When Tanner Krause’s time as Kum & Go CEO comes to a close tomorrow, he said he plans to focus on spending time with his family and reflecting on his experience before deciding what comes next.

He joined Kum & Go in 2013 as a district supervisor and then moved into senior leadership roles leading teams in operations, human resources, marketing and IT. He was promoted to president in 2018 and CEO in 2021. But Krause says his work at the company started early and became his childhood dream.

“It’s been an incredible experience for me. This has been my goal for 30 years to get to this point,” Krause said. “I never thought I would get here as quickly as I did. I’m really thankful for all those around me that helped me develop early in my career to put me in a position to be successful along the way, and I also never thought that here only a few years into the job that it would be time for me to start a new chapter in life.”

Krause sat down with the Business Record to share more.

Responses have been lightly edited for clarity and brevity

Did you have a role in the decision to sell Kum & Go?
For the last three years, I’ve been 110% focused on making Kum & Go the best possible company it can be. Structurally at Krause Group, you’ve got 10 operating companies, and then you’ve got Krause Group, which functions as the parent company that is driving the overarching growth and strategy. None of the leaders of the operating companies sit at the parent company executive team level. How Krause Group chooses to grow, expand, diversify, those are parent company decisions, and those involve the executive team at the Krause Group level. Obviously, as the CEO of Kum & Go, also the biggest and most successful company within Krause Group, of course, I’ve got regular interaction with a lot of those folks, and my interaction focuses mostly on how Kum & Go integrates into Krause Group’s plans, what role we can play as one of his portfolio companies and how we can help achieve mutual success. For the last three years since I became CEO, I’ve not participated in Krause Group strategy meetings, nor strategy conversations on our other companies. I don’t have a role in the ongoings of Krause+, Pro Iowa, the soccer teams or anything like that. They’ve got plenty of people there focused on those businesses, and my team and I remain focused on making Kum & Go as great as possible.

What was your initial reaction when you learned about the sale of Kum & Go?
It’s been a very emotional journey. Kum & Go has been my passion for really my entire life. Since I was a young boy, I wanted to follow in the footsteps of my family. I had three generations of role models before me with Grandpa Tony, [Bill Krause] and Dad, and I looked up to them and from a really young age, I knew that I wanted to be the next one in that line and I wanted to jump into this business. I started working in our stores when I was 9 years old. I absolutely love our stores. I think retail is so fun. It’s dynamic. It’s competitive. It’s challenging. It’s constantly evolving. My favorite part of my job today is when I can be in Kum & Go stores, talking to our associates, talking to our customers, hopping on the register and helping out wherever I can in the store, because really, that’s where the magic happens. Certainly Kum & Go is my most enduring passion that I’ve had, and it’s something that has meant the world to me. I recognize that very few people in the world get to realize their childhood dream, and I’m fortunate that I was able to achieve that goal, even if it was for a shorter duration than I expected.

What do you think will make the transition of Kum & Go’s ownership successful?
I want to start by sharing my admiration for Maverik as a business and Chuck Maggelet as the CEO and his wife Crystal, who runs FJ Management, Maverik’s parent company. I’ve had the pleasure of knowing Chuck for almost five years, we’ve connected at various industry events, and I’ve always respected Chuck. Coincidentally, he and I actually shared a stage at our industry trade show four years ago and talked about our brands and the future of our companies, and he was a great partner on that stage and podcasts, and he’s been a great partner through the transition. I think you would be hard-pressed to find anyone in the industry that is more culturally aligned to Kum & Go than Maverik and its people, so while inevitably, any transition comes with a lot of change, the integration with Maverik is going to be as similar an approach to how both companies went about their business pre-transaction as you can find in an acquisition at this size. I’ve got a lot of confidence in Chuck and his team and our leadership group at Kum & Go that’ll be continuing on to continue making the progress that we were making at Kum & Go in order to make things better for our communities.

What similarities do you see between Maverik’s and Kum & Go’s cultures?
You’ve got, in Maverik and Kum & Go, two multi-generation family-owned businesses that are of similar size and have a similar appreciation for the people in our stores that are really at the front lines driving our business. As we got to know Maverik, as Maverik got to know us, it was clear that these are two like-minded families. These are two businesses that have the competitive advantage of being able to think long term and building out strategy and making investments due to the time horizon of being family owned. I think that’s a wonderful bit of consistency for our associates so that we can keep doing what’s right in the long term and not feel tremendous pressure to sacrifice long term for some short-term gains.

What are some of the most significant lessons you’ll take from your time as CEO?
It’s been a really incredible journey. Really the best advice that I got along the way was to be yourself. You know, I came into the senior leadership team of Kum & Go when I was only 28 years old. At that point, I was running HR for a 5,000-person company, and I was full of knowledge and education but light on experience, and with that came insecurity. I would go into meetings, and I would spend a lot of my mental energy thinking about what I thought other people would do in those situations, and it was slowing me down. It was taxing me and it was inauthentic. It must have been felt by those working around me because finally one of my co-workers said, “Hey Tanner, just be yourself.” That was about five or six years ago. From that moment on, I stopped trying to be somebody else and I focused on being the best version of myself. With that came humility and comfort and saying, “I don’t know,” or comfort in saying, “What do you think?” With that came more confidence to do what I believe is right, to stand up for what I believe in.

As I reflect back on this experience, I feel really confident that it was me being me that ultimately led to my success and that ultimately led to having the deep connections that I feel with my co-workers. I wouldn’t have gotten to this place if I was still trying to channel other people in certain situations. I leave this experience comfortable in my own skin and confident that going about the world with my own values and principles is going to be the best thing for me.

What is your mindset right now on your next steps after Kum & Go?
Right now my focus is on my family. Even before supporting the transaction and the demands of leading a company like Kum & Go are immense, and the intensity of these jobs has an impact on people, and you sacrifice things to pour yourself into your career and to achieve greatness at these levels. Now, I am going to make the most of this opportunity to lean back into my family and spend time with my wife and my two little kids and support them in whatever way possible. Take a breather, take a step back, see the world, not rush into anything, and we’ll see what comes next.

What are some of the accomplishments you are most proud of from your time at Kum & Go?
What I’m most proud of in my experience at Kum & Go is the way in which we transformed the quality of life for the people working in our stores. Five years ago, we were predominantly a part-time workforce. Seventy-five percent of jobs were part time, and with that came the just the externalities of managing a mostly transient workforce. We had extremely high turnover. We had lower engagement, we had less operational excellence, but more importantly, I reflect back on what the employees had in those moments. They were essentially doing the same job they are today, but our associates in our stores back then didn’t have so many things that they deserve. In a program that we called Store Structure, we transformed how we operate Kum & Go stores across the country, and I believe today we’ve got the best management model in all of retail. We converted 2,000 of our 5,000 jobs from part time to full time. We created set schedules built around full-time employment, which granted lifetime stability and income stability for really those that need it most.

With that full-time employment came access to benefits. We’ve greatly expanded the number of people on our health care plan. We have increased wages more than 50% in those five years. We have created or expanded the number of paid leaves. We had no paid parental leave in stores. Reflecting back today, we have six weeks of paid leave for both parents for all associates in the stores. We’ve expanded paid time off, and we’ve done our best to hold or reduce the cost of health insurance to allow more people to afford it. Adding that all up, we’ve drastically improved the quality of life for people that work in a Kum & Go store.

One thing that got our team extremely proud is that Kum & Go was large enough that we’re a market mover, and as we were making investments in these changes, we were influencing those that compete with us for talent. While not every company could always match what we were doing, we knew that we were moving the needle for even more people, when larger competitors would have to pay attention to what Kum & Go was doing and then try to keep up on the investments that we were making. The impact went beyond only improving life for the 5,000 people in our employ but really grew with the tens of thousands of people that were working for our competition. I like to think that we play a small and important role in helping to dignify the life of service workers in this country.

Did making these changes also influence local businesses in Des Moines?
We have a few simple beliefs that influenced our approach to the investments we made in our people. First, we believe that if you work 40 hours a week in this country, you should be able to pay your own bills and to have a little bit of money left over to save up at the end of every month. We believe that you should have ample paid time off in critical life moments. Our total rewards philosophy is to be there for you, and life happens. We believe that your employer should be supporting you in those key moments. Every associate gets their birthday off, we’ve expanded bereavement leave, we have initiated and grown parental leave.

We also believe that everyone should have access to health insurance. We are not there yet, but our goal is that 5% of your income would go to health insurance premiums and no more. We thought that was a target for affordable health care. We set this out based upon what we believe hardworking people in the richest country in the world deserve. We were hopeful that as we made these investments, and I want to be very clear, we didn’t achieve those things, but we were on a path. We made incredible progress towards those things. As we were making this progress we hoped that yes, other local businesses would be encouraged to do the same, and I think we saw that. It was always motivating to us to know that we were of a scale where we operate that we could influence more than just people in our employ.

Will Maverik continue the investments that Kum & Go started?
I do know that Maverik has a similar compensation and benefits plan to Kum & Go and has made similar investments over the last couple of years. Some of what we were doing was what I would say is catching up to the market. Then we were on the cusp, this year, last year and next year, of really starting to separate ourselves from the market. Then over the next five years, we were really on a path to differentiate ourselves with an employment contract that really respected and dignified the work that is going into our stores. I do believe that Maverik is like-minded. I think that they are good-hearted and certainly cheering for these initiatives to continue.

What are the strengths you’ve developed in your career so far?
I was always willing to accept whatever consequence came my way for being who I am and for standing up for what I believe in. To me, that was always more important than whatever was at risk. I also recognize that not everyone is in that same situation and due to economic forces, usually, people have more to fear, and that unfortunately, that stifles expression and thoughts and ideas. That’s an unfortunate form of oppression. I was able to be a situation in which I just have a lot of confidence that whatever happened, happened. For me, the most important thing was staying principled, and just being a champion for what I believe is right, and being a champion for others that were being picked on and didn’t have the opportunity to express themselves in the same way that I could.

Do you think that skill will help you in your next steps?
Certainly. When [Kyle Krause] agreed to the Maverik offer, I knew what that meant for my future. I didn’t take it personally, I understand how the business world works, and certainly look across to a family-owned company and one of the co-owners is the CEO. It’s pretty obvious what that means for the CEO of the target business. While it’s been emotional, I’ve never been worried. I always have had confidence that my family and I are going to be OK, and that whatever the world throws our way, that one, we have strong healthy relationships in our household, and two, whatever comes next, we’ve got a lot of choices. I’m confident that no matter where we end up, it’s going to be something that we feel connected to the mission and we’ll be successful as a family.

Do you and your family plan to stay in Des Moines?
We haven’t made that decision yet. Right now we’re not making big life decisions. We’re focused on just taking a step back, processing, breathing, seeing the world and spending time together, and we’ll see where this takes us.

What are your hopes for the Des Moines business community?
Similar to what they were before the close and before the deal. I want to see a thriving Des Moines, and I hope to see a thriving downtown. I’m pleased that Maverik is securing its headquarters in downtown Des Moines. I think that’s really healthy for a city. I’ve seen communities across the country in which downtown can become blighted and you miss out on so much potential for the energy of a city when you’ve got the density of people in a downtown setting. I certainly hope that Des Moines can continue to attract a variety of uses to its core, and I hope that businesses everywhere look at their operations and take a step back from market dynamics and look through the lens of what’s the right thing to do here. Change the approach from what it is to what it could be or what it should be, and whether that’s the way that you handle people, handle your supply chain, handle your use of natural resources, handle the byproduct of your operations. Whatever it is that you’re doing, look and reflect and say how could we do this better, not just for ourselves, but for all of our stakeholders. I’m proud to say that we took that approach at Kum & Go, and ultimately, it resulted in an incredibly successful exit for our ownership.

Related: Tanner Krause concludes tenure as Kum & Go CEO on Friday