by John Keller | Mar 5, 2014 | Customer News, Fuel Pricing Software, Fuel Pricing Strategy, Fuel Pricing Technology, Fuel Software
PriceAdvantage, a division of Skyline Products, announced today that J & H Oil has chosen PriceAdvantage SMART Fuel Pricing as their fuel price management solution.
J & H Oil is running PriceAdvantage in the cloud, eliminating the need for their IT resources to maintain their system.
“We have been searching for ways to improve our overall pricing process, including speeding up survey collections, and eliminating price change errors. After a thorough comparison and evaluation process, including a successful pilot, we are excited to select PriceAdvantage as our retail fuels software. We elected to include PriceAdvantage because we believe it will allow us to understand market and store performance, adjust our strategies as needed, and give us the competitive edge,” said Craig Hoppen, President of J & H Oil.
“We are glad to have J & H as a cloud customer and to know that PriceAdvantage is already improving their retail fuels business,” said Chip Stadjuhar, CEO of Skyline Products. “PriceAdvantage is ideal for automating the retail fuels pricing process, and ensuring that the right price is at the right store, all the time”, Stadjuhar added.
by John Keller | Feb 28, 2014 | Retail Fuel Margins
According to today’s OPIS weekly report, average retail fuel margins rebounded ever so slightly this week to $0.134 per gallon. That’s a $0.006 improvement from last week.
The year to date average now stands at $0.160 per gallon, and the six week average is also $0.160.
For the first time this year, the current retail fuel margin average is lower this week than the equivalent week last year. In 2013, the average retail fuel margin was exactly $.03 higher, at $0.164 per gallon. Let’s hope the increase in margins continues through the rest of Q1.
by John Keller | Feb 24, 2014 | Customer News, Fuel Price Management Solutions, Fuel Pricing Software
PriceAdvantage, a division of Skyline Products, announced today that Pic-n-Pac Convenience Stores has licensed PriceAdvantage SMART™ Fuel Pricing, a fuel price management solution, for their 15 stores in Texas. Pic-n-Pac will use PriceAdvantage on a subscription basis for a fully integrated fuel price management offering.
“Pic-n-Pac competes with some of the largest retailers in the country and we needed help to level the playing field. We feel that PriceAdvantage is the perfect solution as it will help us become more efficient in our daily operations by streamlining and automating our process for determining and implementing new fuel prices,” said Phil Wuest, Director of Operations of Pic-n-Pac.
“We welcome Pic-n-Pac to our family of customers and are eager to help them improve their fuel pricing processes,” said Chip Stadjuhar, CEO of Skyline Products. “PriceAdvantage SMART Fuel Pricing will help them evaluate pricing from headquarters, giving them the data to make informed pricing decisions rapidly.”
Stadjuhar adds, “PriceAdvantage SMART Fuel Pricing, a fully scalable solution, is as effective for a small growing chain of 15 stores as it is for a national chain with thousands of locations.”
Pic-n-Pac Convenience Stores is a privately held, family owned and operated business. Headquartered in McQueeney, TX, Pic-n-Pac is approaching its 50th year anniversary. The first convenience store was opened in 1964 and was the vision of our company’s founder, Harvey Edward Wuest. Today, the company has grown to 15 locations serving customers in Guadalupe, Comal and Caldwell counties.
by John Keller | Feb 21, 2014 | Retail Fuel Margins
According to OPIS, the average retail fuel margin across the US dropped again this week. That’s the fourth consecutive weekly drop and the retail fuel margin average is now at its lowest since January 3.
The average retail fuel margin now stands at $0.128 per gallon, off $0.018 per gallon from last week, and almost $.05 per gallon since the trend began on January 31. The year to date average is $0.164 and the six week average is $0.168 per gallon.
Last year the retail fuel margin average was $0.102 per gallon. We can only hope that retail fuel margins turn around quickly.
by John Keller | Feb 21, 2014 | Fuel Price Optimization, Industry News
According to Convenience Store News, an increasing number of grocers are entering the retail fuels business. Many grocers see the fuels business as a way to compete against the much larger national retail chains like HEB and Walmart. Grocers also see fuels as a way to build strong relationships with customers, for example, tie-ins between grocery items on promotion and fuel incentives.
What does this mean to the retail fuel manager? It means the retail fuel manager has to constantly be on guard, watching to see if a new competitor is changing the market landscape by slicing the retail fuel volume pie into smaller pieces. It means competitor survey prices need to be carefully analyzed to make sure they are truly comparable, without any kind of embedded reward discount that may throw off competitive price analysis. And it means it’s increasingly important to maximize overall store profitability both on the forecourt and in-store.
PriceAdvantage offers a powerful report that allows the fuel manager to view in-store merchandise sales overlayed on top of retail fuel sales so you can quickly see the effectiveness of both fuel and in-store promotions. The report is a Volume Correlation report and allows you to see store by store, or by market, the elasticity between forecourt transactions and in-store purchases. It is this type of information that allows you to be most profitable in this ever increasingly competitive landscape.
