The extortionate expense of buying anything from a cup of tea to a litre of fuel has always been one of drivers’ biggest complaints about motorway service stations.
So will the new facilities opened last month at Britain’s latest service station, Cobham, between J9 as well as J10 of the M25 in Surrey, be any type of different?
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We recorded the cost of a basket of products from the different shops found on the Cobham site – plus petrol as well as diesel at the filling station – as well as compared it to costs at the nearest supermarket, a Sainsbury’s in Cobham village less than 10 minutes away.
Regular visitors to service stations won’t be surprised to see that costs for almost every product were cheaper off the motorway, however it’s eye-opening to see exactly how much of a premium businesses operating on the motorway fee customers. A bottle of water includes a near-200 per cent cost increase, while the shell filling station charges 6p a litre more for fuel than Sainsbury’s.
Andrew Long, CEO of additional – the business that operates Cobham services – said: “We can’t manage the pricing. We motivate the shops to be competitive, as well as we understand that McDonalds has a ‘same cost anywhere’ policy. It’s useful that we have competition in the building.” He added that stores have added costs in the charges they have to pay to Extra, which is a blend of flat-rate lease plus a portion of turnover or profit, plus the requirement to be open 24/7.
Sainsbury’s CobhamServicesDifference (£)Difference (%)
Restaurant cooked breakfast£4.29£7.99£3.7086%
Chicken sandwich triple pack£2.80£3.99£1.1943%
Highland spring water 500m£0.50£1.49£0.99198%
Regular cappuccino£1.85£2.50£0.6535%
Walkers crisps grab bag£0.60£0.99£0.3965%
Cadbury’s Dairy Milk 49g£0.59£0.79£0.2034%
Litre of petrol138.90p144.90p6p4%
Litre of diesel143.90p149.90p6p4%
Semi-skimmed two pints£0.89£0.89£0.00 None