Starting a new business is rarely a straightforward process, but husband-and-wife team Oliver Arnold and Susannah Moffat had to battle through more than most as they sought to reopen a disused forecourt on the outskirts of Tewkesbury, Gloucestershire.
With an established park café business and catering kitchen already under their belts, the couple had passed the closed filling station on Ledbury Road almost every day for four years, often talking about how they would love to breathe new life into a sorely missed local amenity.
The site had been owned by another husband-and-wife team since the 1960s, but had been closed following the husband’s passing, with his widow adamant she wanted to sell to someone who would rejuvenate business, rather than property developers.
After Oliver and Susannah decided to take the plunge, they were met with difficulty after difficulty. Covid hit as they were mid-purchase, then Oliver managed to break both feet after jumping off a wall (stone-cold sober, he adds) to retrieve a ball while playing with young relatives. This put the kibosh on his plans to do much of the building work himself. Next came shocking interest-rate rises that caused the cost of borrowing to shoot up, with a new baby adding to the couple’s pressures, and the planning process alone taking 14 months to complete. Things became so tough that at one point they were close to giving up and selling, long before they had finished the project.
They soldiered on though, and in November 2024 opened Ledbury Road Services, with fuel supplied by Total Energies.
“We hit it off with Total immediately,” Oliver says. “Tom Morgan at Total stuck with us for the three years it took us to get from where it was to where it is now.” Total also helped them with the purchase of a brand new company, which Tom says “probably wouldn’t have been possible” otherwise.
As well as saving locals from having to drive into Tewkesbury or Ledbury for fuel, the forecourt acts as something as a local hub, showcasing both locally sourced produce, and food from the couple’s own catering kitchens – a sales stream that allows their kitchen to thrive when the park cafe business, founded by Susannah, is quiet in winter or during inclement weather. “We make ready-meals, soups, pizzas, cakes, pasties, and it all swaps over quite nicely from the cafes to the rustic-style farm shop at the forecourt,” Oliver says.
Oliver even went so far as to create his own EPOS software, having been dissatisfied with other offerings on the market
“We needed a piece of software that could do what we need at the cafe and at the garage. It does all our accounting, our staff rotas, our ordering, our messaging, our websites, everything all in one. There was no piece of EPOS out there that did all the things I wanted to do, and when you get to that point you have to make it yourself.”
“I just love doing things”, he explains. “I’ve always written software, built computers, fixed cars, I love it all, and my wife is very similar: she will do anything she can turn her hand to, and she’s much better at the retail side of things than I am.” Oliver is adamant he doesn’t want to license the software out, though. “I create these things to help myself; when you tell people you can do it, you get into the realms of selling, or helping people set these things up.”
That doesn’t mean the couple are finished with their plans, though: while the shop is relatively small, their warehouse is huge, so they’re looking to set up a click-and-collect service, and have pencilled in opening a forecourt café in May 2025 once the weather improves.
While the couple had to install new pumps, the site’s five fuel tanks happily passed all testing prior to purchase. With sales of around 20,000 litres a week, together with the thriving shop, Oliver and Susannah’s investment is now very much a going concern. “We both love a challenge, and this has been the biggest one ever for us”, Oliver says, adding: “It does feel like more of an achievement given that we’ve overcome all those things”.
That sentiment means that despite the difficulties they experienced along the way, their enthusiasm is undented. “I would love to take another rural petrol station and do it all again”, Oliver says, “because it was such a journey, and the feedback from local people who have a shop again makes it all worth it.”
