Alain Bouchard

"During the years that followed, Alain Bouchard opened Perrette stores at lightning speed. As soon as a suitable location was found for a franchise, he was given two weeks to design the store, paint it, install coolers, shelves and counters and arrange merchandise. Nothing could get in the way of him attending opening day for each store, which always took place on a weekend. “I loved that moment. You could feel the excitement of everyone waiting outside before the doors opened.” The energy was that much higher when Perrette promised a complimentary milk jug to the first 500 clients and granted specials on other products, to promote the full range of their offerings. The company grew so quickly that Perrette often opened new stores before it had even found managers to run them. It was Alain who was given the job in the interim, but never for long, since he was the sole specialist when it came to openings. The supermarkets watched the growth of the blue-and-white-signed stores with a mixture of astonishment and amusement. “Everyone was laughing at them,” said Gaétan Frigon, who headed a number of grocery store chains in Quebec over the decades. “It was a company that wanted to sell milk, period.” To his mind, Perrette stores were marginally more menacing than the small corner grocers that had developed anarchically, transforming the living rooms of their apartments into stores."

"The bankruptcy laws in that period, however, were merciless. He was chained to debts that would take him 10 years to repay. The entire family suffered the punishment. “Before, we would drink whole milk, with cream on the top,” says Alain Bouchard. “After, it was powdered milk, and our meat was baloney. They were very hard years.”"

"During his brief stays back home, Jean-Paul Bouchard would take them on an activity that left a deep impression. After they piled into his old car, the family embarked on driving tours of businesses of the region: garages, hardware stores, restaurants, trailer parks. Jean-Paul nurtured a single dream in his heart: to enter the business world once again. His children, brought along on these strange adventures, would see first-hand his yearning to find his way back to that road, that pathway to restoring his dignity. The unusual team would disembark, arrive unannounced abruptly and begin to examine the premises and question the owner about his or her revenue, traffic levels, the price of rent, inventory, employees and their wages, profit margins and sales prices. Then their father, who had only a third-grade education and had trouble with basic math, would turn to his son Alain. “He would say, ‘Alain, do the totals,’” Alain Bouchard recalls. Though the boy was just 12 years old, his father was conferring on him, symbolically at least, the responsibility of understanding the workings of a business, of identifying ways to alter the variables and increase profits. The task became deeply connected with having enough food on the table, restoring his father’s honour and lifting his mother’s spirits. It was the dream of returning to the life they had led before the tragedy. It would be hard to overstate the invisible weight carried by this exercise of mental calculation or the profound impression it would make on him."

"During his brief stays back home, Jean-Paul Bouchard would take them on an activity that left a deep impression. After they piled into his old car, the family embarked on driving tours of businesses of the region: garages, hardware stores, restaurants, trailer parks. Jean-Paul nurtured a single dream in his heart: to enter the business world once again. His children, brought along on these strange adventures, would see first-hand his yearning to find his way back to that road, that pathway to restoring his dignity. The unusual team would disembark, arrive unannounced abruptly and begin to examine the premises and question the owner about his or her revenue, traffic levels, the price of rent, inventory, employees and their wages, profit margins and sales prices. Then their father, who had only a third-grade education and had trouble with basic math, would turn to his son Alain. “He would say, ‘Alain, do the totals,’” Alain Bouchard recalls. Though"

"In July of 1969, while he was on his annual vacation, Alain Bouchard had taken over the store for his brother so that the storekeeper could take some vacation time for himself. A Perrette supervisor came in just as the young man was reorganizing the shelves. “So you’re the one who makes the store look so good?” the supervisor asked him, and promptly offered him the responsibility of organizing the interior of new stores. It was an attractive offer—but salaries in the construction industry were also attractive. Alain Bouchard was earning $3.30 an hour on the construction sites. Perrette was offering $1.50 an hour, which was less than half that. “However, I asked him, ‘Can I work as many hours as I want?’” says Bouchard. “No problem,” was the supervisor’s response. Having a 20-year-old’s energy made all the difference, he says. To make the equivalent wages, he would simply have to work twice as many hours per week; but he would be doing something he actually enjoyed. It would finally allow him to fulfill what his father had taught him: The important thing in a man’s life is to make a name for himself through work. Alain Bouchard threw himself into the job with an extraordinary ardour. “I really clocked some hours. It was ridiculous. I was working 80 hours a week,” he says."

"“On my first day of work, I had to sit on a case of Coke in a dusty basement.” But despite all that, he was happy. It was the happiness that comes with believing you’re a part of the very beginning of something big. His confidence was inspired by Alain Bouchard, he says, his charisma and his passion for work."

"This type of exercise was nothing new for the Couche-Tard team—although they were used to a more modest scale. They had become experts in their unique choreography: Jacques D’Amours handled leases and distribution, Richard Fortin examined the financial records and debts, Réal Plourde analyzed human resources and the operational structure, and Alain Bouchard looked at real estate and the global business plan. Each team member was important, each had his own strengths. It was a given that no decision of that scale could be taken unless they all agreed."