Chevron Corp. is one of the few U.S. oil companies still committed to having a direct-operated retail network. Chevron-branded products are sold in more than 8,000 retail locations in the United States, and the major oil supplies more than 2,500 service stations in southern and eastern states with Texaco-branded fuel.
Despite the number of U.S. locations flying the Chevron and Texaco flags, Chevron's "controllable" retail network—meaning those stores that adhere to procedures created by the corporate operations and category-management teams—comprises 330 company-owned and 390 franchised Chevron ExtraMile stores. The "noncontrollable" locations in the network include independent distributors and dealers selling Chevron or Texaco gasoline, but Chevron has no direct affiliation with the convenience-store offer at those locations. Of the locations the company owns and operates, most have an ExtraMile store.
Chevron has made bottled waters, energy drinks and other swift-selling beverage segments a central focus in its ExtraMile stores, measuring at least 500 square feet with a an open-air, center-floor merchandiser dubbed HydraZone. Seattle's Best Coffee was added to the West Coast stores' foodservice offering in 2012.
The company plans to add roughly 100 new franchised locations per year and has said it plans to double its retail network by 2015.
| Headquarters: | San Ramon, California |
|---|---|
| No. of Stores: | 720 |
| Average Store Size: | 1,000-2,500 sq. ft. |
| Rank: | 12 |
| States of Operation: | California, Florida, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington |
“The starting point for everything around the [in-store] offer is proven demand already for a particular product or concept,” says Paul Casadont, merchandising manager for the Americas (seen here, on the right, with Ian Noble, manager of district sales for the franchise, left, and Adrian Bendeck, general manager, center).
ExtraMile’s Extra Good To Go program offers a range of hot food from sausage and brats to taquitos and tamales. It also has a few fresh sandwich offers on the launching pad that are more targeted toward specific day-parts. “It’s less one size fits all, more targeted to specific shopping patterns in each location,” said Casadont.
Chevron has focused over the past several years on providing a consistent, competitive fountain and frozen-beverage offer, but it hasn’t yet reached the level of a true destination category, said Casadont. While the offer is competitive from the standpoint of pricing, cup size and variety, there is room for more customization. Chevron will be exploring new fountain technology in the coming months to help meet this preference.
Two years since the rollout of its Seattle’s Best Coffee (SBC) branded offer, the ExtraMile team is happy with the results, but believes there is even greater opportunity beyond traditional drip coffee. “Drip coffee is not growing at a very quick rate at all,” said Casadont, saying the real growth is in specialty coffees such as lattes and mochas.
While tobacco is a core focus of ExtraMile, it is no longer limited to cigarettes and OTP. The ExtraMile merchandising team is moving e-cigarettes into its tobacco backbar and testing vaping products at 10 sites. ExtraMile is also getting more location-specific on pricing tobacco, keeping it aligned with area competition.
Chevron is building its ExtraMile franchisee network in the main metropolitan areas of its three-state footprint: Seattle and Puget Sound in Washington, Vancouver and Portland in Oregon, and San Francisco Bay, Los Angeles and San Diego in California. The strategy is to build onto those metropolitan areas, creating the right density from a marketing footprint point of view.