The commission-operator model is an established one in the forecourt industry, but running over 10 sites on this principle with just a handful of people is the very definition of lean.
Subu Nanthakumar has such a business with Tankerford, an 11-site (soon to be 13) firm with an approach to management that appears effective, to say the least.
We’re not meeting Subu today, instead being hosted by his daughter, Vasavi, a director at Tankerford, and the firm’s retail manager Jamie Wheeler, at their prominent Eashing forecourt on the A3, 20 miles south of London.
Vasavi has been working for her father for four years, joining the family firm following a degree in maths and finance. She oversees 10 established sites and is commissioning another three recent purchases, two of which are knock-down rebuilds.
“I have responsibility for all sites”, Vasavi says matter-of-factly when asked about her role. “I don’t really have a base, because everything is commission operated, so it’s where we’re needed, there we’ll be.”
Despite only being 26 she wears her responsibilities easily, and is the definition of confident and competent. This may be connected to the fact that while she has only been officially with the company for a few years, one of her earliest memories is keeping her father company at his first acquisition, while forecourt summer jobs followed.
“I’ve always been involved with the business”, she says. “When I was very young I was there with dad. I can remember being with him when I was five.”
Subu bought his first site in East Ham in 2002. “He traded that himself more or less every day”, she says. A second site, this one in Esher, followed in 2007, before the firm “started slowly growing the portfolio”. Now, with a decent number of forecourts under its belt, Vasavi says Tankerford is taking a discerning approach to its purchases. “We like our high-standard sites”, she says. “And we want to be developing them to their maximised potential, rather than numbers, and having however many sites.” As for further expansion, “We’re not going looking, but if the opportunity comes, we’re open.”
Until relatively recently Tankerford essentially comprised Vasavi and her father, occasionally employing consultants, and supported by two or three people in their office, a streamlined approach made possible by the commission model leaving day-to-day site operations to tenants. But in terms of land acquisitions, regular site visits, negotiations with wholesalers, tenants and fuel suppliers, it’s been her and her dad.
We say until relatively recently because a year or so ago Subu headhunted Jamie to oversee their retail operations. Quick, knowledgeable and with experience at Morrisons and Co-op, Jamie has since overseen changes of wholesaler at many of Tankerford’s sites, while also devising a complete rebrand for the firm’s higher-end stores: Refuel Market, first at Colchester, now at Eashing. There’s tasteful signage, wood panelling on the shop’s walls, hot food and drinks to-go, a bank of fridge-freezers with high-end ready meals, a free ATM and a foreign-food aisle; it’s very, very well done.
“They’re basically our premium stores”, Jamie explains. “Every site we redevelop and modernise, we’ll have a discussion on whether we go down the Refuel Market route. A lot of that is down to demographics and store size…if it’s literally a convenience corner shop and we can’t do more than that, that’s still great for our portfolio, but there’s no point trying to tell customers it’s something it’s not.”
That focus on local knowledge is core to Tankerford’s success both from the perspective of convenience, and where fuel suppliers are concerned:
“It’s very dependent on location: who’s around us, what other fuel brands”, Vasavi says, explaining that “in East Ham, Texaco does very well for us”. The decision to switch Eashing from BP to Shell, meanwhile, was largely driven by the fact BP has a prominent company-owned forecourt just 15 miles away on the A3, though customer profiles also played a part in the decision: “We’re the last stop before Goodwood for the festival, and you know they like their V-Power”, Vasavi explains.
The pair place an emphasis on trusting and listening to their site operators. Vasavi speaks with respect for Kirupa, who runs the Eashing forecourt, while Jamie says: “If you look at some of the decisions we’ve made here, they’re different from other sites because the operator knows things that would do well here. It’s definitely about working in partnership with them.”
Our 40-minute talk takes in numerous topics, including vapes, electric cars, planning processes, car-mat cleaners, crime, and jet washes. As well as being well-versed in all aspects of the industry, Vasavi and Jamie clearly have one thing in spades: the unfeignable asset of enthusiasm.
For example, both talk about the endless possibilities offered by two of their recent “blank slate” purchases, which used to be filling stations many years ago, and are now being brought back to their original status by the firm.
Jamie says these upcoming developments “excite me from a retail side”, explaining: “They’re all slightly different, but they’ve all got potential to have a good retail business alongside fuel. We can take learnings from here and other sites, and pick out those bits and create some really nice shopping environments…We can design the buildings how we want, we can use whatever equipment we want, we can try something new…There’s probably some really cool conversations we’re going to have over the next year, saying ‘let’s try that’.”
Vasavi and Jamie are given almost total creative freedom at Tankerford, with Subu providing a guiding hand. “In a good way he’s pushy about doing the best we can, but he’s not a micro-manager”, Vasavi says, adding that her father is “very happy for me and Jamie to do what we want to do”.
This approach – one that blends pragmatism with idealism, and the keenness of youth with the wisdom of experience – seems to be bearing fruit for the firm. And while Vasavi says she didn’t expect to be involved in the family business so early into her life, she’s “very happy about it.” Given this, and the obvious flair she has for the industry, it’s little wonder how she sees the company’s future: “My thought process is that it would always be in the family, that we would never sell.”
