"Why do they lock the restrooms at gas stations? Are they afraid somebody will clean them?"
The old George Carlin joke says it all: Retailing doesn't come naturally to oil companies. Not that they haven't tried. Over the years, as profit margins on gas have narrowed, oil company operators have looked more and more to convenience store merchandise to make gas retailing worthwhile, investing in improvements and working to do better.
But most oil companies have concluded that retailing just isn't their strong suit. Wednesday The Wall Street Journal reported that ConocoPhillips Co. is
expected to sell off the rest of its 600 company-owned stations. In June, Exxon Mobil Corp. said it was selling its remaining 2,200 company-owned stations.
There's a big exception to this trend, however: Chevron Corp.'s ExtraMile Convenience Stores. According to a survey run by convenience store industry pub CSP, ExtraMile
ranked first in the business for the second year in a row, and Chevron is now building the unit through franchising. There are more than 300 ExtraMile locations, with another 80 in development. Danny Rhoden, Americas marketing VP for Chevron, talks about building a retail culture within a major oil company -- and stresses a "core cleaning process" that would leave a comedian looking for something else to joke about.
It will be interesting to see how ExtraMile fares as the retail model continues to change. Conoco is reportedly selling its stations (for $800 million) to a Seattle outfit called PetroSun West LLC, which
earlier bought 250 stores from the oil company. PetroSun West president Sam Hirbod has expansive ideas about the level of service he can deliver. He told the Journal he's thinking about adding not just fresh sandwiches, but also financial services and dry cleaning.
- Kenneth Klee
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