Kuzminblog

Changing the world for better... at least the world of gas stations)

Author: Alexander Kuzmin Page 6 of 8

Is Your Cup of Coffee Worth Paying that Price?

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On 04.08.2016

In Gas station chains - cafe, Gas station chains - non-fuel businesses, Сoffee business

How much should a cup of your favorite coffee cost? What key factors does the price include? Which coffee is cheaper? One will hardly find the exact answer to all those questions when considering a well-flavored aromatic drink, as we are speaking of a tasty one. 

Regularly proceeding with an in-depth statistics and analysis, coffee market experts are very unlikely to reveal the truth. They know that the average price may range from $0.5 to $1 per cup of your beloved espresso or Americano. Those drinks do not require additional ingredients like milk making cost price lower if compared with latte o cappuccino. Producers and marketers benefit from enormous revenues selling their products with up to 1000% markup. For this reason, the niche appears to have a great potential for businesses, which use all possible means to protect their segment keeping newcomers away. They established an average market price, which is about $1 per cup.

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Efficient Solutions to Reduce Human Factor Errors at Filling Stations

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On 18.07.2016

In Gas station chains - cafe, Gas station chains - non-fuel businesses, RusHOLTS, Сoffee business

My colleagues often blame me for inventing efficient tools that reduce the influence of human factor. They often say I don’t like people.

Well, it’s true. You can’t like all the people, anyway. However, every time I share my ideas on the human factor, it does not mean I reproach filling station operators or other employees for being negligent or low qualified. You can always find a responsible and initiative person as well as those who suffer from a lack of ambitions being unable to perform an extra move. Some employees try their best to follow their duties and fulfill their every responsibility while other do not give a damn what employers expect from them. Others make efforts to be a real pain in the neck interfering with devices operation without having enough knowledge and operational skills.

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Fuel for drivers. Why G-Drive does everything right

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On 12.07.2016

In Gas station chains - non-fuel businesses, RusHOLTS

Savvy marketing does not always help, but it certainly never hurts. The universal rule that brings to life an infinite number of brands, promotion campaigns and rebrandings of virtually anything around us. It works in the fuel segment, too – the most striking example of it is the G-Drive: a brand under which merged a premium fuel for cars and an energy drink. Any fan of “Zenith”, as well as any active Internet user was faced with a G-Drive advertising campaign: the famous Hulk during training sessions performs exorbitant power tricks – tears the ball apart, or does the same to the net, then makes his colleagues looks like extras in game situations.

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Life after oil. The transformation of the gas station

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On 27.06.2016

In Gas station chains - cafe, Gas station chains - non-fuel businesses, RusHOLTS

«Life After Oil» is one of the most quoted events held during the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum. “For our country the oil is everything, it is 25% of GDP. So to imagine the structure of our economy without the oil which has not only a direct impact, but also an indirect contribution to GDP by attracting investment through consumption, is probably impossible”,- quote from a speech by Herman Gref.
Accepting this new reality is difficult not only to Russia. In Canada they also believe that country’s status as an energy superpower is under threat because of the more rapid speed of decline of the era of fossil fuels on the market than it was thought previously.
We’ve told you already about the history of the financial relationship of David Rockefeller and company Exxon Mobile.
David Rockefeller-Sr., the grandson of the founder of the dynasty, said he had lost faith in Exxon Mobil and donated its shares, which he’d got directly from his great-grandfather, to a non-profit Rockefeller Family Fund, which deals with environmental issues.
For non-fuel gas station businesses this trend has some good news in it. The modern driver’s need for a cup of coffee and some rest occurs more frequently than his car runs out of gasoline. This can easily be confirmed by the figures. Shell in 2015 had an operating loss from the core operations in the tune of $5.7 billion, but profits from “auxiliary” businesses, including retail, have grown over the past year three-fold to some $10.2 billion. Source >>
Therefore i consider an interview of Istvan Kapitani, executive vice president and Head of Retail businesses in Royal Dutch Shell, to be an essential one.
Istvan Kapitani joined the company in 1987 as a manager of filling station in Hungary, namely at his homeland. Today he leads the direction, which includes more sales outlets than Starbucks or McDonald’s. 43 000 gas stations, 500 000 employees and 25 million customers in 70 countries every day.

The future of fuel retail
Many of the current problems of fuel retailers today can be reduced to one thorny challenge – how exactly gas stations should be transformed in the light of the needs of the world with constantly falling oil prices, growing environmental requirements and the upcoming emergence of unmanned vehicles.

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Auto purchases, CRM-system for competitive tenders and directories in the clouds

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On 14.06.2016

In No subject

To simplify the work of purchasing department? To avoid hundreds of competitive tenders for each item? To gather together the information on the balance and delivery schedules? Easy.
“ADR” system developed by RusHOLTS has been solving these problems since 2011, making the work of gas station staff and managing companies much easier.
Auto purchases for retail
Solutions that automate procurement processes are actively developing in certain retail segments. A striking example – restaurants and shops at gas stations chains.
Product range in gas stations’s cafes and shops includes about 3 000 commodity items. At the same time, according to the established standards, the station may make an order starting from 500 rubles which, taking in the account the Russian distances, is simply ruinous for the suppliers that have no consolidation tools for trade flows, – Says Alexander Kuzmin, CEO of RusHOLTS – a company which is engaged in supplying on-fuel products for gas stations.
The situation is complicated by the fact that the large chains of filling stations are being built via buying incorporating the smaller ones, each of which uses their own accounting systems: Excel spreadsheets, “1C” and others. This makes it impossible to use standard solutions, so RusHOLTS developed and successfully introduced a number of services: “ADR”, coffee machines remote monitoring and other technological equipment.
As a result an online system for automated collection of information on all products at gas stations was created, on which are based the reports on the need for a particular product at a particular station on a daily basis. Gas station employees are using these documents to place orders with suppliers or service organizations that serve gas stations.
The system eliminated the need for holding hundreds of competitive tenders for each of the goods, increased the transparency of the process and the level of control. To the customer it is simply enough to select one or more operators, which will continue to provide comprehensive management services for the supply of goods and services within the contractual terms.

Full article >> http://www.b2b-center.ru/zakupki/analytics/resheniya-v-sfere-zakupok/

McCafe vs Starbucks business models – a difference that does not exist!

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On 10.05.2016

In Gas station chains - cafe, RusHOLTS, Сoffee business

RBC TV tried to find out whose coffee business is better – McCafe’s & Starbucks’? Classic children’s question: “Who is stronger, an elephant or a whale?” And a boring grown-up answer: “Two subjects must be compared on common parameters”. It is strange that none of those present in the studio have not identified these “common parameters”, having lost sight of that in the competition between the two world HoReCa market leaders we observe frontal confrontation between players using virtually the same automated technology of coffee preparation and not the difference in the “approach to the consumer”.

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Excise stamps for all food products

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On 15.04.2016

In Gas station chains - cafe

Rospotrebnadzor (Federal Service on Surveillance for Consumer rights protection and human well-being) has developed a “Strategy for raising the quality of food products in the Russian Federation by 2030».

It’s really a big deal they are about to start – after all it is necessary to create a single unified information system, which will track the movement of food products – from components to finished products. Plus, they’ll have to introduce compulsory state registration of the basic kinds of food additives. “Excise stamp” on the whole range of food production, cool, #whythehellnot!
Dealing with grand challenges is a profitable endeavour, because while you’re fighting for peace around the world no one will ask you about the devastation in your own WC. We haven’t yet figured out the simple issues, which one won’t have time to do within this large-scale project or vice versa, and now it is a good time to identify the specifics. For example, how do you enter the legislative amendments that will help to distinguish the coffee beverage prepared from the so-called “coffee material”?

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IT is an indispensable tool in the supply chain management

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On 05.04.2016

In Gas station chains - non-fuel businesses, RusHOLTS

You get nowhere without IT. Information technologies are so closely intertwined with all the business processes of transportation and logistics companies, that even coffee machines monitoring is implemented as an remote solution. Here’s an interview with CEO of RusHOLTS Alexander Kuzmin for the magazine “Technologies and means of communication”, # 1, 2016.

– What the trends in the field of IT and telecommunications are priority for your organization?

– Logistics companies of 4PL level are engaged in supply chain management, they become part of the business processes of partners with whom they work. We organize the supply chain of gas station chains in all aspects that relate to the non-fuel business. Simply put, we supply all the necessary from the goods for sale, supplies, furniture, coffee machines to IT-solutions that automate processes of gas station’s daily operations. Gas stations chains as a retail object have a lot of features. Each store by itself is small, but the scale of the chain may be hundreds or even thousands of stations. The total number of chain’s cafe and store items is about 3000 SKU (items’ ID), the station may make an order starting from 500 rubles worth. And everybody can imagine Russian distances very well. The organization and supply chain management in these conditions are a heavy task requiring a lot of masterhood which is impossible without IT.

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Coffee culture and spiritual braces

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On 25.03.2016

In Gas station chains - cafe

Starbucks is having problems. Again. At this time, customers in California believe they have not enough milk in their latte. IMHO (personal opinion of the author), whatever has been written about Starbucks it’s more popular than all other coffee houses in America put together.

Any American shopping mall is full of coffee establishments, but half the tables there are usually free. Only at Starbucks you may see a line of people from opening morning hours till late at night before closing. It’s coffee culture and “spiritual braces”.

You can only manage what you can measure

Still, there’s actually a real problem remaining. Underfill of milk is the most common complaint of customers at gas stations. You will be surprised how easily it can be solved. Milk actually is poured badly because the coaffee machines aren’t being washed properly.

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Private label goods – a trend in demand by gas stations chains

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On 11.03.2016

In Gas station chains - non-fuel businesses, RusHOLTS

How we started to work with the products under the brand name of our private label, how we were developing this direction and what conclusions we’ve drawn. >>

This material includes, perhaps, a one fifth part of the story, so the full version is available to read in the blog.

We’re thanking the magazine “Trick of the trade”, which gave the opportunity to speak out on the important subject for us. Because the private label goods for hypermarkets and private label goods at the gas stations require a different technology to be applied, pursue different goals and objectives, have different pricing and so on and so forth. We’ve said it and we will repeat it for 100-500 times. Those who have already realized this, please, do not be offended.

In terms of shopping malls business, RusHOLTS is now among the five largest suppliers of automotive products for the relevant departments of the federal hypermarket chains. We started off developing our business in the 90s by supplying chemicals and auto cosmetics. In the Russian market we were the official representatives of world’s two huge brands – Holts and Redex. At that time in our country there was no hypermarket chains and gas stations chains have only been planned to start manage its shops on a unified and centralized basis. Then there was 1998 defaulted payments crisis.

The people stopped buying expensive imported car cosmetics, but no one refused from the use of the cars and their quantity only grew. Then we decided to create our own full-scale range of chemicals and auto cosmetics from fluids and fuel additives to polishes and air fresheners. So that niche of autochemistry saw import substitution by Russian-made goods as early as in 1998. Many well-known brands in this direction became the history since that time. Products created by us were unified under the umbrella brand EXPERT.

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