WOG celebrates 20 years of success

Since it was founded 20 years ago, the WOG gas station chain has come a long way!

The chain’s first station opened at the turn of the millennium, in the village of Tsuman in Volyn Oblast. Twenty years later, WOG has become the largest monobrand chain of gas stations in Ukraine, with an annual turnover of $1.4 billion, serving 150,000 customers a day!

Over the years, WOG’s customers have come to trust the quality of the chain’s products: All oil products in the WOG chain are imported exclusively by the company, and meet the Euro-5 standard. For the last decade, WOG has been one of the largest importers of petroleum products in Ukraine, supplying almost 10 percent of the market for petroleum products in the country.

Products are imported from the region’s most modern oil refineries, in Romania, Israel, Greece, Lithuania, Poland, Belarus and other countries. From production to sale, WOG’s products undergo a series of 20 quality checks.

More than fuel 

But it’s not just gas that WOG’s customers have come to trust the brand for: 70 percent of the people who visit the company’s gas stations buy something other than fuel for their car.

WOG was among the first brands to join in the coffee revolution in Ukraine, when in 2014 it installed 100 Franke coffee machines at its gas stations. That was quickly followed in 2015 by the opening of the first WOG CAFE outside of a gas station, on Lva Tolstoho Square in Kyiv.

WOG CAFEs have since opened at Kyiv Sikorsky Airport (Zhulyaniy), and at Lviv and Odesa airports. People can even enjoy the company’s great food on the rails, with WOG CAFE in 2016 starting to serve customers on Ukraine’s Intercity high-speed train services.

Over the last six years, WOG’s customers have bought almost 90 million cups of coffee, and every day the WOG CAFE chain sells more than 70,000 coffees, more than 28,000 hot dogs, and more than 7,500 sandwiches and burgers!

People first

WOG’s core principle is always to remember that “cars don’t drive, people drive.” Its whole strategy is to build everything around people – their preferences, wishes and needs. At its heart, this ethos means making people’s lives easier.

That’s why WOG was the first gas station chain in Ukraine to launch its own mobile application, WOG PRIDE, which now has half a million active users. Among other things, the app offers its users easy ways to pay for fuel, car insurance services, a bonus scheme, and an online store.

Using this new technology, WOG has pioneered the concept of the “contactless gas station.” Using the app’s WOG PAY feature, customers can fill up their cars and pay for their fuel without leaving their car. WOG PAY services 1,500 transactions per day, and 17 percent of WOG PRIDE app users refuel their cars using this service.

To save customers more time, 14 WOG gas stations in Kyiv and Odesa since April 2020 have hosted Nova Poshta post offices, where customers can pick up deliveries of letters, and parcels weighing up to 30 kilograms!

In May 2020 WOG launched a joint project with online store Rozetka, allowing customers to pick up goods they have ordered online at any of eleven WOG gas stations in Kyiv. The number of stations offering this service is set to increase soon.

Lifesavers

Sometimes WOG’s 7,000 employees go beyond giving great service, and become actual lifesavers! In one recent incident, a four-year-old child left sleeping in a locked car by his parents at the WOG gas station at Sevastopol Square in Kyiv was saved by WOG employees. While his parents were shopping in the station’s WOG Market, the car in which the child was sleeping caught fire and started emitting thick smoke. Gas station employees Serhiy Tretyak and Oleksandr Davydov immediately rushed to put out the flames, and the child was rescued alive and well.

On July 16, 2020 at the Zarvanytsia filling complex in Vinnytsia Oblast, a client had a heart attack and lost consciousness. The head of the station, Eduard, remained calm and quickly administered CPR, saving the man’s life.

So customers know that whether they’re there to fill up, pick up a parcel, do some shopping, or grab a cup of coffee, they’re in safe hands at WOG!