Fuel a Better World

MFG is active in the communities in which it operates and we run a large number of local and national initiatives. Our stations are an important part of the fabric of the cities, towns and rural areas where we have a presence.

Engaging with communities

We engage with people in the communities where we operate, and support relevant and appropriate activities both at a local and national level. Making sure we’re providing for specific local needs is high on our agenda, and is discussed regularly in our quarterly ESG Board meetings. Covid-19 highlighted just how important we are to our local communities and how we could be doing more to support them. In 2021, we refreshed our community strategy so that we can make a greater social impact.

Staying open during COVID-19

As an essential service provider, it was vital that our sites stayed open throughout the pandemic. To keep our people and customers safe we continued to make regular visits to our forecourts to provide advice on changing guidelines and offer support. In the early days, when safety equipment was hard to come by, we offered free PPE to our staff and customers. From the outset we supported the UK government’s ‘Stay at Home’ message, and the majority of office-based staff worked from home to make sure our business continued working seamlessly.

LOCAL COMMUNITIES

We sit at the heart of our local communities and offer essential services and items that are often no longer available on the high street or in village shops. We aim to provide goods and services with specific local needs and demand in mind.

Being a good neighbour

We aim to be a good neighbour, engaging and providing support where we can through direct action or sponsorship. By keeping our properties well-maintained and in good condition, we aim to enhance the visual appeal of neighbourhoods, and avoid any negative impact on surrounding communities. We abide by local planning and by-laws and seek to settle any disputes quickly and amicably. When our neighbours do raise concerns over any aspect of our activities, we respond as quickly as possible.

Supporting local communities

We encourage our staff and contract managers to support local causes and initiatives. In addition to charity fund raising activities all our staff are encouraged to get involved in some way, and we recently introduced two days paid volunteering leave for them to work with registered charities or local community initiatives. Many of our contract managers also do sponsored events for charity.

At our direct managed sites, we work with Too Good To Go to reduce food wastage and provide low-cost food to people local to our sites, saving over 15 tonnes of food from being thrown away in the last year. We’re now expanding this to all our Greggs outlets, and we’re currently looking into how we might be able to roll this out more widely cross our franchise network.

Meeting community needs during Covid-19

During Covid-19 our stores became vital community hubs to many of our customers and therefore it was crucial that we remained open, providing fuel, groceries and food services. To help customers who were concerned over taking unnecessary trips, we rolled out UberEATS and Deliveroo as fast as we could to as many sites as we were able, so that locals were able to receive grocery and food deliveries directly to their homes – this service is now provided at two thirds of our sites.

Many of our franchisees provided support to their local communities in any way they could, such as donating food and drink to local hospitals and giving NHS nurses a boost with chocolate gifts at Easter. All our sites displayed banners supporting NHS and essential workers, and collected funds for NHS Charities Together, helping to raise more than £250,000.

SUPPORTING COMMUNITY-FOCUSED CHARITIES

MFG has a long track record of supporting charities that are active in the communities our sites serve. Thanks to the immense generosity of our customers, we’ve collected over £2 million since 2017 in partnership with Pennies, who help us collect small optional digital donations that can be added to fuel and grocery bills at about 50% of our sites. In addition to this we collect via charity collection boxes at all sites.

Over the years, a number of different charitable organisations, including Help for Heroes, RNIB, NSPCC and Air Ambulance regional charities have been supported in this way.

Annual national charity partner

We’ve selected Macmillan Cancer Support as our national charity partner from April 2021, and we’re proud to be playing a part in the organisation’s aim to be there for everyone living with cancer across the UK. COVID-19 has been a particularly difficult time for many people with cancer, with vital tests, diagnoses and treatments being postponed, cancelled or changed, and widespread impacts on people’s mental health.

In support of the COVID pandemic between May 2020 and March 2021 we raised £250k for NHS Charities Together.

In addition to customer donations at sites, and as part of our support, we’re providing free advertising space to Macmillan to advertise their support line number at many of our fuel pumps, have introduced charity payroll giving for employees and are encouraging MFG employees and our contract managers and their staff to raise funds through sponsored events.