What is The Foodary and why is Caltex banking on its future?
Petroleum company Caltex has an Australian network of about 1900 franchised, company owned and affiliate stores. The business banks on convenience to satisfy its customers, and this year is introducing some fresh thinking into the petrol/convenience store format.
Inside Franchise Business magazine spoke earlier this year with Caltex GM of convenience development Helen Moore.
What is the thinking behind The Foodary concept?
The first thing you’ll notice about The Foodary is that it doesn’t look or feel like the usual petrol station food outlet. We wanted to create an environment that is inviting, and one that excites all five senses – we want people to see, hear, taste, smell and feel the difference.
The whole concept of The Foodary was driven by our customers. They told us they want fresh, easy food and coffee on-the-go. The Foodary still has traditional food like the humble sausage roll, but it’s about giving customers choice.
We also saw the opportunity to make life more convenient and easier for our customers. As part of The Foodary, we are trialling some special digital experiences. For example, an app lets busy motorists pay for their fuel on-the-go, directly from their vehicle.
It also gives them the option to pre-order food or coffee before re-fuelling, or even before they arrive at the store, so they can easily and quickly collect food at the counter. There are also touch screens at the pump so people can pre-order food while refuelling.
For Caltex, The Foodary is part of our evolving retail strategy and our plans to reinvent the local convenience retailing industry.
We will be trialling partnerships with the likes of Boost Juice, Guzman Y Gomez and Sumo Salad, as well as improving our product offer across key fresh categories such as sandwiches and salads, bakery and meals.
These are established and trusted brands, so we are really interested in seeing our customers’ reactions to these quick-service restaurants within our stores.
We plan to open more concept stores in New South Wales and Victoria first, with other states later in the year. We hope to make some of these products and services available to our broader network once they have been tested.
What is the ultimate goal for this concept?
The Foodary is part of Caltex’s overall vision to offer freedom of convenience to our customers. It is part of our evolving retail strategy, where our aim is to reinvent the local convenience retailing industry.
We want to give our customers the choice to eat quick, healthy food on the go, and offer them convenient services like parcel pick-up or laundry. This is about anticipating and delivering on our customers’ needs so they can spend less time on the things they have to do and more time on the things they want to do – that’s convenience.
What other services are boosting convenience for customers?
As part of our pilot trials at Concord (Sydney), customers can collect parcels and use a laundry service. As The Foodary is open 24 hours, seven days a week, as a parcel pick-up spot it is much easier for people to access than, say, a post office.
And through Washem, customers can drop off their laundry and have it cleaned, dried and ironed for same-day pick-up.
We’ll continue to keep testing new products and services so we can better understand what our customers want. We are open to adding more services over time as customer demand grows.