Investing in the future
Car wash, c-store add to successes of Clipper Petroleum

By MaryMurphey

Clipper Petroleum has been a solid fixture of the Gainesville, Ga., landscape since the company was established in 1933, and its presence just keeps growing stronger. Tom L. Bower III, whose family acquired the multi-brand distributorship in 1974, is the current owner and head of the business.

Steve Hall, Clipper Petroleum’s general manager, explained that the company represents brands including Exxon, BP, Shell and CITGO at its 16 retail locations, which are located throughout northeast Georgia.

Focusing on teamwork and investing in its employees, of which there are roughly 100, is the philosophy the company follows. “Taking good care of our people and investing in our people,” Hall said, is of primary importance at Clipper Petroleum. “Retention has been a good byproduct of the way we try to take care of these folks. We have some long-term employees and we consider that a huge benefit.

“We supply about 125 stores in addition to the stores that we operate,” Hall pointed out, “so we’re a pretty large wholesale-type business and we also get involved in helping retailers — our wholesale customers — develop locations, which in a lot of cases include car washes. We plan to develop some additional stores. I would expect to see us in the 20- to 25-store range within the next five years. We’re generally bringing on two to four stores per year, some of those we operate, some of them we offer up to retail customers.

“We pride ourselves on our longstanding relationship with customer service and I think the fact that we have a huge number of wholesale accounts and the fact that we own and operate locations ourselves probably gives us an up with our wholesale customers as well. They like to look to us for advice, guidance and leadership as far as the c-store operations.”



Clipper Petroleum takes its responsibility to each community it’s a part of very seriously. “We feel a strong sense of community with all of our stores and a strong sense to be a participating partner with the neighborhoods,” Hall said. “And we try to offer products that serve the neighborhoods and are beneficial to them. We also stay away from certain products that might be offensive in a neighborhood environment.” Such as drug paraphernalia, rolling papers and pornography, Hall cited.

“I don’t think there’s anything particularly special (about Clipper Petroleum),” Hall explained. “And I think that’s a plus — that we’re kind of simple, kind of consistent in what we offer. If anything that may even be one of our attributes.”

A new profit center
Four of Clipper Petroleum’s 16 locations offer car washes, and the remaining 12 just don’t have the space that’s needed to effectively operate a car wash. “But I wish we had room for car washes at all of them,” Hall said.

“We certainly are undertaking some new facilities and where we have room, we intend to add car washes. We currently have four locations for development, new ground-ups, and a couple of those will have car washes.

“At one time a car wash was not necessarily a profit center,” Hall pointed out. “But we certainly now find that they can be profit centers sometimes to the degree that we would prefer to install a car wash from a revenue standpoint as opposed to retail space or tenant space. So where we have choices to make there, in a lot of cases we’re leaning more toward car washes due to technological advances in quality of the wash and whatnot. So it has been good profit vehicle for us.”

Offering the consumers the additional feature of a car wash gives a retail site another opportunity to set itself apart from its competition. “No doubt about it,” Hall stated. “I think (having a car wash) increases our gasoline volume, particularly when we can sell that car wash on the card reader at the fueling dispenser. That has been an excellent tool in developing car wash sales.”

Clipper Petroleum uses all AUTEC equipment at their current sites, and also plans to do so for any new developments. “We have all soft cloth,” Hall said, “with the exception of the one wash that we have at Perimeter Mall (in Atlanta) — that is a combination touchless and soft cloth.

“What we’re finding in the upscale areas is the combination wash is very popular. People are willing to pay 10, 12 bucks for a car wash, and we’ve got some areas in the upscale parts of Atlanta which they do, and do regularly. The combination wash has been very popular — you get the benefits of both the high pressure and the soft cloth.”

Quality foodservice
“Originally we got in the convenience-store business back in the ‘70s — there was a completely different landscape at that time,” Hall detailed. “And we have had to evolve. At one time we had as many as 36 stores, and since that time we’ve had to reevaluate our positions on some of the stores that were not as productive as we thought they needed to be. They needed the attention of an owner/operator, so we leased a lot of those locations to owner/operators. We’re just a little bit more selective now with what we retain as our company-operated locations.

“Clipper Petroleum has a ‘Doing Business As’ venture called Circle M Food Shops,” Hall explained, that is also its proprietary group or company-operated retail chain. “Like any other business venture, we just felt like there was an opportunity as a distributor who also realized some profitability and benefits through a chain of convenience stores. Unfortunately, we have to be a little more selective in today’s environment with all the big-box retailers and the other groups that are entering into the gasoline business. It’s unfortunately reduced what we consider to be the sites of opportunity. But there are still places we can do business. There are still places we can survive in this environment. And that’s what we try to select.”

The c-store component of Clipper Petroleum’s sites is essential to each location’s overall profitability. “It is the most critical element of our organization,” Hall matter-of-factly said. “But unfortunately due to limited profitability on the fuel side, we have found that it’s critical to find niches and ways to generate revenue from within the convenience store.

“We do a number of different kinds of arrangements depending on the market. We’re spread all over the North Georgia area and, as a result, we have to kind of lend our facilities to the makeup of the area. We have four QSRs, which are Subway. And we currently have an in-house foodservice program, primarily offering hot dogs, packaged sandwiches, taquitos, burritos and microwaveable-type foods — very low-labor type of food arrangements.”