‘It’s okay to have moments where you’re not running at the same pace as you want to run all of the time’

“I have a great passion for people, that’s the part of the job that I enjoy the most – developing the business, developing the people within the business and creating more opportunities for those teams to grow and thrive,” says Fiona Matthews, Managing Director of Applegreen Ireland.

Her passion for leadership will give you an insight into why Matthews was chosen as CEO of the Year at this year’s IMAGE PwC Businesswoman of the Year awards. 

Business is in her DNA – her great-grandmother owned and ran a textile mill in their hometown of Mullingar, her mother owned a travel agency business and her father and brothers have an office supplies retail business in the town centre. Looking at that family background, her 15 years of experience in retail are hardly surprising. 

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In 2019, Matthews joined Applegreen, the motorway service station, forecourt services and convenience store provider, as Commercial Director. The company was founded in Dublin in 1992 and has over 600 locations across its home market, the US and the UK.

This is the first place [where]  I’m encouraged to take on new things before I’m champing at the bit looking for them.”

In 2021, it moved from a publicly quoted company to private ownership, in partnership with Blackstone Infrastructure Partners, in a €718 million deal. In Spring of the same year Matthews was appointed Managing Director of the Irish business. 

Homegrown business

“What attracted me to Applegreen initially was the fact that it’s a homegrown, Irish business based in Ireland with strong growth ambitions to scale across the UK and the US. I felt it had that entrepreneurial culture that I was looking for at the time,” she explains. “Also the industry and the state of where the industry was moving – from forecourt retail to take on all EV charging and that hospitality side of the business – the blend between store and food and coffee is all evolving, and it’s changing so much that I was very interested in being part of that transition.”

As a company, it has satisfied Matthews’ hunger to try new things and expand her skillset and remit. “Applegreen is probably the first place I’ve been where I’m encouraged into new roles, and taking on new things before I’m champing at the bit looking for them. It’s a testament to the leaders here, and as such, I have been asked to take on, in addition to my MD role in Ireland, a new group chief commercial officer function which is really exciting.”

Speaking of coffee, if you have ever had a cup of Applegreen’s own blend, Braeburn, then you’ve Matthews to thank for that cup of ‘passion’. “During the covid period, we worked on this new coffee brand – we took the time to strategically look at our coffee business, and we know how important it is to our overall business, and we really wanted to put some more passion into the brand.

“We’ve rolled Braeburn out to over 100 outlets in a self-serve capacity. I think we were the first in the country to offer non-dairy ice options in a self-serve capacity and customers loved that. It brought a whole new customer into us for a really good quality coffee,” she explains.

“That grew legs and since then, we’ve opened two drive-through cafes and stand-alone cafe, most recently in Midway, at Portlaoise [Junction 14 to most of us on that route].” 

Electric vehicles

Coffee and Percy Pig sweets from Applegreen’s recent partnership with M&S  are not the only consumer demand at Irish forecourts, with the increasing number of electric vehicles entering the market meaning that fuel stations needed to implement more electric charging into their offering. 

“We are investing in our EV infrastructure across the three territories – we’ve over 1,100 fast chargers across 120 locations in the three markets, including company-owned and third-party,” she says. 

“In the last seven months, we’ve had over one million charging sessions, so it just gives you a sense of the scale. In comparison to ICE vehicles and fuel as we know it, it’s relatively small, but it is growing. The UK is probably the most mature market for us when it comes to EV drivers, so we’re building out the infrastructure as consumer demand changes and people are making that transition.”

A look at Matthews’ early career might suggest that travel to foreign markets might have been the final destination. Studying international business and languages in DCU which included a year in Belgium, Matthews started her working career with Glanbia. 

Life Stateside

“A few years later, the opportunity to move to the US came up, I jumped at the chance. So we moved over, myself and my then boyfriend now husband, where we worked with a small team just outside Chicago. 

“I worked in corporate finance at the time – we were focused on mergers and acquisitions and it was really exciting. I got to see so much of the States in the couple of years I spent in Chicago, which was fantastic. 

“Before I left Ireland, my intention was to be away for a long time. I was highly ambitious and hadn’t thought about any of this ‘settling down malarkey’ at all and I was steered not to. I really thought I’d spend maybe four or five years in the States and possibly then another few years in Asia, which was on my hit list because that’s where a lot of the activity was happening at the time.”

Six months into the Chicago stay and  “all of a sudden, friends and family started getting married and having babies, and I was missing the rugby matches, and it turns out, I was far more of a home bird than I ever thought,” she says. 

Did they settle back in quickly on their return home? 

“Not at all, it took at least 12 months. There was a lot of ‘but this was so easy in America, and that was so easy in America’. There were areas where they weren’t quite as far ahead as we were – their banking system was light years behind ours and I think texting was only coming into its own back then in 2006. But when I returned home . . . it was an adjustment to move back to Ireland. Other than those two areas, there is an ease of everything over there – they do convenience very well in the States,” she says.

Redundancy hit me very hard at the time.”

The realisation that she was not made for the expat life hasn’t stopped Matthews from recommending broadening the horizons. “I tell everybody it’s a fantastic opportunity. If you get to travel, please do. And the graduate programme that we run now in Applegreen is fabulous. It’s a two-year programme where the graduates get an opportunity to do three different rotations; 12 months in the US to work on two different rotations.”

Her corporate finance experience in Glanbia helped Matthews decide her next career move, preferring commercial operations to the deals she was overseeing. “I always felt like it was handing off a baby to somebody else to run.” Keen to explore where a commercial manager’s role in retail would take her she joined Kepak Convenience Foods in 2007. 

“I got the opportunity to go over and look at some of the European markets for them and understand where the opportunities were, and then to launch their convenience foods product into Belgium,” she explains. 

New chapters

Matthews took redundancy from the firm in 2009, this would be the first of two redundancies she has endured in her career. 

“It was a shock to somebody who was so ambitious and it hit me very hard at the time,” she says, but on reflection, the timing meant she could look after her granny who was sick at the time.

“And then it opened up the opportunity to get into Disney which was a fantastic opportunity. I worked with Disney for nine years, and they really are a masterclass in brand management. I learned a lot when I was there, it’s such a powerful brand. When I’d meet people for the first time and they ask you where you work, and you say, Disney, you just get those bright eyes looking back at you, Disney! A brand that creates such a strong emotional reaction from most people is extremely powerful, so there was lots to learn.”

It’s a marathon

Matthews’ Disney era was also when her kids were born. Did she think differently about her career progression while creating a family? “I had two babies under two when I sat in one of those women’s networking events and heard a fantastic quote, which I keep repeating, ‘your career is a marathon and not a sprint’ – it really resonated with me at that moment. I had always been very ambitious, driving, driving, driving, and I probably was struggling with two babies under two, probably denying it to myself at the time.” 

“The fact that somebody said, ‘look, it’s okay to have moments where you’re not running at the same pace as you want to run at all of the time’ was important. And it can be for a variety of different reasons, childcare is one element or caring for an elderly parent – there are tons of different things that happen to all of us. We’re all human.

It’s so important to trust your own instinct. As you get a few more grey hairs … you learn to trust it more.”

“I think it’s brilliant to see businesses evolve and recognise that we are all human, and it’s really important that we, as business leaders, embrace that, and create environments where that flexibility is supported.”

Restructuring in Disney dealt Matthews the second blow to her career when she once again found herself redundant, and with a family of three kids at this stage. 

“I suppose the resilience carried through from having been through it before, knowing there was something bigger and better awaiting. It’s so important to trust your own instinct and I think as you get a few more grey hairs over the years you learn to trust it more.” That’s when an apple (green) fell into her lap. 

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What does contentment look like to Matthews? “When the kids are happy I’m happy! I think with the seniority of a role like mine comes a duty of care. I think contentment is knowing I’ve done well by the people I care about, which is everybody from my family to friends and it leads into teams at work as well.”

We’re not so sure the duty of care extends to herself though as she is currently gearing up for an abseil from the roof of Croke Park. “A few unknown facts about me might be that I’ve done two skydives and a bungee jump previously – a little bit of a thrill seeker you could call it.” We’ll leave her to it. 

This is the sixth in a series of articles written in collaboration with The Currency. Chief Executive of The Currency, Tom Lyons, was a judge at the annual IMAGE PwC Businesswoman of the Year Awards.

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