All Forecourt Trader articles in September 2013
View all stories from this issue.
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News
Subway marks 40,000th outlet
A Suffolk forecourt has become the host for the world’s 40,000th installation of the sandwich franchise Subway. The milestone site is an Applegreen petrol station in Ipswich, Suffolk.The achievement for Subway which has opened at 1,761 new locations around the world since the start of the year "is ...
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Sainsbury’s offers 10ppl off with £60 spend on groceries
Sainsbury’s has run its second deep discount promotion on fuel this summer.Running from Thursday August 29 until Wednesday September 4, it offered customers who spent £60 or more in store a coupon entitling them to 10p off each litre of fuel at any of the supermarket group’s 285 forecourts. Customers ...
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News
E10 in limbo
How the media loves a scare story. ’Nearly nine million cars could be incompatible with new fuel’ screamed one headline earlier this year, while ’E10 could add £80 to a family’s annual driving costs’ screamed another. If only Michael Winner was still with us to say ’Calm down dear’. Instead ...
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Applegreen reaches 40
Applegreen has nearly doubled the size of its UK operation increasing the number of its sites from 22 to 40, and is already looking for its next 10 sites according to managing director Michael O’Loughlin.He said the acquisitions were not the result of a single deal but of several which ...
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Motoring ahead
There can’t be many service stations around nowadays that date back so far that they’ve gone from doling out hay and water to horses and carriages, right the way through to serving today’s fuel-thirsty vehicles and their demanding drivers/passengers. But that’s just what’s happened at Prestwick-based David Bryson & Son. ...
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Allstar and BOSS form partnership
BOSS, the British Oil Security Syndicate, has entered a partnership with leading fuel card services provider Allstar to help reduce fraud and other crime on UK forecourts.The joint working initiative will see BOSS and Allstar sharing information on incidents and suspected fraudsters, boosting efforts to identify and bring to justice ...
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Applegreen sites receive high-speed rebranding
Sign installation and maintenance company Xmo Strata has carried out a rebranding programme for 12 Co-op sites acquired by Applegreen and says the contract set new UK standards. "A normal site rebranding will take maybe a week to 10 days, depending on the size of the site, the scope of ...
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News
Bagging a display
Nine of The Dormen Food Company’s products, including original salted peanuts and cashew nuts, are available in new 12x50g/40g shelf-ready packs. The company hopes that reducing the case size from 24s to 12s will give the range an increased presence at till fronts or in snack aisles. To make display ...
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News
Phat pies fit the bill
The surf-themed Phat Pasty Co has added premium pies to its range. The new Phat Pies are supplied fully baked, frozen and can be re-heated to serve.The individual 250g pies come in foil so can be reheated from frozen in a conventional oven and placed in a heated display cabinet. ...
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MRH signs with BOSS
MRH Retail, which is number one in Forecourt Trader’s Top 50 Indies, has joined the Payment Watch debt recovery scheme run by the British Oil Security Syndicate (BOSS).Kevin Eastwood, executive director of BOSS, said: "For the number one independent fuel retail group in the UK to sign up to our ...
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Merril Boulton: Shocker
Wow what a shocker! The news that the government has seriously under-estimated the size of supermarket fuel sales in the UK is a huge upset of the fuel retailing sector’s view of its business. And it’s like a nightmare come true for independent retailers. It’s as if the industry has ...
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News
BP signs up for loyalty programme
BP has joined Natwest and RBS’s new loyalty programme, Cashback Plus, as one of the launch partners.According to RBS and Natwest, Cashback Plus is the UK’s only debit-card linked loyalty scheme. It enables shoppers to earn at least 1% of their spend back on qualifying purchases.BP UK marketing director Alex ...
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Nisa unveils next branded forecourt
Nisa has announced the launch of one of the first Nisa-branded forecourts following its partnership deal with Greenergy.The Nisa Local in Shildon on the outskirts of Bishop Auckland in County Durham is one of the first three fully Nisa-branded forecourts.The forecourt store was built about 15 years ago and until ...
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Brands mean growth
With more people consuming hot beverages than a year ago, the £5.8bn market is showing no signs of slowing down. According to Allegra Strategies’ Project Café, an estimated one in five people now visit a coffee outlet on a daily basis, with figures showing that the morning period remains the ...
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in brief
Fire fighters strike alertThe government’s chief fire & rescue adviser, Peter Holland, has written to trade associations, alerting them to the threat of industrial action by firefighters in a dispute over pensions. He said he expected it will be ’business as usual’ for most organisations and 999 calls will continue ...
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News
GB Oils brings in new card payment terminal
GB Oils is aiming to strengthen its dealer support package with the roll-out of the HTEC GemPAY card payment terminal. It says it will enable dealers to process transactions up to 10 times faster while providing increased end-user security in line with the latest PCI DSS legislation. The first phase ...
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News
MFG owners buy more sites
The owners of Motor Fuels Group (MFG) have teamed up again to buy a portfolio of 54 petrol filling stations in a deal worth more than £50m.Aberdeen-based oil industry veteran Alasdair Locke and private equity firm Patron Capital Partners formed a joint venture, Scorpion PFS 1 Ltd, to buy the ...
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Call for rural forecourts to supply evidence on prices
The PRA is urging forecourt operators to respond to a request for evidence from HM Treasury as the government prepares to ask the European Commission for an extension to the rural fuel rebate scheme it operates.The Treasury is asking petrol retailers around the UK to send it information relating to ...
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Money Talk: Card merchant fees are not the real issue
It’s been a little odd to watch the whole card processing cost saga increasingly dominate the news pages in Forecourt Trader over the past few months. At EKW (and particularly through this column), we have been pointing out the effect of retail percentage merchant fees on rising fuel prices for ...
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Service Centre: Jac Roper on retailers having a run-in with the planning office... and problem staff
Get approval before you improve Sometimes there is no pleasing the local authorities. Linda Sheppard tells a cautionary tale that anyone who is thinking about making improvements should read. Linda and Richard have run R&R Motors in the village of Rampton in Nottinghamshire for some 40 years. Their son and ...