Peddie Convenience Centre Now Open
Mark Povey is no strangerto developing successful, customer friendly, full service fuel centres, having already built 15 and with more to come. Peddie Convenience Centre includes an Engen fuel station, OK Express shop, Steers, Debonaires, KFC with a pharmacy to come.
“Opening and running a successful operation depends on a few things but with a fuel station “location, location and location” is critical. We are on the N2, the highway connecting Cape Town to Durban, and central to Peddie and have been here as an Engen Fuel Station for 22 years. When we had the opportunity to redesign the Fuel Centre we took full advantage of the additional land secured from the local Municipality to increase our convenience offering and improve the flow and parking for the new development.”
Another huge positive is the selection of the franchise partners and our partners have a proven track record to attract our local customers as well as attract the passing traffic and combined they give a perfect balanced offering to our customers.
Mark said over the years he has seen that success depends on customer satisfaction, a branded convenience food range and good toilet facilities that ensure that people are returning customers.
“With service as our key goal and by putting the customer first, we are committed to giving excellent service for Peddie, the 114 surrounding villages that make up the broader Peddie area as well as for the passing traveller.
Peddie mayor, Sanga Maneli, who performed the ribbon cutting opening ceremony and was surrounded by other dignitaries, said the development was welcomed by residents of the town, the surrounding areas, passing motorists and the taxi industry.
Mark said their target market were taxis, travellers and especially the local community.
“We have done a lot to assist in boosting economic development and job creation in the impoverished area of Peddie in which job opportunities are hard to come by. We are working on similar developments in East London, Whittlesea, Sterkspruit, and should soon start with a similar development in Stutterheim.
“My parents owned a Caltex fuel station in Port
Elizabeth, now Gqeberha, and I worked there over school holidays. I suppose petrol runs in my blood. Most of our developments started with a potentially good fuel station and the convenience stores are planned around them.” For this Peddie development we had the support on the Municipality, the Taxi Associations, Engen Petroleum, the local community and our team of professionals. I would like to highlight the role that the Project Manager, Jedwyn Harty, played in this development and wish to personally thank him for this successful development.”
The Peddie development was not without its hiccups, said Jedwyn Harty, the project manager. The biggest challenge was keeping the site “wet” during construction, meaning that fuel had to flow 24/7.
He said that there were strict environmental and SANRAL guidelines and deadlines were tight.
Harty said that they had an excellent relationship with the taxi operators as one of our past social conscious developments in Peddie was the upgrade and refurbishment of the taxi rank by way of providing undercover parking shelters.