Advantage Solutions CEO Dave Peacock sat down with PNC C-Speak recently for a two-part podcast that touched on his extensive and diverse career journey, his leadership style, how he sees the current business landscape and what drew him to lead Advantage almost one year ago. And, not least of all, his passion for his hometown of St. Louis. Below are some highlights of his interview:
On St. Louis
Peacock has strong roots in St. Louis, where he was born and raised and where he went on to leadership roles in two of the region’s largest companies, as president of Anheuser-Busch and president and COO of Schnuck Markets. He’s also a diehard fan and an active proponent of the city’s professional sports scene. He’s currently prepping for Advantage to officially open its new corporate headquarters in the metro area in early 2024.
In addition to Peacock’s admitted personal bias for the city, “St. Louis is perfect for us in the sense that it’s central to the U.S. Our clients and customers are some of the nation’s largest retailers and consumer products companies, and many of them are based in the Midwest and the East. This gets us closer, shorter times on planes as we go visit them. There’s also amazing talent here. We’ve had great success filling some key positions here as we’ve been building up our business.”
His road to Advantage
Peacock’s previous leadership positions on both sides of the retail equation set him up perfectly to take over the lead role at Advantage in February 2023. “I’ve got background both with consumer products goods with Anheuser-Busch, and then retail with Schnucks. You typically find people that have one or the other. So having that perspective puts me in a good position to both work with our clients, or consumer products companies, understanding their needs, but also what retail is looking for from consumer-product companies.”
Those roles — and a stint as part owner of the largest Jamba Juice franchise in the country with 1,000 front-line teammates — helped Peacock understand the importance of those workers to the business. At Advantage, which has 60,000 front-line and hourly teammates in full- and part-time roles in the United States and globally, “how we motivate those workers and create career tracks and opportunities for them is one of our most important functions,” he says.
People-first approach
“Our organization is really a people-first organization,” Peacock says. “We’re thoughtful in every decision we make and how it affects our people and how can we create more opportunities for our people. At the end of the day, if we take care of our people the way we think we should and give them the opportunities to grow, our business will take care of itself. We believe strongly in that.”
Listen to Part 1 and Part 2 of PNC C-Speak’s podcast with Dave Peacock.