effort to “grow our way out of the problem,” he says, by acquiring half a dozen 7-Eleven stores. Things improved. A few years later, at 28, Susser became CEO, a job he’d hold for the next 22 years. (He also served as CEO of the wholesale fuel business.) As the business generated more cash, he accelerated the expansion of the convenience store chain, Stripes, doubling overnight on four ocHIS FATHER DIDN’T SAY A WORD. Sam L. Susser casions through acsaw in his dad’s eyes what needed to happen. quisitions. Ten years Sam should leave Wall Street and come home in, he bought out his to help save the family business. father and uncle and The year was 1988, and the banks had called the early investors a meeting to determine the fate of Susser who had enabled the Petroleum Company, the fuel, convenience company to survive. store, and real estate business that Sam’s In 2012, with more grandfather had started following the Great than 500 stores and Depression. Fifty years later, the enterprise nearly $5 billion in anSUSSER ON CRITICAL ADVICE FOR ANY CEO: “ONE OF OUR BOARD was on the brink of bankruptcy, undone by the MEMBERS URGED ME TO THINK HARD ABOUT WHAT DECISIONS I WANTED nual revenue, Susser collapse of the energy, real estate, and banking TO KEEP CONTROL OF. HE SQUEEZED HIS HANDS IN A FIST AND SAID, ‘HOLD Holdings cracked the industries in Texas. Because Sam’s father, Sam ONTO THOSE LIKE YOU’RE SQUEEZING THE LIFE OUT OF A CHICKEN, BUT LET GO OF EVERYTHING ELSE.’” Fortune 500. In 2014, J. Susser, BBA ’62, and uncle, Jerry Susser, had when Susser decided personally guaranteed the company loans, the to sell the company to the oil giant Sunoco, it had grown to 650 stores in Texas, New Mexico, family was facing financial ruin. and Oklahoma, nearly $7 billion in revenue, and some 12,000 employees. Sam, a 24-year-old analyst at Salomon Throughout his career, rapid and massive growth forced Susser to continually adapt. The Brothers in New York, quit his job and returned organization outgrew his early hands-on approach. (The first year, he’d actually delivered to Corpus Christi to help his uncle, who was donuts to the stores himself.) Susser, regarded as one of the industry’s leading innovators, running the company. (His father, president of embraced technology to better manage the sprawling organization. “Our biggest competitive Citgo Petroleum, needed to keep his steady and advantage became our analytics,” he says. “We knew every keystroke on the register, the length lucrative income.) The core business, selling of time of each transaction, what was selling in each store.” motor fuel, was in free fall. “I had to engineer He also learned the key to delegating — critical advice for any CEO. “One of our board mema plan for survival,” Sam says. bers urged me to think hard about what decisions I wanted to keep control of,” Susser says. To pay off the debt, his plan involved enlisting “He squeezed his hands in a fist and said, ‘Hold onto those like you’re squeezing the life out of more than a dozen outside investors to help a chicken, but let go of everything else.’” start a new company, later Susser Holdings, Today, Susser is a former CEO — in some ways, a reluctant one. “My wife [Catherine G. built around the family’s one cash-flow positive Susser, BBA ‘91, MPA ‘91] and I didn’t want to sell the business,” he admits. “But after months business: five convenience stores in Texas. of painful reflection, we came down on the side of this is something we had to do. We had a Susser, whose family retained a 30 percent fiduciary responsibility to investors.” After all, Sunoco paid nearly $2 billion. stake in the new entity along with its original But Susser, 52, is also experiencing the upside of leaving the CEO lifestyle behind. For years, wholesale fuel business, then spearheaded an he spent half of every month on the road, away from his wife and three children. “I missed the window on my first born,” he says of his daughter, Sophie, a freshman at McCombs. “But I’m spending more PATH TO VICE PRESIDENT AND time around my boys. I wasn’t making Boy Scout THE TOP GENERAL MANAGER camping trips when I was running a Fortune 500 Southguard Corp CEO company.” But he is now. (later Susser Susser Holdings PRESIDENT ANALYST Chuck Salter is a senior editor at Fast Company.
THE BUILDER
SAM L. SUSSER, BBA ’85 SUSSER HOLDINGS
Salomon Brothers
Holdings)
and Susser Petro-
Susser Holdings
New York City
Corpus Christi
leum Partners
II, L.P.
1985-1988
1988-1992
1992-2014
2015-present
#McCOMBSMAGALUMNI 21