Tribal owned gas stations discontinuing branded fuel

[Super S]

I have noticed a few Tribal-owned gas stations in my area have recently discontinued Shell and Chevron branding, and are now selling unbranded fuel. Apparently there is now a tribal owned fuel distributor they are buying from. This has not been consistent, but is something I am seeing more as fuel costs in WA continue to skyrocket.

The tribal stations seem to do their own thing with convenience store operations and don't really rely too much on the fuel branding.

I am curious if this is taking place in other areas.

[Brian Lutz]

I see that the Tulalip tribe has switched their two stations (one near the Quil Ceda Creek Casino, one near the Tulalip outlet mall) to self branding where they used to both be Chevron. The Stillaguamish tribe operates several stations on their land as well branded as River Rock, plus another one in the parking lot of the Angel of the Winds casino and branded as such. In the past I've seen Pilot Flying J trucks at one of these stations, but I would assume that if it's unbranded they can switch suppliers pretty much at will.

[storewanderer]

The challenge is in some places they prefer to keep branding agreements because it will guarantee them an uninterrupted supply of fuel. In reality there are suppliers who will do that for you if you are unbranded too, so they seem to be figuring this out and slowly going to being unbranded.

Many tribes have never operated branded fuel stations and always had them unbranded and have very profitable fuel/tobacco businesses due to the favorable tax situation that they enjoy.

For instance tribal fuel stations in Bishop, CA; Susanville, CA; have never had any branding.

A lot of it is more of a local fuel supply related decision more than anything else.

I am surprised Tulalip did not retain the Chevron branding though. If there is a fuel brand out on the west coast if you own a gas station, that is the one.

[babs]

If you are shopping for the lowest gas price at a casino, grocery store, or warehouse club, does branding matter at all?

[storewanderer]

If you are shopping for the lowest gas price at a casino, grocery store, or warehouse club, does branding matter at all?

Some of these Tribe gas stations are positioned in prime locations just off highways in high traffic locations in a manner where fuel branding is important to a lot of customers. Others are in out of the way locations that are inconvenient/low traffic so the only way to get traffic is through price.

There is also the issue of the oil company issued credit card. Chevron has a higher rate of branded credit card use than any other oil brand on the west coast. This is something operators look at when deciding what brand to use since they can typically accept the oil company's card without any processing fee involved.

It is also possible some of these Tribes did the analysis that they have a low use of the oil company branded credit card at their sites so that was not the benefit to them that it is to some other stations.

[Brian Lutz]

I know that most of the time when we went there the River Rock (Stillaguamish) station next to I-5 was very busy, especially when gas prices started going up rapidly last year and their price was generally cheaper than most other nearby options. They have the advantage of not having to charge the extremely high gas taxes found in the rest of Washington (a fact which makes the politicians mad but there's little they can do about it) so they can charge less for gas and make it up in volume. The Angel of the Winds gas station is in the casino parking lot and usually had slightly higher prices than the one on I-5, but they offer discounts to casino players club members to make up for it.

[veteran+]

If you are shopping for the lowest gas price at a casino, grocery store, or warehouse club, does branding matter at all?

How about if the shoppers' criteria is what Tier of gas it is (and secondarily, the price)?

[jamcool]

If you are shopping for the lowest gas price at a casino, grocery store, or warehouse club, does branding matter at all?

Some of these Tribe gas stations are positioned in prime locations just off highways in high traffic locations in a manner where fuel branding is important to a lot of customers. Others are in out of the way locations that are inconvenient/low traffic so the only way to get traffic is through price.

There is also the issue of the oil company issued credit card. Chevron has a higher rate of branded credit card use than any other oil brand on the west coast. This is something operators look at when deciding what brand to use since they can typically accept the oil company's card without any processing fee involved.

It is also possible some of these Tribes did the analysis that they have a low use of the oil company branded credit card at their sites so that was not the benefit to them that it is to some other stations.

Plus the Chevron partnership with Safeway/Albertsons loyalty points.

[storewanderer]

Plus the Chevron partnership with Safeway/Albertsons loyalty points.

Is that partnership doing anything in AZ to draw people to Chevron stations? It gets pretty heavy use in NorCal (due to the dominance of Chevron there and dominance of Safeway- customers were already using both so I'm not sure how much habits changed, more the partnership just fit in with the existing customer habits so well). It is a joke in NV/ID/UT- very low use. OR it is difficult to redeem rewards in the first place as phone number entry is sloppy (bar code scanner is a lot better but that isn't how the Safeway/Chevron partnership works).

There is no gas partner for Safeway in CO and back in DC/MD they partnered with ExxonMobil.

The station does have to fund a few cents of that Safeway discount so some stations may not like the program. I think Chevron has forced all stations to participate in the program at this point, but getting all to participate here in NV took quite a while. There are still some Shell sites that do not participate in Kroger because they don't want to fund the 2-3 cents of that discount they are required to fund.

[jamcool]

They advertise it in the weekly S/A ads…and every small town in AZ that has a Safeway has at least 1 Chevron station.
IMHO it is harder to get the Fry’s rewards points at Shell and Circle K, you have to have the physical card and the pump doesn’t always accept it. All you have to do at Chevron is enter the phone number tied to your Safeway club card.