John Jackson: From one gas station in Caldwell, Idahoan builds $600 million C-store colossus (An IBR Executive Profile)

By Brad Carlson

IDAHO BUSINESS REVIEW

Jacksons Food Stores Inc. occupies a newish two-story headquarters in Meridian, where CEO John Jackson is positioned strategically in an office near the front door.

“It keeps me a little closer to the action,” he said. “I can see who comes and goes, and it’s easier for me to come and go.”

Jackson, 50, started with a single service station in Caldwell in 1975, and still takes a small-business approach to heading the company, which today operates about 120 Jacksons convenience stores in eight Western states, plus grocery wholesaler Capitol Distributing and fuel distributor Jackson Oil. They’re based in a 20,000-square-foot building on Commercial Street, east of Eagle Road, opened five years ago.

The businesses employ about 1,100 combined and were expected to generate nearly $600 million in revenue last year.

“I still think we’re small,” Jackson said. “It seems like the bar continually rises on you. There is so much consolidation going on in our industry, like all industries. We have grown, and so have our competitors.”

Jackson, who spends about half his time on the road for business or volunteer-service reasons, still isn’t above picking up a broom or mop when he visits his stores.

“Do we run it as a small business? In a lot of ways, we do,” he said. “Our culture and personalities are still small business.”

Jackson and his key executives “all started at the bottom, so we have a humble view of things. We don’t have a big-ego approach.”

His sister, Andrea Jackson, is president of Jacksons Food Stores. Tony Stone is president of Jackson Oil. Cory Jackson, John’s son, is president of Capitol Distributing.

They report to John. He’s CEO of the whole enterprise, “which, from a management perspective, operates like a holding company,” he said. He has no plans to change his title or role.

“All of our key executives are pretty young. It just evolved that way,” Jackson said. Andrea Jackson and Stone are 43, and Cory Jackson is 29. John’s son Jeff, director of real estate, is 24.

“We do try to take a business-family approach to the relationships within our companies,” Jackson said. “If someone is in need of help, we try to be there for them as a company.”

Jackson maintains an open-door policy, and the executives, managers and employees communicate openly. The execs travel a lot.

“Since we are spread out over eight different states, people could feel left out if they were not communicated with,” he said. “And there’s no substitute for being there.”

There’s a degree of hierarchy out of necessity, but managers try to make it “a fun place to work,” Jackson said.

“I think because of our culture, and the way we represent ourselves in the marketplace, we seem to be a preferred employer in our industry,” he said, noting that full-time employees receive full benefits. “We are blessed with a very good crew.”

Jacksons recently paid for employees and family members in the military to visit home while on leave from training at bases in the southern U.S.

Jackson favors a low-profile approach to management, “but sometimes in business, you have to stand up and be heard. It’s just part of getting the job done.”

He grew up and graduated from high school in Homedale, where his father, Dale, owned a service station.

While Jackson was an accounting student at Boise State, his father alerted him to an opportunity for real-world experience. A Texaco operator in Caldwell was planning to move to northwest Boise, and Texaco wanted someone to run the Caldwell station, at the old Boise Avenue stop sign on Interstate 84, until the lease expired in six months.

Jackson bought the inventory in August 1975 for $2,000, with a loan that his father co-signed. “I paid it off within the first month. It turned out that the site was actually a very strong site,” he said.

Although he knew a planned expansion and re-routing of I-84 in Caldwell would impede access, he created “a typical interstate location,” installing a tall sign and extending the station’s hours.

“The previous owner was more of a mechanic. I was not as good a mechanic, so I leaned toward the sale of fuel and less toward the service side,” Jackson said.

“We went from 30,000 to 85,000 gallons a month, a very good gallonage in those days,” he said. He kept the station for five years. The changes he made there inspired a sales emphasis.

“It was just like a light switch was flipped when I saw the things you could do with this business and the results you could get out of it,” Jackson said. “I was down there every day &#133 I went from kind of lazy to being a very driven young man.”

“I became focused on detail,” he recalled. “Retail is detail.”

“We were always pretty much growth-oriented from the beginning,” Jackson said. “When I got the first station I was planning for the second.” He opened his second station in December 1976, in downtown Caldwell.

From his father – who died in the mid-1980s – he learned to support the business first by not taking too much money out, and to go where customer volume is high.

Jackson owned five stations in 1980 when he opened his first convenience store, at 31st and State streets in Boise.

Good mechanics were hard to find then, and a C-store “was more profitable than a service station, which is harder to operate if you’re not there all the time,” he said. “It took one C-store to realize I wanted more,” said Jackson, who adopted the format at all the company’s stores.

The company fielded about a dozen stores in 1985. In 1988, when the company had 17 stores, it expanded outside the Treasure Valley by acquiring three Reno-area stores from Texaco and picking up supply contracts on about eight others.

In July 1999, Jacksons acquired and converted 47 Circle K stores in southern Idaho. The firm bought 14 Fast Eddy’s stores in the Boise area in 2003 – keeping the Chevron fuel brand and remodeling buildings – and converted 65 Jacksons stores from Texaco to Shell last year.

Last year, Jacksons closed stores at Curtis and Fairview and on Latah Street in Boise, and at Chinden and Garrett in Garden City (acquired by Ada County Highway District).

“As the market evolves, we’re constantly looking at who’s making it and who isn’t,” Jackson said. “There are a few more we’ve got our eye on.”

Jacksons also continues to look for stores to buy, as opportunities arise.

“I expect us to have continued strong growth,” Jackson said. “Most of our companies are up 35 percent in sales to just shy of $600 million. I’d like to be doing a billion a year in five more years.”

“If we do well, we have a shot at it. All three businesses are growing through new business we’ve picked up.”

Jacksons Food Stores and Jackson Oil each contribute about 40 percent to total company revenue, he said. The other 20 percent comes from Capitol Distributing. Cory Jackson - who previously worked for the Texaco Inc. Retail Group – “has made a number of improvements, and we’re getting more out of it than we ever thought possible,” John Jackson said. Capitol expanded to 45,000 square feet last year and could grow to 80,000 square feet in one or two years, he added.

The high fuel prices of 2004 hurt the stores, he said, because they meant “less disposable income for people to shop our stores -&#160two-thirds of your profit.” Gas is low-margin for stores, and “it’s very competitive, particularly with big-box retailers getting into the business.”

Jackson recently moved from Eagle to the Boise Central Bench. He plays golf, skis, and flies planes when not managing his businesses or serving on volunteer boards. He has received several service awards.

Jackson and his staff are involved in many nonprofit and community activities, and the company has made major financial gifts.

“With the help of our employees and customers, Jacksons Food Stores has raised millions of dollars for local charities and community events,” a company statement says.

“We try to be part of our communities, and give back,” Jackson said. The company belongs to the chamber of commerce in each city where it has stores, “and as far
as charitable work, we’ve been open to those types of opportunities from the very beginning.”

Jacksons recently committed $250,000 to a St. Alphonsus Regional Medical Center expansion, and earlier gave $250,000 for the BSU indoor track and field arena in Nampa. The company raised nearly $40,000 for the Idaho Partners for Justice Project – which serves victims of domestic violence – in a one-month campaign in late 2003, and ran the campaign again at the end of 2004.

“I love this business most of the time, and I think in the future there is a lot of opportunity for us,” Jackson said. “You have to be on your toes.”