When foodservice stops being optional with Holiday Oil President Mike Wagstaff

For a lot of convenience retailers, food service has been the goal that always seems to slip just out of reach. The roller grills get installed, the hot case gets filled, and still something about the execution never quite lands the way it should. Mike Wagstaff, president of Holiday Oil, knows that story well, and in the latest episode of The Future of Convenience podcast, he lays out why his 78-location Utah, U.S.-based company is done playing defense.

Wagstaff joined hosts Carolyn Schnare and Harry Milloff, CEO of the Moseley Group, for a candid conversation about what it actually takes to pivot a legacy fuel-focused business toward a food-first future. Founded in 1964, Holiday Oil built its reputation on high-volume fuel, car washes and a strong community culture inside the store. But as the fuel landscape grows less predictable, Wagstaff has made a deliberate decision to reframe the entire company around what comes next.

“We really needed to become more offensive minded and really have a different mindset of who we are as a company,” Wagstaff said. “We will become a food company as we move forward.” That shift started at the board level, where Holiday Oil brought on a food industry expert before even beginning the search for a food director, a sequencing Wagstaff described as essential to making sure the company doesn’t miss the mark on a hire that matters this much.

Milloff, whose work with convenience retailers across the globe has given him a close view of how these transformations succeed and fail, was struck by the depth of thinking Holiday Oil had already put into the cultural side of the change. “Culture just plays such a big role,” he said. “Your team members and how the pride and passion that goes into the day to day really leads towards success in food and beverage programs.” Wagstaff echoed that sentiment throughout, noting that even individual store managers have a measurable impact on how new food programs are received by customers.

The episode also explores the structural advantages Holiday Oil brings to the table, including its vertically integrated distribution network, which gives the company control over warehouse operations, fuel logistics and store ordering in a way that most competitors simply don’t have. Wagstaff sees that infrastructure as a meaningful edge as the food program scales.

“At the end of the day, the customer is the one that really decides our success,” Wagstaff said. “So if we can take care of our customers, I think it’s really taking care of our team members and giving them the training and the coaching to be able to accomplish what they need to do.” The trio agreed to a follow-up episode in a year’s time to measure how far the journey has come, making this first installment a genuine document of a business in motion.

The Future of Convenience podcast is available on all major platforms including Spotify and Apple Podcasts, with new episodes featuring global convenience retail leaders released every other Tuesday.