Parksville Petro Canada just turned 25 years old on June 17. It’s a milestone that owner Wayne Pike is proud to have reached considering more than 25 years ago he was looking for a different career.
Pike comes from a family of gas bar owners.
His grandfather in South Africa used to own a gas station there and when they came to Canada, his father started a gas station in Nanaimo before relocating to Victoria.
Upon moving to Victoria, Pike said, he thought that was it. He had no intention of following his father or grandfather’s footsteps. He was determined to do something else with his life but when his father got ill with cancer, Pike had to help run the small two-pump gas station in Royal Oak. It was this unfortunate circumstance that led Pike to where he is now.
“I took over while my father was away and I guess I found my calling,” said Pike. “I love people. Ultimately at the end of the day, one of my strengths is that I love the customers.”
Pike helped the small gas station to grow, introducing a variety of promos such as Ladies Day and Dogs Day, where dog treats were handed out. Pike added they were also the first in the province to add vacuums to their service.
“We literally tripled the volume and won some accolades from Petro Canada at the time,” Pike recalled.
After three years of looking after the business, Pike’s father recovered from his illness and eventually came back. Six months later, Pike said, he just couldn’t work with his father anymore and decided to leave.
Petro Canada reached out to him and offered him to run a gas station in Parksville.
“The rest is history,” he said.
Pike has made Parksville his home since 1993 and turned Petro Canada into a family operation as his wife Christie and four children are also working there.
Pike takes care of the car repair shop while his wife and children tend the convenience store and gas service.
“I love working with my kids and I love being able to have an influence on them,” said Pike. “I found it easy to be able to teach them, to role play them how to be good at work. To have a good strong work ethic.”
One of his youngest children have shown an interest in the business and Pike said, “who knows we might be here for another 25 years.”
Pike credits the sustainability of his gas station to their ability to adapt to the changing times and keeping their services updated especially when it comes to repairing cars, which he has become passionate about.
“The repair services operation is not like the gas bar operation,” Pike explained. “There’s so many unique parts to the business, everything to keeping up with advance technology. Servicing new vehicles is a whole bunch different than the way we serviced old vehicles. At a young age I really enjoyed the gas bar side of it and as I’ve matured, I have cared about the repairing side of it so much more than I did before. It allowed me to evolve from running a gas bar literally to focusing more on service.”
What Pike loves the most in the last 25 years is having to serve three generations of families that continue to come to Petro Canada, which is located 431 East Island Highway in Parksville.
“I can think of 20 to 30 names of folks… the grandparents, then the kids, and now the grandkids are supporting us,” said Pike. “It’s neat. That is memorable to me.”
One of the major highlights that Petro Canada has achieved in the last 25 years is winning the President Operational Excellence Award twice.
It is presented to the best of the best – the individual, team or business area that excelled at applying the principles of operational excellence and the behaviours of operational discipline to deliver exceptional results or significantly improve the way we work. It is awarded to five locations across Canada said Pike.
“It’s fairly high prestige to be able to win that and then to have won it twice is pretty phenomenal,” said Pike.
Pike plans to hang around for another 25 years but would like to eventually pass on the mantle to his daughter, who has shown interest in the business.
“I would sort of be just an outside support,” he said. “I don’t think I got 25 years in me at this point but I am sure I’ll have a finger on the pulse.”
Petro Canada has not held any 25th celebrations yet but plans to hold one either in the last week of August or first week of September.