Indian Oil Corporation has inked a memorandum of understanding with the Savera Group for opening food stores in IOC’s highway retail outlets across the country. The first such store, Amaravathi Highway Family Restaurant, was formally inaugurated at Chengapalli on Friday.

Chengapalli in Tirupur district is located at a distance of about 50 km from Coimbatore.

Highway hubs

Inaugurating the facility, R Sitharthan, Executive Director (Tamil Nadu), Indian Oil Corporation, said, “The effort is aimed at upgrading our retail outlets along the highways with signature stamp, besides extending customer convenience. This outlet has become a hub for highway travellers.”

“There are 2,250 IOC outlets (in TN and Puducherry) of which 130 are located along the highways. With leisure travel on the rise, we foresee the need for upgrading our outlets located along the highways. This is just a beginning,” he said and indicated that another 2600-odd fuel stations would be added to this network soon.

“The minimum requirement for establishment of such facility is four acres,” he added.

Pan-India presence

Speaking on the sidelines of this event, Anthony Michael, Vice-President, Savera Group, told BusinessLine that as per the agreement, the group would open food store across most IOC properties along the highway from Kanyakumari to Kashmir.

“We opened our first highway outlet near Gudur on the Chennai-Nellore highway three years back. It has now become a preferred stop for travellers en route to various destinations. The success story of Gudur is sought to be replicated at Chengapalli, but this would be our first project with IOC,” he said.

Future plans

The group plans to operate five outlets (under this agreement), one each at Ponneripalli near Hosur, Maraimalainagar, Ulunthurpet and Mathu- ranthagam by March 2019.

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