About Calgary Co-op
Calgary Co-op was founded in 1956 by local farmers, ranchers, and community members who set out to build a grocery store owned by the people it served. That founding idea — shared ownership and a genuine connection to local producers — still defines the organization today, nearly 70 years later.
Now one of the largest retail co-operatives in North America, Calgary Co-op serves Calgary and the surrounding communities of Airdrie, Cochrane, High River, Okotoks, and Strathmore through food centres, pharmacies, gas stations and car washes, Home Health Care centres, and wine, spirits, beer, and cannabis locations. The organization also owns and operates Community Natural Foods and Willow Park Wines & Spirits, and is the majority shareholder of Care Pharmacies.
Calgary Co-op operates on the Rochdale co-operative principles — the model established by the world's first modern co-operative in 1844 — including democratic member control, member economic participation, and concern for community. Its vision is to be respected as the best and most trusted place for members to shop every day, delivered through a culture of Service, Caring, and Excellence.
The Opportunity
Reporting to the Chief Executive Officer, the Vice President, Operations will be a critical member of the executive leadership team, responsible for driving operational excellence across Calgary Co-op's diverse retail network. This is a pivotal moment for the organization as it works to strengthen foundational execution, improve consistency, and unlock greater performance across its grocery, wine spirits & beer, petroleum, home health care, and Community Natural Foods (CNF) businesses.
This leader will modernize how Calgary Co-op operates and serves its members, moving the organization toward a more disciplined, professionally managed operating model. Success will require a hands-on leadership style — working directly with leaders at every level to ensure change is not just communicated, but genuinely embedded in day-to-day practice.
The Vice President will establish and own a disciplined operating model that brings clarity to standards, accountability to execution, and rigor to performance management, while ensuring a consistently high-quality member experience across all locations. Building a culture of transparency, accountability, and trust across the operations organization will be central to the role.
Working closely with the CEO and executive team, this leader will translate strategic and cultural ambition into a scalable, repeatable operating model — one that blends the strengths of traditional grocery with a more differentiated, modern retail concept. This role will suit a strategic, inspiring, and hands-on leader who thrives in complex, evolving environments and is energized by the opportunity to modernize operations while building on the strengths of a purpose-driven, community-owned organization.
Key Responsibilities
Operational Performance & Execution Consistency
- Drive consistent execution standards across all locations through clear operating routines, expectations, and accountability mechanisms.
- Instill a culture of performance management through regular review of operational metrics, store-level results, and leadership accountability.
- Improve day-to-day execution across sites by addressing variability in performance and ensuring adherence to defined standards.
- Identify and close performance gaps across the network, improving productivity, cost control, and in-store execution quality.
Foundational Standards & Operational Rigor
- Establish clear, practical standards for core operating processes across all formats.
- Reinforce adherence to safety, quality, and compliance procedures through structured routines and leadership oversight.
- Ensure site leaders understand, adopt, and consistently apply operational expectations.
Network Leadership Across Banners
- Lead operational performance across Calgary Co-op's multi-format network — grocery, petroleum, and Community Natural Foods — ensuring alignment and consistency.
- Balance standardization with flexibility, preserving each banner's distinctiveness within a common baseline of execution excellence.
Future-State Operating Model Implementation
- Translate strategic direction into operating frameworks that can be executed consistently across locations.
- Define and implement new approaches to store operations, including operating rhythms, service expectations, and execution standards.
- Support the rollout and scaling of new concepts and formats, ensuring they are operationally viable and repeatable.
Cross-Functional Execution Alignment
- Ensure operational readiness and execution excellence for enterprise initiatives by aligning closely with merchandising, supply chain, and marketing.
- Create mechanisms for two-way communication between stores and head office, ensuring frontline feedback is heard and acted upon.
- Partner with merchandising to ensure in-store execution supports assortment strategies and enhances the member experience.
Risk, Compliance & Operational Integrity
- Oversee adherence to regulatory and internal standards across all operating environments, ensuring consistency in execution and risk mitigation.
- Maintain strong oversight of operational controls and incident response practices across the network.
- Ensure teams are equipped and accountable for maintaining safe, compliant, and well-run environments.
Leadership, Culture & Capability Development
- Lead and develop a team of operational leaders, strengthening capability and consistency in leadership practices.
- Set clear expectations and provide ongoing coaching to improve performance at the site leadership level.
- Assess talent across a tenured organization to identify high performers and development needs, partnering with HR on action plans.
- Build momentum through early wins, strengthening confidence and engagement across the team.
Enterprise Leadership Contribution
- Contribute as an active member of the executive leadership team, bringing an operational lens to enterprise priorities and decisions.
- Ensure operational implications are considered in strategic initiatives and that execution plans are realistic and achievable.
- Champion operational excellence as a key enabler of member experience and overall business performance.
Ideal Experience
Enterprise Retail Operations Leadership (Multi-Site)
10–15+ years of progressive leadership experience in retail operations, overseeing large, multi-site field organizations with thousands of employees. A track record leading complex operating footprints across multiple formats and/or banners, with accountability for consistent execution, productivity, labour performance, and member experience. Demonstrated ability to operate as a strategic enterprise leader, partnering closely with a CEO and executive leadership team to translate strategy into scalable execution.
Labour relations leadership experience is highly desired, as the organization is working toward greater flexibility in its collective agreements as part of its broader transformation.
Operational Excellence & "Back-to-Basics" Discipline
Experience building or re-establishing strong operating fundamentals in environments where discipline and consistency needed to be reset — including implementing standardized operating procedures and management systems (store operating rhythms, compliance routines, safety and quality checks, performance dashboards) and embedding sustained accountability at the site level.
Regulated / High-Compliance Operations (Asset-Intensive Preferred)
Experience leading operations in regulated, compliance-driven environments where rigor and consistency are non-negotiable — pharmacy, petroleum, food safety, or similarly regulated sectors are strongly valued. A mature approach to risk management, audit readiness, and operational controls, with a proven ability to build disciplined habits across geographically distributed teams.
Operating Model Design & Scaling a "Best-of-Both" Concept
Experience operationalizing new or evolving retail concepts — translating strategic ambition into a practical operating model that can be delivered consistently at scale. Ideally has helped integrate or harmonize different banners or cultures into a more cohesive operating approach while preserving what makes each format distinctive.
Education
Undergraduate degree required; an advanced degree is preferred.
Critical Leadership Capabilities
Driving Results
- Brings a process and continuous-improvement mindset, making changes to existing ways of working to significantly improve results.
- Proactively seeks to raise quality and productivity through efficiencies and best-in-class solutions.
- Technology-savvy, with a track record identifying if, how, and when technology can enhance the member experience, and partnering effectively with technology teams.
- Stays current on leading-edge technology and AI with clear ROI potential to enhance the member experience.
- Enables higher performance through incremental improvements based on calculated risks.
- Benchmarks performance against industry best practices.
Collaborating and Influencing
- Builds partnerships across the enterprise to address organization-wide challenges and opportunities.
- Creates an environment where collaboration is expected at every level.
- Systematically builds support across groups to achieve alignment, acknowledging differing interests.
- Negotiates with a genuine give-and-take approach, treating counterparts as true peers in shared decisions.
- Identifies and engages all relevant stakeholders to shape a collective consensus.
- Builds relationships that help others achieve their objectives.
Leading People
- Holds the leadership team accountable for creating a remarkable team member experience that translates into a remarkable member experience.
- Engages people in the business's direction, conveying the vision and how Operations fits into it.
- Delegates with clear, agreed-upon objectives and measures of success.
- Translates business goals into team priorities and individual performance measures aligned to key metrics.
- Communicates long-term goals regularly, reviews progress, and seeks corrective action when needed.
- Teaches, trains, and coaches — leading from the front with clear goals that inspire the team.
Other Personal Characteristics
- High Integrity: A clear commitment to the highest standards of professional and personal conduct, holding others to the same standard.
- Strong Intellect: Mental flexibility, creativity, conceptual ability, and judgment — equally comfortable with strategic issues and detailed tactical execution.
- Well-Developed EQ: A good listener with outstanding interpersonal skills and a natural, effective consultative style, able to navigate complex, multi-stakeholder environments.
- Positive Attitude: An infectious, can-do attitude that energizes the organization.
- Self-Confident, Ego in Check: Comfortable with ambiguity, driven more by the success of the venture and their peers than by personal profile.
- Innovative: Proactively generates creative solutions and stays open to different approaches.
- Servant Leader: Puts the needs of employees first and helps people develop and perform to the best of their abilities
