Convenience Confidential is a video series where C-Store Dive Senior Reporter Brett Dworski analyzes the biggest stories and developments shaping convenience retail. Here is an edited transcript of today’s episode. You can also find these videos on LinkedIn.
C-Store Dive was first to report on Thursday that at the end of this month, BP will be parting ways with two of its highest-ranking convenience retail executives: Greg Franks, SVP of mobility and convenience in the Americas, and Derek Gaskins, head of guest experience.
Now, earlier this week, BP announced that it's making a pretty significant company-wide initiative in which it's getting rid of its “customers and products” division, which houses its c-store segment, and merging everything into its upstream and downstream segments. BP did say that its c-store business will be housed in its downstream segment moving forward, but I couldn't help but wonder what this shift might mean for its c-store business. The fact that BP is cutting the entire division that its c-store business has been housed under should mean something.
While this is all up in the air until BP comments publicly on what's actually going on and the impacts on the c-store business, I'm hearing from sources that the move might be part of BP wanting to focus less on company operated retail moving forward and more on franchise-style type agreements, as well as its branded marketing agreements, and that goes for its TravelCenters of America arm, Thornton's, Ampm, Amoco — all of its banners.
This would be pretty significant, because even though BP left company-operated retail in the early 2000s, a few years ago it got back in, notably when it acquired TravelCenters of America's roughly 250 sites.
So, what is BP doing? We don't know, but sources are saying, again, that this could be a shift that they are moving away from company-operated retail once more, or at least focusing less on it.
