Nhulunbuy sits on the Gove Peninsula in East Arnhem Land, about as remote as fuel retailing gets in Australia. Petrol arrives by ship from Darwin on a rotating schedule. Shop stock ordered on a Monday lands the following Monday. And every August, the Garma Festival multiplies the town’s population overnight.
Lisa Roach has run BP Nhulunbuy for 14 years, in a family business that has held the site since December 2000. The site started out on OnQ, the point of sale system the Beacon team acquired and supported, and later upgraded to Beacon. We caught up with Lisa the week after Garma to talk about remote operations, the food offer that has become local legend, and what 25 years on one POS system looks like.
Building the Store That Fuel Can’t Deliver
What sets BP Nhulunbuy apart is what Lisa has built inside the shop. “I haven’t got a huge amount of control over the fuel sales volumes, but I knew I could control what I do in the store,” she says. “I noticed there was a lull during the day and realised I just didn’t have enough food options. Then boom, now we’re humming all day.”
The fried food she developed has become part of the town’s identity. “They call my $10 box ‘Iconic’ now,” she laughs. When she considered a price rise recently, the community talked her out of it within hours. There’s even a $10 gift voucher now, which local companies buy as incentives for their employees and students. Fresh sushi came next, with a Japanese trainer flown up and a machine that rolls consistent sheets no matter who is rostered on. “It’s so hard to continuously train people to be consistent with something like sushi. With a machine doing the rolling, it’s been going really well.”
Her inspiration includes one of the east coast’s most admired independents. “One place I’ve loved looking at is Fox’s Pantry. What they’ve done is amazing, and it inspired me. Why aren’t more stores doing that?”
From OnQ to Beacon
The family started on OnQ when they took the site in 2000, stayed with it after the Beacon team acquired the product, and later upgraded to Beacon itself. “We’ve pretty much had it from the very beginning,” Lisa says. “And I just absolutely love the point of sale. It’s beautiful.”
That longevity matters most where staff turnover is high. “It’s just so user friendly, and new staff are able to pick it all up quickly,” she says. “It’s just a matter of showing them where their eyes need to look.”
Invoices That Load Themselves
The back office has quietly removed whole jobs from Lisa’s week. Supplier invoices she once keyed in by hand now import automatically. “I used to spend a lot of time inputting invoices. Now it just loads them in, and I only have to check them.”
The timing could not have been better. “It came in at the perfect time, when I was having my second baby. Suddenly I was able to take one job off my hands.”
Ordering Built for a Two-Week Supply Chain
With a week’s lead time on everything, ordering mistakes in Nhulunbuy cost more than they do in the city. Lisa runs minimum holdings and reorder numbers on every product, set high enough to keep at least two weeks of stock in the store, and Beacon produces the order. “I originally had staff doing it manually, and that can lead to a lot of mistakes and uncertainty.”
It also made the business portable. “I spent a year working from home and was able to do all the ordering without having to be here. It produces the order, and I can email it directly from Beacon to my suppliers.” When good managers leave, the system carries the knowledge they take with them.
Price Book, Reports and the Numbers
Margin protection comes down to noticing cost changes, and Beacon’s price book management puts every change in one place. “It puts all the items that have had a price change into a list, so you can go through them and make adjustments,” Lisa explains. “It’s really helpful because it’s all in one section. You just get it done quickly.”
Then there’s the reporting. “I love looking at all my reports: my monthly sales so I can figure out what I should be ordering, my stock usage by month, how things are selling.” Sales by time of day feed straight into staffing. “It helps you identify the busy periods, which helps when you’re doing the rosters too.”
Support from 4,000 Kilometres Away
For a site this remote, support that works over the phone is not optional. “I love the fact that they can just dial in from all the way down in Melbourne,” Lisa says. “It’s been great to have that support on the phone. They’re very switched on with what they’re doing.”
The relationship runs deeper than a help desk. Lisa has known the Beacon team for years, and several have made the trip to Nhulunbuy in person, including Kesavan, who visited back in her father’s day. “They’ve always been great for a chat.”
Looking Ahead
With a food trade that keeps growing, Lisa’s site shows no sign of slowing down. “I’ve created a beast, we’re just so busy,” she says. “People come in and say they thought it was going to be a normal service station, and then they see how busy it really is.”
Most operators will never run a site where the fuel comes by ship and the stock takes a week to arrive. But Lisa’s approach travels anywhere: control what you can control, build the offer your town actually wants, and run it all on a system simple enough for anyone to learn and strong enough to run from a lounge room. For BP Nhulunbuy, that has meant OnQ first and Beacon since, with the same team behind both for 25 years and counting.