Bob Eddy and the arithmetic of coming back

Bob Eddy has a soft spot for peanut M&M’s. At a retail conference in New York in January 2024, the chairman and chief executive of BJ’s Wholesale Club made his preference public. His family liked them, too. The relevant unit of affection was a 62-ounce jar. At BJ’s, even a weakness for candy comes in a size suitable for a committee.

The jar had a business credential: it had been the retailer’s second-best-selling individual item the previous year. Eddy was onstage with Mars executive Anton Vincent and interviewer Hope King, discussing how a retailer and a supplier could work together. Here was a pleasing overlap between the chief executive’s shopping preferences and the sales ledger.

That overlap makes a useful introduction to Eddy. He came through accounting and finance, occupations that encourage a person to check the figures. Running a membership retailer adds another question: what will make someone want to come back? The answer has to survive a trip home, a household budget, and the next annual membership decision.

Fourteen years before the top job

Eddy graduated from Phillips Academy and Babson College. His working life before BJ’s included the audit and business advisory practice at PricewaterhouseCoopers, serving retail and consumer-products businesses in Boston and San Francisco. He was learning the industry through its accounts before taking responsibility for a retailer’s own.

He joined BJ’s in 2007 as senior vice president of finance. In 2011 he became executive vice president and chief financial officer; in 2018 his responsibilities expanded to include the chief administrative officer role. The progression matters because it puts a long apprenticeship behind the current title. By the time he became chief executive, he had spent fourteen years inside the company.

His appointment as president and CEO became permanent on April 20, 2021, after a short period as interim chief executive. Laura Felice took over as CFO. Paul Cichocki became chief commercial officer, with merchandising, membership, and analytics in his remit. Bill Werner became executive vice president of strategy and development, including responsibility for expansion.

Those appointments distribute the work behind the familiar photograph of a chief executive. Someone must make the numbers add up, someone must decide what goes on the shelves, and someone must decide where the next shelves should stand. Eddy’s move to the top came alongside changes in each of those jobs.

He became chairman on June 15, 2023, succeeding Chris Baldwin, who remained a director. Lead independent director Rob Steele retained an oversight role. The change put management and board leadership in Eddy’s hands, while preserving a separate position for independent scrutiny. His long company tenure had now become a formal concentration of responsibility.

The strawberries have a vote

In a 2025 conversation with retail association leader Matthew Shay, Eddy discussed the business from the produce department of a BJ’s club in Maryville, Tennessee. The setting suited the subject. He described fresh food as having moved from a peripheral part of the business when he arrived to roughly 35 percent of sales.

He reported a 15 percent increase in produce unit sales over the preceding year. Behind it was Fresh 2.0: more frequent deliveries, distribution brought in-house, and additional training for buyers and employees. His example of the stakes was admirably domestic: “Everybody knows when you bring home your strawberries and they’re not great two days later, that’s not a great experience.”

A strawberry is an awkward object around which to organize a corporate promise. It has a schedule of its own. The customer discovers whether the promise was kept after leaving the store, when there is no executive nearby to explain the distribution strategy. Freshness gives the household a particularly direct way of marking the retailer’s homework.

In Eddy’s account, shoppers who bought fresh food visited more often, shopped across the club, and were more likely to renew. That connects an operational decision to the membership model. A better delivery schedule can influence the next grocery trip; enough satisfactory trips can influence the decision to pay for another year.

His attention to supply chains also appeared in the boardroom. When BJ’s added Marie Robinson and Steven Ortega as directors in June 2023, Eddy singled out Robinson’s supply-chain experience and Ortega’s retail background. The company had taken control of its perishable and ambient supply chains. New authority over those systems made practical experience particularly relevant.

The coupon leaves the kitchen drawer

Eddy’s description of paper coupons in November 2022 was less affectionate than his description of candy. He recalled the company’s concern, five years earlier, about relying on them as its main promotional vehicle. By that earnings discussion, he estimated that about three-quarters of promotion had moved to digital channels.

Digitally enabled sales had increased 43 percent year over year in the quarter being discussed. He also observed that members who engaged digitally were the company’s best members. Taken together, the comments explain why an executive trained in finance would care about an app: it was becoming part of the relationship that supported repeat business.

The kitchen drawer offers a formidable filing system for things nobody can find when needed. Moving a coupon onto a phone gives the retailer a chance to make a saving usable at the moment of purchase. The usefulness matters more than the novelty. A discount that stays in the drawer does little for either side.

“value always wins.”

Bob Eddy, NRF 2024

BJ’s offers curbside pickup, in-club pickup, delivery, and an ExpressPay feature that lets members scan purchases while shopping. These choices put several different versions of the same errand within reach. A shopper can choose a club visit one day and order collection another day without having to learn a different retailer.

For Eddy, the managerial problem is keeping those routes connected to the same reason for joining. Convenience brings its own demands on employees and systems. An attractive screen still depends on goods being available, selected, and ready. His career has carried him from the financial account of an operation to responsibility for the operation itself.

A New England business buys a Texas map

In March 2025, BJ’s announced plans for 25 to 30 new clubs over the next two fiscal years, including an entry into the Dallas-Fort Worth area. Eddy pointed to economic expansion and population growth in Texas. The ambition was geographically specific, with new households to recruit and a new market in which to establish the membership habit.

The plan also included a smaller experiment: a BJ’s market in Delray Beach, Florida, designed for a quicker grocery visit. Expanding a retailer can mean adding another full-sized location. It can also mean asking which parts of an existing shopping trip deserve a different format. Eddy’s team was pursuing both questions.

By April 2026, the Texas plan had a street address. BJ’s announced its Forney club would open on April 24, becoming its 264th location. The gas station opened a week earlier. A one-day promotion offered regular gasoline at $2 a gallon, with a 30-gallon limit. Introductions are easier when the price is visible from the road.

The opening announcement included a $25,000 grant to Forney Food Pantry. That put a local organization alongside the membership offers and fuel promotion. Entering a new town involves a familiar retail challenge: a company may be well established elsewhere while still having to introduce itself to the people nearby.

The second-quarter results released on August 21, 2026 showed 8.5 million members and a network of 267 clubs across 22 states. Comparable sales excluding gasoline rose 3.1 percent; digitally enabled comparable sales grew 30 percent. Those are different measures of activity, each offering a view of how the expansion and the existing business were progressing.

Eddy said the results strengthened his confidence in continued investment. The figures provide a checkpoint rather than an ending. Opening a club supplies a new place to shop. Building a membership business requires households to keep choosing it after the opening offers have passed.

A bigger table, the same practical questions

Alongside BJ’s, Eddy has taken roles that put him in conversation with other retail leaders. He joined the DICK’S Sporting Goods board in September 2023. Its executive chairman, Ed Stack, welcomed his experience as DICK’S developed store concepts and customer experiences. Eddy’s current committee responsibilities include chairing compensation and serving on governance and nominating.

In January 2025, he succeeded Walmart U.S. chief John Furner as chairman of the National Retail Federation board. He had previously chaired its Financial Executives Council from 2013 to 2017. Here, too, his route ran through finance before reaching broader leadership. The role gives him responsibilities beyond the commercial interests of his own chain.

There is a smaller encounter worth keeping beside those appointments. When Babson student Sarah Starko received an NRF Foundation scholarship, Eddy introduced himself and congratulated a student from his alma mater. The gesture puts an individual exchange into a career otherwise recorded largely through promotions, board appointments, and quarterly figures.

His public posts also return to BJ’s field leaders. After the 2025 Operations Leadership Conference, he described their importance to the business and the pleasure he took in gathering with them. That is a revealing choice of audience for someone whose job is so often discussed through investors: the people who turn an operating plan into a shopping trip.

The most useful portrait of Eddy may therefore be assembled from objects rather than titles. A jar of candy makes a supplier relationship tangible. A strawberry tests delivery and training. A coupon tests whether technology helps someone save. A membership asks the customer to judge the accumulated result.

His assignment keeps renewing itself. The household has another list, another budget, another decision about where to go. For all the acreage, systems, and arithmetic involved in running BJ’s, Eddy’s work eventually reaches that ordinary moment. Someone opens the refrigerator, checks the cupboard, and decides whether to come back.