SunStop Convenience Stores               
‘Big Family Atmosphere’ Makes Work Enjoyable

  by Sharon Shuford with Chuck Ulie, CSP
Twenty years ago the following article appeared in the Fall issue of GACS Today. We ran across it recently, and found that it’s just as true and relevant today as when it was written, and decided to reprise these myths for today’s readers.
W hy do some convenience-store hires depart after a month while some never leave? CSP recently interviewed a few convenience employees who have turned their hourly positions into careers. One of them was GACS member Kelly Stokes, with Southwest Georgia Oil.

Which led GACS Today to take a closer look at Southwest Georgia Oil/ SunStop stores, to learn what it is about the company culture that leads to employee loyalty and retention.  The following paraphrases what CSP uncovered, combined with our own interview with Michelle Weckstein, who was one of our August convention speakers.

She worked in the C-Store business for 15 years, then moved into a different line of work when her store closed. Stokes later worked as a part-time cashier at a C-Store that was acquired by SunStop, now an 80+-store chain. After about six months, she moved up to assistant manager and, a year later, manager, a role she held for 11 years. Stokes has been a district manager for the last three years.

In her early 20s, she realized she was good at her job and first considered making a career in the C-Store business. Stokes said opportunity for advancement is one of the main reasons she has stayed.
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She also said there’s a “big family atmosphere, and that kind of thing makes the work enjoyable. Everybody knows everybody in the company, even our President (Glennie Bench). She’s very personable.”
Stokes has held many positions, so one of her biggest strengths is relating to coworkers. “(I know) what it feels like to be a store manager and how it feels to have just lost two employees in one day, or to be the cashier who’s tired and struggling and has a kid at home,” she said.

The company offers a variety of training opportunities, including leadership development, and a few months ago, Stokes partook in a conference in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Based on what she learned, she did a presentation on employee motivation and retention in October at the NACS Show in Las Vegas.
Throughout the summer, she surveyed employees to gauge their motivation and loyalty. Based on the results, SunStop will implement an employee rewards program, and at the end of three months, she’ll conduct another survey to gauge results.

To inspire others, Stokes makes it a point to tell her story to as many coworkers as possible, showing that they also can excel in a company. “I started this whole journey young, and I did rise up through the ranks,” she said. “I know I have a lot of managers who say I inspire them to do better and want to move up. I help them.”

Michelle Weckstein, Director of Food and Beverage Brands for Southwest Georgia Oil, dba SunStop,  arrived at SunStop by a more circuitous route.  Starting her career in Human Resources, for several years, she bounced from restaurant chains to convenience. Ultimately, she found herself working in the convenience channel with EZ Energy, 7-Eleven, Parker’s Kitchens, and finally SunStop.
In 2017, she learned that Southwest Georgia Oil was looking for a Director of Food and Beverage as part of its effort to build its food service programs. She wasn’t interested – until she met Glennie Cox Bench, whom she viewed (and still does view) as a powerful, competent and strong woman role-model and leader, who offered her a new opportunity.

At Southwest Georgia Oil she found a culture that is fully employee centric, and a management that truly cares about the people who wear the SunStop uniform. She found her home.

Today, Weckstein leads a team of four “food fanatics. We make sure we have innovative, fresh food,” she says. Her days are filled with looking for ways to up the food game, train stores in food prep and safety, improve processes, looking at technologies to support the process, and social media to push the message.   
“Seeing a manager understand the P&L is what drives me,” she says. She’s always striving for the enthusiasm among employees to be the best in the industry. Her training program includes helping people in the stores understand their
contribution and impact on the bottom line.

She’s energized by working with SunStop because the company gives her the ability to take risks and do what she thinks will move the company forward.  “It’s very exciting,” she says, “to be part of this true people culture” at SunStop.
That perspective extends to employee hiring and training. A big challenge is retention, as it is across the industry. Weckstein is focused on making sure food prep is streamlined, so that if staff is short, food quality doesn’t suffer.
She also spends time visiting competitors, from all over the country looking for ideas, because, she says, “we’re a little behind trend here (in the south).” But when she finds something, she often makes adjustments to insure it will appeal to her market. For example, when she found a pork fritter sandwich in Indiana, she changed it up and it became a pork fritter biscuit with gravy in SunStop stores.
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“We want to grow the food program and our brand as a great place to eat, not just fuel up,” Weckstein says of the future for herself and SunStop. “Pride in food” matters, she says, “We are food forward.”
Southwest Georgia Oil Co. Inc./SunStop is No. 86 on CSP’s 2024 Top 202 ranking of U.S. convenience-store chains by store count.
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