Service stations with the lot have arrived in Sydney as part of Viva Energy’s national rollout of the OTR brand, in a makeover that is 30 years overdue.
Jevan Bouzo (left), CEO of Convenience & Mobility at Viva Energy, and Yasser Shahin, executive chairman of Peregrine Corporation, which sold the On the Run business to Viva last year for $1.15 billion.
Home-brand energy drinks, $3 Moe’s hot dogs and mini-supermarket aisles are at the centre of an Australian petrol station renovation for the digital age.|
The $4 billion ASX-listed Viva Energy took a $1.15 billion punt last year on the acquisition of the On the Run business from Adelaide’s billionaire Shahin family.
It is convinced the OTR brand will be as successful as Bunnings and JB Hi-Fi on the national stage. Until now, almost nobody in Sydney has heard of it.
But in Adelaide, OTR fills a gap in the market where families can fill a basket with school lunch essentials and night owls can grab a greasy snack to go with their tank of unleaded.
About 30 of Viva’s Coles Express petrol stations will have been rebadged OTR by mid-2025.
One of Viva’s top executives, Jevan Bouzo, is convinced it will be embraced by customers, and held in the same regard as brands such as Chemist Warehouse and jewellery chain Lovisa.
OTR outlets trade 24 hours a day, seven days a week.
“It’s creating something that’s a little edgy.
People drive past and think, ‘whoa, that’s a little different’,” Bouzo says.
Each conversion of an existing Coles Express petrol station owned by Viva costs an average of $1 million. Outlets at Greystanes and Strathfield in Sydney have re-opened with the OTR livery in the past week after being given the full treatment, and another at Kingsford is due next week.
A former Coles Express at Hope Valley in Adelaide’s north-eastern suburbs opened on December 4 after a $1.5 million four-week overhaul.
The mini-aisles and fridges inside are stacked with private-label brands made exclusively for OTR – home-brand milk under the Simple label, Nom Nom lollies, nuts and snacks and Pure energy drinks – which sit alongside the usual shelf staples known by shoppers.
OTR has its own coffee brand, C.
The first On The Run was set up in 1999 in Adelaide, the brainchild of Yasser Shahin. He thought the profit margins from selling petrol alone were too thin. It was important to branch into convenience stores and food, he believed, to fully embrace customers’ daily lives.
Shahin, executive chairman of the family’s Peregrine Corporation, is super-proud as workers buzz around the Hope Valley site, adding the finishing touches.
The street art graphics are front and centre, designed in-house.
“We want to stay relevant.
You look at a lot of our competitors, they haven’t changed in 30 or 40 years,” Shahin says.
He says being able to adapt to changing lifestyles is crucial, and success in expanding OTR to other states is not taken for granted.
“Don’t accept that this road is going to be easy.
We will keep adapting,” he says.
Shahin is working as a consultant to Viva for two years as part of the buyout deal.
OTR has kept fine-tuning its offering in SA in the past 20 years.
“It keeps evolving, it keeps changing, it doesn’t stop,” Shahin says. Pre-ordering coffees on mobile has proved popular, he says.
Sleek wooden panelling on the columns holding up the canopies under which motorists fill up their vehicles is another new design flourish.
Striped lime-and-white awnings bring a touch of France crossed with Melbourne’s laneway coffee culture. Bouzo likes the effect.
The range of products is broader than shoppers are used to, occupying a middle ground that the Viva executive describes as “a top-up supermarket”.
But unlike the usual offering known to east coast drivers, there are enough pantry ingredients to prepare a home-cooked meal including trendy condiments such as Kewpie mayonnaise.
Australia has about 7500 service stations. Viva has about 1000 across several brands.
Viva acquired the Coles Express business in 2022 from supermarket giant Coles Group.
Viva, partly owned by commodities trader Vitol, owns the Shell-branded network of petrol stations.
Bouzo, the chief executive of Convenience and Mobility at Viva, says an older generation of motorists in Australia were brought up on the love of motor sports where Shell was prominent.
“It was more relevant for older Australians.
Younger people don’t really have that same love for motor sports, that Ford versus Holden rivalry. This is a bit of a step-out.”
Bouzo says there will be local marketing first in catchment areas around the rebadged OTRs in Sydney.
It will accelerate once 30 outlets is reached.
Jevan Bouzo with a Moe’s hot dog and soft serve ice-cream – Roy VanDerVegt
“If you go big and you’re only a small player, you don’t maximise things.
I think it’s smarter to wait until you’ve got that critical mass before you go big,” he says of the strategy.
“Basically, across Australia every Coles Express and Reddy Express capable of being converted to OTR will be converted,” he says of the long-range plans.
Inside an OTR, a small automotive products section, complete with L-plates, octopus straps, bottles of glass cleaner and air fresheners, is tucked away.
Bouzo says it is the slowest-moving category for sales, but is sacrosanct because it represents the automotive heartland.
He says electric vehicle charging will be part of the broader offering eventually.
“EV charging doesn’t work in isolation.
As EV uptake increases, more people will come to us,” Bouzo says confidently.
Rival Ampol has slowed its EV fast-charging network rollout plans.
Chief executive Matt Halliday said in August that local distribution network bottlenecks had forced a rethink on the aggressive schedule.
There are currently two OTR sites in SA offering EV charging. It is rolling out EV charging to 30 service station sites in NSW, with funding from the NSW government.
Most of the EV charging in NSW will be in existing Reddy Express sites, progressively shifting to OTR as the outlets are converted.
OTR’s network also includes about 100 quick service restaurant annexes from Subway, Guzman y Gomez, Krispy Kreme and Oporto.
Charlie Shahin and father Fred at their original Woodville Park petrol station in the western suburbs of Adelaide in 1986.
Viva in February completed a site-swap deal where 25 Coles Express outlets in SA went to Chevron, and it took control of 13 Chevron sites in other states, to gain clearance from the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.
The Shahin family built incredible wealth from humble beginnings after its patriarch, the late Fred Shahin, arrived in Australia in the mid-1980s.
He had been an auditor and logistics manager for the United Nations in Lebanon, helping Palestinian refugees.
But he tired of the strife of war, and four decades ago fled to Australia with his wife, Salma.
Arriving in Adelaide in 1984, he couldn’t find a job.
He answered an advertisement in the local newspaper, The Advertiser, looking for buyers of a BP petrol station in the working-class suburb of Woodville Park in Adelaide’s western suburbs.
It came with a house next door in a package deal, so the family had somewhere to live.
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