HELP WANTED
Sheetz aims to attract workers for its growing convenience store empire
Anyone on a Western Pennsylvania highway for a couple hours — say, driving U.S. Route 22 from Altoona to Pittsburgh — is likely to pass by a number of sprawling 2-acre sites with bright red canopies over numerous gas pumps and large brick stores.
Last month, Joe Sheetz tried to stop at all 12 Sheetz locations dotting that 100-mile stretch of road.
“I do unannounced visits,” Mr. Sheetz said, quickly clarifying: “I’m not inspecting or anything.”
The 51-year-old chief executive officer of the eponymous convenience store chain wants candid suggestions from employees. “Otherwise, what I’m going to do — guess what they want me to do?” he said.
Mr. Sheetz needs to know because Sheetz Inc., which started more than 70 years ago as a small dairy store in Altoona, isn’t just selling gas and hot dogs these days. It’s also selling itself as a place to pick up a paycheck.
The family-owned company is in the midst of an expansion, operating more than 560 store locations with at least 18,500
employees throughout Pennsylvania, West Virginia, Virginia, Maryland, Ohio and North Carolina. It plans to build 25 to 30 stores a year for the foreseeable future. Annually, it pulls in more than $5.6 billion in revenue.
The company is also finishing a spree of tearing down decades-old stores and building new concept stores with a footprint twice as big and with more services and ordering technology.
Yet Sheetz is working overtime to keep all those stores staffed — facing difficulties in recruiting and retaining employees in a tightening pool of labor at a time when lots of other retailers want the same type of worker.
In April, the company announced plans to hire another 2,500 workers, including 1,200 in Pennsylvania.
Some locations, Mr. Sheetz acknowledged, are in areas with so few applications that the company brings in corporate recruiters to drum up more.
“In those markets, you’re hiring people who are already working somewhere,” said Mr. Sheetz, in an interview after a lunchtime speech organized by the Pittsburgh Downtown Rotary Club at the Omni William Penn Hotel in Downtown.
“So then you’re trying to figure out, how do I entice these people?” he said. “It’s almost like advertising — sell the Sheetz story. Why should I come work for you? It’s a little bit of a longer, slower burn, but you have to do that.”
Like other retailers, the convenience store chain has been making that pitch in the form of higher wages and more benefits. Sheetz boosted its starting wage to $10 an hour and touts its medical, dental and vision insurance; tuition reimbursement; adoption assistance; a 401(k) retirement program; and the opportunity for quarterly bonuses.
Higher wages are in line with the rest of the industry. Convenience stores boosted the average hourly wage for the fourth consecutive year in 2017, paying workers on average $10.19 an hour, up from $9.99 in 2016, according to the National Association of Convenience Stores.
At the same time, industrywide turnover fell to 115 percent, down from 133 percent in 2016, according to the Virginia-based trade group.
For Sheetz, the biggest overture to workers has meant one of the toughest changes for the company. The company has been relaxing its scheduling systems to let employees work when they want and where they want. Many care more about a predictable schedule than a slight wage bump, Mr. Sheetz said.
Store managers talk to managers of other stores in the chain and allow employees to choose hours among several locations, taking advantage of the company’s density in Western Pennsylvania.
“We’ve spent a lot more time than we ever have around scheduling,” Mr. Sheetz said.
The gas-focused chain is embedded mainly in the suburbs and along highways. Sheetz makes it clear on its website who its target consumers are: “Road warriors. Construction workers. Soccer moms.”
As traditional brick-andmortar retail continues to struggle, gas stations and convenience stores have raked in profits and added stores nationwide. In 2017, pre-tax profits from both gasoline and food sales rose nearly 2 percent to $10.4 billion, according to the convenience store trade group.
The group’s annual report, released this month, showed prepared food to be a key driver of sustained earnings. Convenience stores see thin profit margins from selling gas, as consumers are often price-sensitive — even a nickel-a-gallon difference will send drivers to a competitor.
“Fresh food and drinks, that’s the differentiator now,” said Jeff Lenard, vice president for strategic industry initiatives at the trade group. “You see more stores that look like restaurants that happen to have gas pumps.”
It’s why consumers see places like Sheetz, GetGo and Speedway touting their sandwiches and iced coffees.
Mr. Sheetz said his company is always hunting for new customers. A new road, shifting traffic patterns or a surge in population can create an opening for a new store. In large part, it’s a matter of counting cars that would drop by during the morning and evening rush hours, as well as during a lunch break.
Yet new stores exacerbate that pesky staffing issue.
The new-concept stores require seven to 10 more people than the previous model. In this region, Sheetz has recently rebuilt stores in Robinson, Murrysville and Cranberry, while the only old-model store Mr. Sheetz could recall is on Perry Highway in McCandless.
“We’ve done an unbelievable amount of tear-downs to start over again,” he said. “We are constantly changing models, and you need to keep up with the times.”