BP Bolwarra
Fueling the community with quality service and a commitment to local growth!
In the Hunter Valley Region of New South Wales, there is a special suburb of Maitland City that holds a lot of history dating back to the early 1800’s: Bolwarra Heights. This is a beautiful historical suburb made up of over 85% of owner-occupiers, with 75% of these being families. Positioned on the corner of Patterson Road and Tocal Road, you can’t miss BP Bolwarra Heights, positioned 300m from the majestic look out that oversees all the green land.
Dinesh Vekariya and his family migrated to Australia from Kenya and started with humble beginnings. Dinesh had his heart set on purchasing this old run-down Metro service station that had a high turnover of owners in a short amount of time. He could see the potential of this block and the suburb, and that’s where his dream started.
In 2017 Dinesh took the first step to fulfill his dream and acquired the site, having a strong vision that within 10 years he would create a modern facility where his customers would be proud to fill up and shop.
Due to Dinesh’s ability to plan and with the support of his family, he was able to make his dream come true in under 10 years.
Keys to Success have been:
Aligning your business with the right brand is important to set you up for success:
Dinesh values partnership and understands that without these partnerships he would not be where he is today.
He could see that both BP and New Sunrise complimented each other. BP had the ability to provide full support around the fuel offering and New Sunrise brought their expertise through promotional marketing.
“All I had to do was to build relationships with the manufacturers reps, and any issues I can escalate to New Sunrise and they would sort it out with the distributor or manufacturer.” Dinesh said.
There were key elements that contributed to Dinesh’s success:
1. Staff – Dinesh believes in the saying “Happy Staff, Happy Customers”. By supporting his staff, he provides an open positive environment and see’s them as family.
2. Customers – Understanding your audience and catering to meet their needs, making them feel at ease, and providing promotions, deals and competitions. It’s important that they feel comfortable, they know the brands and there is transparency around pricing. The store is strutctured and well laid out for convenience.
3. Facilities – Provide clean toilets, soap, mirror, handbasin and paper towels.
4. Inventory management – This is important, check what is coming in, holding enough stock, and making sure that the stock is turning around quickly. Dinesh has processes in place that allows him to keep wastage low.
How has the New Sunrise brand helped to elevate your business?
“Branding my store with the New Sunrise brands has allowed me to create awareness, we are able to meet customers demands. There are exceptional brands, always within arms reach, we are known to provide reliable and consistent promotions in store.
New Sunrise has a fresh outlook, a hands-on and experienced team that could help me manage and elevate the store. On my own I would never have been able to create all the marketing and advertising touch points New Sunrise are able to deliver on.”
Customer-Centric approach and the partnership with New Sunrise
Dinesh mentions that New Sunrise have provided him tools and partnerships. For example, The Common Good Coffee, that allows him to provide high quality coffee to customers.
“Keeping it local is important to us. It’s a great feeling to be able to provide support to the local community who in turn supports you. The key is to understand and be relatable to your audience.”
“The beauty of this partnership with New Sunrise is that they know not one shoe fits all, so they provide us with hundreds of promotions which span across all categories, such as hot food, confectionery and beverages. Besides that, they also provide help with setting up the promotions, this increases sales and basket size.
“Competition is tough and New Sunrise heard their members. It’s been a tough year, money is tight as families have been hit with high inflation. Interest rates and the cost of goods growing faster than inflation. To help their members to sustain and grow foot traffic through the doors, New Sunrise brought out the $1 and $2 promotions and it worked: my business has not suffered and I’ve been able to enjoy growth and profits through these times.
The team at New Sunrise congratulates Dinesh and his team for providing us with an excellent example of how retailing should be done. Dinesh and his team’s hard work and dedication are an asset to the industry. Well done!
