Harold Stinnett's Page

I apologize for the reply to your wall but there seems to be a glitch in my sending a private message...Mr. Wes Stone is trying to fix the issue...
Sales Staff Reply: It depends on each Hackney division. Some branches are larger with more accounts and more area to cover. We have about 30 branches. We have 10 sales people that cover our area, but some of the other larger branches may have as many as 15 or more. It is possible that HT Hackney has around 360 sales people employed (if you are just asking about Hackney). If you are asking about the entire area,keep in mind...there are other Wholesale distributors that also supply in this region. Coremark, Mclean, ADC, and Petrie also have their sales teams to cover their accounts. The larger the chains such as 7-11, circle K, Tom Thumb (Turkey Hill),etc...The more sales staff may be needed. We have roughly 200 c-store accounts that we service and we like to provide a good service to our customers with bi-weekly visits. Some of the other larger wholesale distributors may do things differently with fewer salespeople and may only have 1 salesperson to call on the corporate office of these chains. To get a good estimate of how much sales staff is needed to cover the Eastern half of the U.S. it would be best to know how many convenience stores cover the region. I know there are over 146,300 convenience stores accross the united states but not broken down by regions. My guess would be somewhere around 35,000+ with a possible number of 1,200 wholesale sales reps covering the area. I hope my insight has helped you in coming to a decent ballpark figure.

It is very difficult to keep our territory and gain more distribution. It seems we always lose out to pricing for the big chains, but we do provide a better service to our customers than most of the bigger distributors. We make each of our customers feel important. They are all big fish to us and we cater to their needs, but this cost more to do. Some customers who left us for better financial deals have realized this and came back. Every independant c-store owner should feel just as important as a corporate c-store chain. Chains bring in more business and more profit, but we can't forget the mom and pop stores that many people still love and for many of those owners it is the same customers coming in everyday that they have built relationships with. That is what we do at Hackney. I'm not a sales person but I have met many customers at our food shows and so many of them are good people and they know they can call me anytime if there is something new they or looking for or a last minute order. And I think its important to have a good relationship with my vendor/broker reps. We help each other grow business and they are always welcome in my office with or without an appointment.