One Day, One Job » grocery

RaceTrac

Willy Franzen — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 17:58:16 +0000

I don’t know about you, but I love the smell of gasoline–at least in limited doses. Oddly enough, I absolutely hate the smell of coffee, so I’m not sure how I’d do if I had to work at a RaceTrac. They’re an Atlanta, GA based chain of more than 525 gas stations and convenience stores that stretch across twelve southeastern states. The odd thing about them is that their home page puts more emphasis on their coffee than on the gas. I guess gas is pretty much the same at every gas station, but good coffee will actually bring people through the doors. Besides the coffee RaceTrac differentiates itself with its size–their stores are typically over 5,000 square feet with more than 4,000 items and 20-24 pumps. If I owned a chain of gas stations, I’d probably use clean bathrooms as a point of differentiation. I think it would be a goldmine, but RaceTrac’s $8 billion in annual revenue makes them the third largest private company in Atlanta, so maybe coffee is the right choice.

Start Your Engine

As I mentioned before, RaceTrac’s home page doesn’t make it very clear that they’re a gas station, but there is a huge emphasis on different forms of transportation. They’re obviously trying to sell themselves as a part of an on the go lifestyle. This makes a lot of sense considering that it’s often the convenience items that drive the profits for retail gas stations. I’m sure there’s a lot of interesting stuff going on behind the scenes at RaceTrac, which is why you should check out their Careers page. They have page for Associate and Manager positions, but my guess is that you’ll be most interested in the positions at their Store Support Centers (Corporate). Right now they have some great opportunities for new or recent grads including:

Real Estate Analyst (Atlanta, GA)
Fuel Pricing Coordinator (Atlanta, GA)
Engineering Coordinator (Atlanta, GA)
Recruitment and Engagement Specialist (Atlanta, GA)
Recruitment and Engagement Specialist (Baton Rouge, LA)
HR Business Analyst (Atlanta, GA)
Software Developer (Atlanta, GA)

There are some really interesting look positions at RaceTrac, so check them out and see if any of them make sense for you.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Have you ever stopped at a RaceTrac?

ALDI

Willy Franzen — Mon, 22 Mar 2010 14:58:50 +0000

Sweet 16! And if I’m going to find a way to get to the game, I’m going to need to start shopping at ALDI, because flights to Syracuse aren’t cheap. Luckily, the groceries at ALDI are. I’ve never stepped foot in an ALDI store, but I’ve heard plenty about them from friends and articles. They are unlike all other grocery stores. They almost never stock name brands—they have their own private labels. They don’t have shelves—they use pallets. They charge for reusable bags, and taking a shopping cart requires a 25 cent deposit. ALDI also doesn’t take credit cards, and they stock far fewer items than your typical supermarket. ALDI may not offer a luxurious shopping experience like Wegmans does, but they make up for it by offering insane value. If you’re pinching pennies, you have no excuse not to shop at ALDI. Even with their limited selection of products, they’ve found that most of their customers “can do as much as 90% of their weekly shopping at ALDI.”

Find Value at ALDI

ALDI isn’t only different in the customer experience that they offer, they also run their business in a unique way. They’re a German company, and they have a huge presence in Europe. Their U.S. headquarters is in Batavia, IL, but that’s not where most of their entry level jobs are. That’s because another interesting thing about ALDI is the fact that they hire their District Managers straight out of college, and they pay them exceedingly well ($70k per year well). They offer these opportunities across a large portion of the country, and they’re growing at a rate of 100 stores per year. You can find all of the details on ALDI’s Careers site, and you should be sure to check out their employee profiles and the details of their training program (they wouldn’t throw a new grad into a management role without a ton of training). Another cool thing is that after 2 years as a District Manager, ALDI offers the opportunity to work abroad for another 2 years through their International Expatriate Program. It’s pretty obvious that ALDI’s cheap philosophy does not apply to how they treat talent. If you’re interested in working for them, you can find out all of the information on how to apply here.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

Do you shop at ALDI?

Wegmans

Willy Franzen — Mon, 11 Feb 2008 13:00:37 +0000

If you’ve never spent time in upstate New York or the mid-Atlantic, you probably don’t even know what Wegmans is. The One Day, One Job team is made up of Cornell kids, so we developed quite the obsession with the supermarket chain during what we call our “time on the hill.” For those of you who aren’t blessed with a Wegmans in your college town, we’ll fill you in. Wegmans is the best supermarket in the world. Wegmans is an acceptable place to take a date for dinner. Wegmans is the place to go when you decide to bake cookies at 3:00 A.M. Wegmans is the thing you miss most about college after you graduate. And in case you didn’t know, Wegmans is also one of the best places to work in America – Fortune Magazine has had them on their list of the 100 Best Places to Work for 11 straight years (#3 this year, top 10 the past 6 years).

From what we can tell, Wegmans doesn’t offer entry-level job opportunities in the sense that we usually talk about. They have a ton of jobs that require no prior experience, but they’re not jobs that require a college education either. Wegmans is a bottom-up type of company, so starting out as in a “customer service” role is probably necessary to future success in a leadership position at Wegmans. It might be possible for some to leap into some sort of management position based on education and internship experience, but we wouldn’t count on it. Considering that Wegmans has over 35,000 employees, we’d imagine that they also have corporate jobs at the their headquarters in Rochester, NY, but we can’t find much information about them. That’s because Wegmans fills most of those jobs with people who have succeeded at the store level. The only fast track at Wegmans is great performance and customer service while working in the trenches.

Wegmans offers both pay and benefits that are unparalleled in the grocery industry. In fact, they might even be competitive with other entry-level jobs that you’d be looking at. What really stands out, though, is Wegmans’ scholarship program. In the program’s 25 years, they’ve awarded $63 million in scholarships. This isn’t just for you to go to college, but also to extend your education in other ways. For instance, someone in the meat department might be able to get a scholarship to study charcuterie (sausage making) in France. How cool is that?

The types of jobs that Wegmans offers may not be exactly what you’re looking for after you graduate, but take some time to think them over. If you want to go into food merchandising or marketing, there are few better places to learn the ins and outs of the grocery business. The same can be said if you want to learn how companies can use customer service as a competitive advantage. Wegmans is also a great place to get started in a culinary career. So, before you write off Wegmans’ jobs because they won’t put your degree to use right away, consider your future aspirations and how Wegmans might be able to help you achieve them.

To get a job at Wegmans, use their store locator to find a location near where you want to live and then browse through their job listings.

P.S. While we were writing this post, Wegmans completely revamped their website. All the links we put together changed. We did our best to update them, but there might be a few things that we missed. That’s just more of a reason for you to head over to Wegmans.com and check it out for yourself. The new site is a big improvement in a lot of ways, and it has even more information than before.

Note: On April 24th we revisited entry-level jobs at Wegmans.

Links to Help You Begin Your Research

If you’re not going to apply for a job at Wegmans, at least figure out which of your friends go to school in a Wegmans town, so that you can make a road trip and go visit them.