Top 50 Indie, Sharma Garages, has successful reopened its BP Swift Services at junction 15 of the M6 in Newcastle under Lyme following a knockdown rebuild.
The company bought the site from BP more than 20 years ago. Then it was a tiny petrol filling station with two pumps and most of its business was from roadside recovery and the garage workshop. It invested in the site over the years but always knew it had far greater potential and so decided to knock it down and rebuild it.
Much of the BP site’s trade will come from bunkered fuel so the canopy has been made tall enough to allow HGVs to fit underneath. There are also three BP Pulse EV chargers, a state-of-the-art jet wash courtesy of Electrajet and nine parking spaces. The EV chargers are ultra-fast and capable of charging six vehicles at a time.
The site now has a Premier-branded 3,200sq ft store which has an off licence and offers food to go via BP’s Wild Bean Café Express modular system which has an adjacent seating area where customers can use the free wifi. As well as Premier branded products, it also offers shoppers Tesco’s Jack’s value brand.
Digital displays are used across the forecourt and in the store to communicate brands and offers to customers.
The site is open 24 hours with the shop open from 5am to midnight.
The opening on September 21 was supported by BP with the company’s UK sales manager, Andy Allen, present. Also present was an F1 racing car and the Premier League Cup. Other support came from big brands such as Monster and Red Bull. Sharma advertised on local radio on the day of opening and ran a competition between 7am and 10am where one person an hour (three people in total) won £150-worth of fuel.
Saeed Noorani, business operations manager at Sharma Garages, told Forecourt Trader: “The reopening went very well and we have received excellent feedback from customers who are delighted at having such great facilities on their doorstep. The site is already trading beyond our expectations; we have already hit our shop sales and fuel volume targets so we are delighted.”
