Park Garage Group has celebrated a fantastic refresh of its site in Rushden, Northamptonshire, with a well-attended event welcoming both customers and industry guests.
The busy BP-branded site was a blaze of balloons, flower arrangements, food and drink, as well as fund-raising activity - including an appearance by the BBC Children in Need’s Pudsey Bear.
The Rushden site, which has now become the group’s flagship operation, is one of the 27 forecourts PGG acquired last year from EG Group which was obliged to sell them to satisfy CMA requirements following its acquisition of Asda. It was a new-build in the town of Rushden, and had been run by EG Group for less than a year before its forced sale. It had also featured a Sainsbury’s offer as part of a convenience trial the Blackburn-based forecourt giant had been running in the 3,500sq ft shop.
The management team at Kent-based Park Garage Group, the long-established close-knit family business, had its work cut out.
“When we took it over this time last year, there was no signage and Sainsbury’s had stopped supplying for the last two months,” said Hemant Tandon, operations director, who runs the company with his cousin Manoj, father Sunil and uncle Balraj. “With such a lack of stock, it wasn’t that great!” he reflected.
“We didn’t want to put another fascia on here and decided to back the existing Park & Shop brand, which was redesigned by NIS Signs, which has done Dominos, KFC, a lot of EG stuff as well.”
With the new stylish Park & Shop branding, and a shop full of stock supplied by Blakemore, PGG greatly boosted the store’s appeal. Alcohol has been introduced into the mix – and is already up to £2-2,500 a week – as EG Group had a policy of not selling it; plus a big vape section has been installed alongside the till area - which had previously been designated to feature a Cinnabon offer - and is now doing 12% of the shop total.
In combination with a great team behind it, including site manager Rachel Trafford, area manager Jan Hawthorne, and head of operations Ian Cawley, sales have soared to £30k a week, minus coffee, valeting and sizable Greggs outlet. Fuel volume is 100k litres a week. And with surrounding fields the target for the big residential development, the potential for Park Rushden is huge.
“We’ve learnt so much in the past year,” stresses a very upbeat Hemant. “We’ve now done 28 Park & Shop rebrands on PGG sites; and 95% of EG site re-brands, which also include some shop work and extensions. We should finish the rest by the end of the year; plus there are more announcements to come.”
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