Family Business Transformation
Company Overview: Shop-A-Snak began as a small chain of convenience stores focused on the core grocery category, offering extended operating hours and no fuel. All locations were leased and located on B+ real estate.
Location: Headquartered in Birmingham, AL.
Size: $125mm in Revenue, 50 owned Company Stores and 350+ Employees
Background: EJ Marino, Jr. started his career at Shop-A-Snak as the CFO and ended as the President & CEO. The goal was to transform the company into a professional, scalable enterprise with aggressive growth while acquiring A class real estate. Also intended to leverage our rich family grocery heritage to become the c-store market leader in merchandising and operations.
Challenges: Limited c-store merchandise offering with “case purchase” only supply chain. No consistent overall branding, inadequate accounting and POS systems, “family business” management team structure and poor capital structure.
Solutions:
- Created a new brand package, store layout and merchandise plan-o-gram offering with a “single pick” supply chain
- Added a robust fuel and c-store impulse snack item offering
- Installed new enterprise level accounting and POS systems
- Launched a wholesale fuel distributorship and a real estate development company
- Built a leadership team based on skillset versus family. Honored “family culture” while operating professionally.
- Restructured debt and established growth capital lines with commercial banks for all 3 business units
Results:
- Significantly grew sales, margins, and achieved market leadership in all of our operational geographies
- At maturity, owned 95% of our real estate comprised of “A” class corner locations
- Based on NACS published data, we outperformed most KPI benchmarks of chains with similar size
- Won the Exxon/Mobil National Distributor Excellence Award (top 5% nationally) 15 years in a row
- Successfully exited the business through a sell-side process in 2006 after 45 years in business and exceeded our valuation goal