's five years in Green Country Oklahoma provided us a great list of enduring "favorites." Our favorite barbecue? Definitely Burn Co BBQ (try the fatty.) Need a true, old-school diner breakfast including a truly amazing sticky bun? You gotta go to The Savoy (get there early, be prepared to wait.) Our favorite slice of pizza outside of NYC comes from Andolini's. (All of these favorites are food-related. Did I mention I lost forty pounds when we moved away from Tulsa?)

Without a doubt, however, Team Gosney's all-time favorite T-Town institution is QuikTrip (QT). It's fair to wonder why anyone would get so excited about a gas station/convenience store. Well quite simply, QT is the World's Best Gas Station. (Don't come at me, Buc-ee's fans. I know I'm right.) What makes QT the best? They do have an amazing soda fountain with vastly superior crushed ice. My wife believes their hot dogs, cooked on a roller grill and served on a steamed bun, are the ultimate. I maintain that the QT Chocolate Long-john could unlock the secret to world peace. But, ultimately, it's how QT runs their operation that sets them so far apart from their competition. (In the markets in which they operate, a QT is on average seven times more profitable than their competition in the C-store space.) A relationship with my employer in Tulsa afforded me the opportunity to spend some time peeking behind the curtain at QT where I was able to learn a little bit more about what makes it so special. Below are three things your organization can do to be a little bit more like QuikTrip.

It's all about culture. In the early 1980's, QT was a fairly unassuming and unremarkable small group of c-stores. But owner and founder Chester Cadieux had grown frustrated. He knew that his organization was capable of more, but that to reach his goals some things had to change. And so he authored a memo that spelled out, in colorful terms, exactly what type of individual was no longer going to be acceptable as an employee (for this article let's just say no "jerks", but Chester used a different term.) It's easy to make such a statement, and somewhat easy to apply that rule to your front-line staff. But Chester recognized that some of his most talented and accomplished executives were also not particularly nice people. And so he cleaned house and started making hiring and promotional decisions based upon not just someone's technical expertise but also their cultural fit. Eventually the organization was populated with individuals who were both skilled and also culturally-aligned. It is one thing to make a poster that lists your organization's cultural pillars and plaster it all over the break room. It's quite another to consistently make difficult choices that reinforce that culture across all the various systems operating within your organization. (A great perspective on this idea is presented in Gustavson and Liff's book 'A Team of Leaders.' A good read if you're looking to make this kind of cultural shift.)

Set clear expectations and manage to them. If you were going to describe an average QT you'd use three words: fast, clean, and friendly. When you walk into a QT you will be immediately greeted with a cheerful "hello, welcome to QuikTrip!" I'm fairly certain you could walk in with a ski mask on and you'd still get the same greeting. (Please don't try this.) The bathrooms are so remarkably clean you could eat off the floor. (Also something you probably shouldn't try.) And if you find yourself waiting in a line that's more than two deep an army of QT employees magically appear to run additional cash registers - which is sort of the point when the name of your company is QuikTrip. How does QT operate so consistently and well across all of their stores?

Without giving away too many of their corporate secrets, QT has done a remarkable job setting very clear performance expectations for each of their employees and stores and creating great training that teaches to those expectations. They measure and evaluate their stores against those standards obsessively. And instead of individual pay-for-performance, collective employee compensation is significantly tied to a store's ability to deliver on these standards. What this leads to is a sterling example of Collins' Hedgehog Concept, in which the team members become aligned and self-governing to the objectives of the organization. An anecdote shared by a friend illustrates this point. A friend of her teen-age daughter was working at a local QT where one of her co-workers was not pulling their weight. This seventeen year-old girl took it upon herself to speak with her manager about her co-worker's poor performance. She was not willing to let one bad apple spoil the collective work of her team. That's an individual who understands and is championing the expectations of the organization.

Focus on Employees. It would be easy to think that QT's mission is customer-focused. They certainly create a phenomenal customer experience. Instead, QuikTrip's mission is to create opportunity for others - specifically their employees. QT's growth is a function of its mission. More stores means more opportunity for its employees to provide for their families and build a career. QT promotes almost exclusively from within. To manage a store you must start as an hourly employee and work your way up, and many of their corporate team also began life behind the register. Their pay is well above industry averages, and as already mentioned they have created a compensation model that creates profit sharing and shared ownership among their team. QT's turnover is enviably low, irrespective of industry, and it is not uncommon to see ten and fifteen year employees in their stores. QuikTrip has learned that it is the employee that creates the experience, and when you make it about them they'll make it about your customer.

Given all of the above, you can imagine my excitement when yesterday I learned that QuikTrip is expanding to Denver - my family's home for the last three years. But as much as I'm looking forward to an ice cold drink in a Big Q cup accompanied by something off the roller grill, I'm more excited to again see up close an organization that makes it about culture, sets clear expectations and manages to them, and focuses on employees. The great news is that your organization can do these same three things, too. And if you've also got great doughnuts, I'll be there.