Leading Rwandan forecourt retailer Société Pétrolière (SP) has revealed its new partnership with Brioche, a Rwandan cafe and bakery chain. The new retail offer, Brioche On-The-Go!, has been launched at two service stations in Kigali, with plans to roll out more outlets this year.

SP was founded in 1967 as Fina Rwanda and merged with BP in 1985 to create BP Fina Rwanda. The company was bought by Engen in 1998, and then sold onto Sakirwa Petroleum. It changed its name to Société Pétrolière in 2007. It has 42 service stations across Rwanda.

SP plans to roll out Brioche On-The-Go! across its network, with more stores planned this year. It is part of a more general overhaul of its retail offer with improvements to it food, beverages and convenience retail proposition.

Brioche has six outlets in Rwanda, of which two are the new partnership with SP. All outlets are in Kigali. As well as bread, pastries and coffee it offers a light menu that includes burgers and European-style dishes such as lasagne and tomato soup. The two new forecourt sites are at SP’s Nyarugenge and Gikondo service stations in Kigali.

Forecourt retail is very immature in Rwanda, although leading retailer Sawa Citi has eight branches of its Express format convenience store on Engen forecourts in Kigali. That partnership has been operating successfully since 2015.

More generally in East Africa, service station forecourts, are a becoming a key retail battleground as fast food brands such as KFC and pharmacy chains such as Goodlife forge new partnerships to exploit high traffic sites.