At the latest On The Road with Forecourt Trader event, hosted by Highland Group, on September 24, Tom Highland shared how, as the second generation to run his family’s six-site business, he continues to modernise: investing in social media, and solar panels at its flagship Childerley Gate Service Station.
He told the group of 20 forecourt owners and managers, representing more than 400 sites, that installing solar panels at the award-winning site in Dry Drayton, Cambridgeshire, was “the best thing I’ve spent money on”. On their best day, the panels produced 400kW of power, said Highland.
Within two years of paying £50,000 for 102 panels on the shop and two canopies he has saved £38,000 in electricity costs – a two-and-a-half year payback, and providing resilience against future increases in grid energy prices.
Highland plans to invest further in the technology from Smart-Lux, one of three businesses he rents out office space to above the Co-op-supplied shop. He will add panels to a south-facing parade of business units, which he is seeking planning permission for and could include a beauty salon, a barbers, takeaway food outlet; and a café, perhaps with an upstairs bar/restaurant.
Initial plans for the venture have been rejected by the council. However, undeterred, Highland plans to reapply as part of his ambition to transform the 1.8-acre site into a local community hub. The forecourt on the A1303 St Neots Road is around six miles west of Cambridge city centre, and has a butcher’s and a Liz’s Bakery food to go counter; a four-bay Adriateh jet wash canopied hub; and a local, fresh food emphasis which has established the BP station as a destination site.
Investing in social media has also delivered results, with multiple collaborations with suppliers – including Huel and Cadbury’s – leading to “a prolonged” uplift in sales, said Highland. He works with social media agency One9Seven6, another business renting office space from him, admitting that when he tried to do the work in-house “it probably did more harm than good” to the brand.
While the site is big enough for electric vehicle charging, Highland told his guests that he remains to be convinced on the business opportunity. He only likes to invest in projects which will give a payback in under four years, and anyway he told the group most of the site’s customers – who tend to be affluent – will have driveways to charge in.
He prefers to focus on jet washing, which he said can get extremely busy during hot weather. “The surprise for me was that I thought jet wash would do better in winter when it is wet and muddy, but actually it is spring and summer when we do particularly well with it,” said Highland, with one of the four bays at Childerley Gate uncovered for high vehicles.
Highland shared insights across his business in the behind the scenes tour, sponsored by convenience retail consultancy The C-Store Collective and fuel and forecourt insight specialist Informed Sources.
Jonathan Rons, co-founder of independent convenience retail consultancy The C-Store Collective, explained at the event how his business could drive efficiencies in their shops: offering health checks, strategies, and wholesaler supply negotiations, as well as marketing, succession planning and compiling operations handbooks among its services.
He said that he could guarantee that his business would be able to “sharpen the pencil a little bit” for the majority of forecourt operators. And he pointed to a case where a two-month project working with an multi-site operator and its wholesaler added 4.5% gross profit – adding over £30,000 a week to its bottom line. In another instance, it managed to treble an operator’s annual supplier funds to £15,000 a store.
He said that The C-Store Collective, whose clients have included Tout’s and Stevenson Forecourts, is filling a gap with expertise which was more forthcoming from symbol groups prior to Covid. “We are not there to tread on toes,” he said. But he added: “There’s a lot of support that you used to get from your symbol groups, that has simply disappeared, and we find that they’ve become more box movers or deal sellers, rather than necessarily business development.
“While it’s great to hear about the relationships that Tom was talking about with Co-op Wholesale, that seems to buck the trend of what we’re hearing when we’re out and about in stores. So we believe there is a gap.”
Mark Hawtin, head of business development at fuel and forecourt insight specialist Informed Sources, used the occasion to launch an app which alerts forecourt operators within five minutes of local competitors increasing their fuel prices. He said that for £1 per site per day, PriceWatch Mobile can also update participating retailers’ prices with Fuel Finder.
The app, already used in Australia for the past five years, provides a due diligence paper trail if there is a problem with the recordings later.
Hawtin said that users with 10 sites or more will potentially save hours a day from manually researching competitors’ prices. “We have one client [in Australia] who runs 10 sites today, who reckons he’s saving between two to three hours a day by using the app,” said Hawtin.
Hawtin also pointed to how forecourts could use the company’s NetWatch database, outlining the services available in UK forecourts. Once a year it says that it visits each site to assess 85 features including whether it has a shop and how big it is, how many fuel positions it has, whether it has parcel lockers and jet wash.
“The point is whether you are considering acquiring a site, if you want to benchmark yourself against local competition, or want to make any major investment decisions we can help you combine your intuition and local knowledge of your markets with factual data about who’s there and what they are doing today,” said Hawtin.
“It allows you to see how they might be different, and where might there be opportunities to consider investments. That might be for existing locations, or if you’re looking to acquire land for new to industry sites, it can help with that as well.”
Attendees were: Sajikumar Muthiah from Atlas Retailers; Tom Dant, Gill Marsh Forecourts; Luxman Selvarajam, Kris Navaratnam and Rolson Dsouza, Krisco; Kirupathas Yogarasa – Leaf Garages Group; David Charman, Spar Parkfoot; Jamie and Josh Sejpal, and Ricky Jhuti, Platinum Retail; Prem Uthayakumaran, Prehybrid; Stuart Riding and business partner Simon Emery at PB Fuels; Seb, Tom and Paul Hawtree, Riverside Garage Hawtree & Sons; Michelle Levett, Rontec; Theepan Piratheepan, Sterling Petroleum; and Jamie Wheeler and Shaun Fruen, Tankerford.
