When I commute my 23 miles to work each weekday morning, my typical route leverages Interstate-85 to the Durham Freeway South which I stay on through Durham, exiting at Alexander Drive right on the northern edge of the Research Triangle Park. From there I take Alexander to South Miami Blvd and then a mile or so down Miami to the office. At the ever-active intersection of Alexander and South Miami sits this massive Sheetz Convenience Restaurant. The place always seems to be packed and buzzing with activity– folks filling up – coffee or gas or MTOs ordered through their touch screens. This Central PA kid just shakes his head and chuckles every time he encounters this scene. Imagine that – Altoona-based Sheetz on Tobacco Road - and not just thriving, but expanding.
The Mirror recently did a story on the company’s history and growth as they celebrate their 60th birthday. Though the tale has been told many times before, it is still a good read. A driven, competitive, visionary creates and grows a company in his image with a corporate culture rooted in his small town values. An obsession to customer service. A continuous loop of customer feedback, reinvention, and adaptation as your company, your market, and the world around you changes. Some good timing and fortune, no doubt, but, as with most of these successes, the recipe includes huge doses of intelligent business planning, innovation, and good old elbow grease in the execution phase. The “Sheetz Story” is all the cooler, for me at least, since the seeds of this success story were sewn on the same streets of the city in which I was raised. (Damn, that last sentence has some high-quality alliteration. Props to, among others, Ms. Patricia Winstead, 9th Grade English, BGHS Sixth Avenue, 1976-1977.)
Loyal readers will no doubt recall my post earlier this year describing my decision to enable