Retail Watchers

Bagels wrote: ↑December 26th, 2019, 1:59 am There’s a gas station in Orange that was recently rebranded to the ARCO brand, but the convenience store is still branded as Sunoco (and the gas portion hasn’t been branded as Sunoco in years- it was most recently an independent shop). Branding agreements are weird.

I don't think this location had any connection to the real Sunoco brand. I think it was someone just using the name.

I think the old Thrifty stations sometimes had a sun-type logo for their food mart.

I saw my first Marathon branded fuel station in the Phoenix area yesterday.

It's a former Valero at 6842 E Thomas Rd, Scottsdale, AZ 85251.

I also saw a former Arco in Scottsdale (10809 N Frank Lloyd Wright Blvd, Scottsdale, AZ 85259) has now rebranded as a Shell.

Shell has lost many stations in Northern California when the stations became Speedway Express. I rarely ever hear of new Shell stations. The last time I ever saw a new Shell was when some USA Gas stations converted to Shell many years ago. Now they are Speedway. Shell is a trusted brand, but they are expensive.

I have only seen one new Valero recently and that was in the San Francisco Bay Area. It was a strange station as the station was blue instead of green. The logo was blue too. Is Valero switching to blue? Or perhaps the sign installer was colorblind.

That's their new scheme. Comes with a new font too...

Albertsons Express > USA Gas > Mobil are now Speedway Express in Oregon. Just saw the "Cully Neighborhood Albertsons" change today.

Years ago Albertsons got rid of their gas stations. It was only after taking over Safeway that Albertsons decided to sell gas again. Perhaps Albertsons is going to sell off all of their gas stations. The Safeway gas scandal in South Lake Tahoe, California cost Albertsons tons of money in car repair claims. They may want to exit the gas business and all of its potential problems.

Having a low priced gas station such as Speedway next to a Safeway is just as much of a draw as a Safeway gas station. As long as Speedway has low prices, it will still bring in customers to Safeway.

I am shocked that Mobil is going away. The Mobil brand is a trusted gas brand and the gas quality is Top Tier.

Except Safeway has a partnership with Chevron through its Rewards Card. The Phoenix Safeway fuel centers have upgraded signage on the pumps with the “Express” lettering

So far it seems the "USA Gasoline" brand sites attached to Wal Mart Store parking lots have kept the "USA Gasoline" name even in territories where everything else has been switched to Speedway.

I wonder what will come of these.

Also I notice the Eastern Washington sites have kept Mobil branding... those were all corporate Tesoros long ago. Not sure what they started as.

Looks like Seven & i is in talks to buy Speedway. The Speedway stations could all be rebannered to 7-11.

https://www.cspdailynews.com/mergers-ac ... L1qSv29VbE

7-11 and Speedway are as different as fish and fowl... most of the Speedways have oversized kiosks for convenience stores that are too small for an average size 7-11. How much of this is just wiping out a major competitor