BY MICHAEL POWER
THE LCBO’S NICK NANOS ON HOW SUPPLY CHAINS GIVE BACK From his earliest days working, Nick Nanos has focused on service, connections, and giving back to his community. Nanos grew up in Trenton, a small town east of Toronto. The community, with a population of about 16,000 people, hosts a Canadian Forces Base. Young Nick’s father operated a family restaurant in the town, and some of Nanos’s fondest memories are connected to the time he spent at the establishment. “It was a family business, and I literally grew up there,” says Nanos, now the chief supply chain officer for the provincial-government owned Liquor Control Board of Ontario, known as the LCBO. The LCBO is one of the largest retailers and wholesalers of alcohol in the world, with five regional warehouse facilities, 680 retail stores, and 18,000 restaurant and bar wholesale customers. “I think it’s in my blood to focus on service and on community and family and that’s what 10 OCTOBER 2023
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you get when you grow up in a family business,” he says. “Those are all the things that I’m able to recognize here in my role at the LCBO: service, community, and family, so it’s rewarding. I feel I’ve found my place.” The restaurant taught Nanos several skills, from working the cash, to washing dishes, to operating the grill and deep fryers. He sometimes jokes with his wife that when he retires, the couple will open a restaurant of their own. She jokes back that he’ll have to take on that project alone. While the restaurant industry is even more challenging now than when he was young, Nanos stresses that it’s also rewarding because of opportunities to deal with people, feed them, and help them enjoy time with friends and family. Nanos now gets that same sense of serving the community from his position at the LCBO. Profits from sales go to the Ontario government, which are then invested in the province’s communities.
THE CUSTOMER EXPERIENCE Nanos began his career at the LCBO in the early 1990s. He started in retail before moving into store management. He worked across Ontario in different roles and a variety of store types, and recalls that period as an exciting, transformational time at the retailer. At the corporate level, the organization understood what it needed to do to provide a good customer experience in LCBO stores. From there, Nanos decided to make the jump to more corporate roles within the organization. “I was in stores for about 12 years when I decided it was time for a change,” Nanos says. “I applied to corporate roles, and I had the opportunity to work in various roles right across multiple different capacities. I worked in store audit, corporate audit, finance, wholesale logistics, and it gave me really broad experience across all our functions.” When the LCBO did an organizational review in 2016, it asked Nanos to act as the senior vice-president, logistics and quality assurance, for 18 months. After that, he permanently stepped into the role of VP of distribution and logistics. In that role, he led all of the organization’s distribution and logistics activities. That was the final position he took before accepting his current role of chief supply chain officer. At first, the job title was senior vice-president of supply chain and wholesale, which Nanos accepted in 2018. He oversaw all of the company’s business-to-business operations and its SUPPLY PROFESSIONAL
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MIKE FORD PHOTOGRAPHY
PEOPLE, CONNECTION, COMMUNITY
“One of the special things about the LCBO, when you look at it through a sustainability lens, is that every dollar of net income – or in our case, dividend – goes back to the province for investment in programs and services such as infrastructure, healthcare, education. That’s a really satisfying thing for all of us that work at the LCBO.” Nanos earned an undergraduate degree in political studies from Queen’s University in Kingston, Ontario. While the degree had no direct connection to supply chain, he’s since earned several industry designations, including the CITT-Certified Logistics Professional, and sits on the CITT’s board. He’s also a Certified Fraud Examiner through the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. He has a certificate in logistics management from the Schulich School of Business at Toronto’s York University, an executive development certificate through his alma mater of Queen’s University and, most recently, the Certified Supply Chain Management Professional designation through the Supply Chain Management Association of Ontario (SCMAO).