Alain Bouchard served as the Executive Chairman of Alimentation Couche-Tard since 2014, before stepping down as president and Chief Executive Officer. He opened his first convenience store in Quebec, 1980, and founded the companies that became Alimentation Couche-Tard.
Alain Bouchard was born in 1949 in Chicoutimi, Quebec as one of six children. His father, Jean Paul Bouchard, owned an excavation company, going bankrupt when Bouchard was a boy. After losing the family home, the Bouchards moved into a mobile home in a remote community. As there were no local high schools in Chicoutimi, Bouchard and his older brother attended a boarding school run by priests and returned home each summer to work.
At the age of nineteen, Bouchward was a stock boy at his brother’s Perette Milk store. In 1969, he was hired by the owner to scout and step-up new stores. By the age of 24, he began working for the grocer Provigo, and was given the task of implementing a new convenience store concept, branded Provj-Soir. In the late 1970s, Bouchard was an independent retailer before he founded the Alimentation Couch-tard in 1980. He served as the Chief Executive Officer from 1980 to 2014. He led the company as it expanded to more than 12,500 convenience stores around the world.
Alain Bouchard’s net worth is valued at: $5.6 billion.
Bouchard is an Officer of the National Order of Quebec Companion of the Order of the Canadian Business Hall of Fame
Named Canada’s 2012 Outstanding CEO of the Year and the Institute for Governance’s Great Economic Builder of Quebec
Received the Fraser Institute’s T. Patrick Boyle Founder’s Award; and was inducted into the Canadian Business Hall of Fame.
Cercle des Grands entrepreneurs du Québec, a prestigious distinction awarded to exceptional entrepreneurs whose achievements, ideals and commitment have contributed to Québec’s entrepreneurial vitality and economic development (February 2018)
International Horatio Alger Award, which recognizes people who have persevered through challenges to become successful entrepreneurs and community leaders, from the Horatio Alger Association (March 2017)
Grand bâtisseur de l’économie du Québec from the Institute for governance (2014)
NACS Insight International Convenience Leader of the year (2014).
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