'It's payback time for our members:' Calgary Co-op's new CEO talks unlocking opportunities
After going more than a year without a CEO, Calgary Co-op has tapped UK retail executive Andrew Clarke to helm the co-operative.
Clarke began his career at Marks & Spencer in the UK, later holding senior positions in apparel at New Look, Pimkie and Sears Holding Corp. From 2020 to 2025, he served as the CEO of women’s fashion retailer Francesca's.
Before officially joining Calgary Co-op, Clarke says he spent time immersing himself in the company, spending months on shop floors and speaking to employees with decades of experience at Calgary Co-op.
“They know our members by name, and they know everything about Co-op, our opportunities and when we’ve performed well and what led to that, when we’ve fallen short and what might be behind that,” Clarke tells Canadian Grocer.
Read on to hear more about Clarke’s plans in an interview that has been edited for length.
Why did you decide to take on this job?
I’m a British retailer that has spent most of his career operating outside his home market. Having retailed in probably 30 different countries, I can say that Canada is its own unique experience. But it’s not my first rodeo as far as trying to figure out a new consumer within a new retail market. I found it exciting when I got the call. It’s Calgary, of course, and when it was explained to me that this was for a co-op, the ownership model intrigued me. This is the first time I’ve worked for a cooperative, though I started my career at Marks & Spencer in the UK and that operated very much like a cooperative in the sense that it’s a very widely held retail stock in the UK. Spending my early twenties as a fledgling retailer in the UK, I grew up with that mindset of, my job is to serve customers, my job is to serve members, and that will make me a successful retailer. Thirty years later, that is still as true as it was back then.
READ: Calgary Co-op sales rise in 2025 as company reports profit of $6.12 million
What intrigues you about the grocery industry?
Broadly speaking, I think there’s no greater responsibility than putting food on customers’ tables—in this case on members’ tables. I grew up the son of an egg and cheese merchant, so when I first got my driver’s license, I was delivering eggs and cheese just outside the village of Cheddar—famous for one of those products. I was delivering to local grocery stores, one of which was a cooperative. So I grew up with a very food-focused background before moving into more broad corporate retail roles. What excites me about the grocery business is Calgary Co-op feeds Calgarians, we care for Calgarians through our pharmacy business and we transport Calgarians every day. Every day is an opportunity for us to pass the test on how well we are serving those members in our community. I have a huge sense of responsibility that, under my leadership, being a good cooperative is not enough. We’ve got to be a great retailer to serve members.
How can Calgary Co-op serve Calgarians better?
We have tremendous loyalty here. We’re a regional player that has huge brand awareness. You can’t drive down a major road in Calgary without seeing, at the very least, a Calgary Co-op gas station. But we’ve got to be better retailers. We have, over the past five or six years, acquired a number of businesses, which has really broadened our reach, added some new categories and given us an opportunity to broaden how we reach into Calgarians’ lives more often, more effectively. We’ve shifted our focus to operating those businesses more effectively. What I mean by that is there’s an opportunity to integrate. We own two food businesses, Calgary Co-op and Community Natural Foods. We own a number of drink businesses, both Calgary Co-op Wine Spirits Beer, but also Willow Park Wines & Spirits. Understanding how synergistic categories can be integrated, leveraged, and whether there are cost efficiencies on the back end, while supporting differentiated products on the front line in front of the members, could be a big unlock for our organization. Community Natural Foods or Willow Park Wines & Spirits should be delivering more value on a day-to-day basis to our members. To put it plainly, our members have seen our Co-op take on some debt in order to expand our reach and acquire these businesses. We should be very proud to own and operate Community Natural Foods and Willow Park Wines & Spirits but also, it’s payback time for members as well. We need to operate those businesses really successfully with our retailing expertise.
Before you were officially announced as CEO you spent a few months immersing yourself in Calgary Co-op. What did you learn from that experience?
Part of that was about getting myself prepared to be back in a grocery-driven organization, although grocery is only part of what we do. I didn’t spend many of my first months in an office. I was out on the sales floor, I was in our pharmacies, I was at gas bars. I wanted to learn this business from the people that work here, the people that operate it, but also hear directly from our members—what they expected of their Co-op and where we were delivering and frankly, where we’re falling short and what matters to our members so that I could start to build, with the executive team, a strategy for the next three years.
Where are you falling short?
Having a loyalty program is for most retailers and grocers a marketing tool. Being a co-operative, a loyalty program is not a marketing tool, it’s actually our business model. Paying a dollar, becoming a member, owning a part of the Calgary Co-op and participating in its profits and having a say in how the organization is run, is our business model. I think we have an opportunity to harness that engagement from our members. They want to be consulted, and I see tremendous opportunity in unlocking member input and engagement and turning that into more successful strategies that we undertake as a retailer that land and resonate, because members have been part of that process.
