Zion Ginat, Founder and CEO
During my tenure as the CEO of Delek Europe, a fuel stations retail company with a network of approximately 1,300 stations and 950 convenience stores in France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg, I noticed the industry was undergoing a major shift.
The large fuel companies had begun moving away from fuel retailing and professional retailers started taking over the networks.
The change was mainly due to the increase in vehicle fuel efficiency and the introduction of hybrid vehicles. As a result, the average fuel consumption was being reduced, and consequently so was the fuel margin. Fuel companies needed to identify alternative revenue streams, and they found them through non-fuel facilities in the stations, like 24/7 convenience stores, car washes, restaurants and more. This allowed them to develop strong customer engagement and improve the overall driver experience.
Changing the Fueling Game
This tendency towards customer-facing facilities has grown ever more over the years. Fuel retailers have turned from gas station managers to leaders of huge consumer facilities. They now manage large estates that include, in addition to gas stations, also food courts, convenience stores, vehicle services like car washes, specialty retail, and more.
Unsurprisingly, COVID-19 has also accelerated this change. With less people commuting to work on a daily basis, less fuel was being consumed and gas stations were replacing their traditional offering with one that was more suited to drivers’ modern needs.
The next step these retailers will need to take is to find a way to optimize engagement with drivers and entice them to shop at their facilities. Both personal drivers as well as commercial fleet drivers are a potential target market that can benefit from bespoke offerings. By creating digital and dynamic solutions for drivers, fuel retailers have the opportunity to generate new revenue streams from non-fuel products.
A New Opportunity
After carefully observing this change over time, I decided to seize the opportunity and set out to establish a new solution for fuel retailers. One that was adapted to the changes the industry was going through. The goal was to help them serve their customers better while adding on additional revenue streams. Until now, no such holistic solution existed.
Introducing: Picafuel
That realization is what prompted me to start Picafuel, a platform that helps fuel retailers revolutionize the way drivers consume services. We enable our fuel retailers to diversify their business, with the technologies they were missing.
Our vision is to provide a converged, holistic solution that answers the unique challenges of the B2B fueling industry in one, single platform. This includes basic systems for running the fueling business, like dedicated CRM specialized and tailored to the industry needs fully integrated with a billing module, through fraud management and all the way to customer engagement solutions for advanced and personalized marketing.
Having been in the industry myself, I understand the needs of fuel retailers. I know that it isn’t easy to adapt just any system to fueling. We build our solutions solely for the purpose of making fuel retailers more efficient and better able to serve their customers. We know what they need, both now and in the future, so we can meet their specific needs.
The Future of Fuel Retailers is Digital
When you see modernization happening before your eyes, it becomes very clear that companies have two options: to sink or to swim. It’s no wonder that this digitization of fueling businesses is a global trend. I started Picafuel to continue what I began at Delek - helping all fuel retailers provide driver-centric solutions that increase their productivity, revenue streams and adapt to the global changes of tomorrow.
Reach out to me to learn more.
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