Sindicom, Brazil’s confederation of petroleum wholesalers and convenience stores, invited me to Brazil to give the keynote address last month at the Expo Postos & Conveniencia, the country’s equivalent to the NACS Show in the U.S., although on a much smaller scale. The show attracted about 20,000 attendees to Sao Paulo’s Expocenter Norte pavilion which was filled with about 140 exhibitor companies including both product and service suppliers. With a large number of equipment vendors, the show floor resembled the PEI (Petroleum Equipment Industry) wing at the NACS Show.
Sindicom and a local fuel and lubricants distributor and convenience store operator called, Mime Group, sponsored my trip to Brazil, where I was given a tour of c-stores and gas stations throughout the southern state of Santa Catarina and in the huge business capital of Sao Paulo.
One of the things I liked best about Brazil is that sugar is used to both fuel the majority of the country’s automobiles and to make the country’s signature alcoholic drink, the caipirinha, which I absolutely fell in love with.
Ethanol made from sugar is the fastest growing fuel in Brazil, growing from 4 percent of the country’s fuel consumption to 14 percent over the past five years, according to Sindicom. More than 90 percent of new vehicles in Brazil are equipped with flex-fuel technology – meaning they can run on both traditional gasoline and ethanol, which is usually less expensive than regular petroleum fuel because it is not taxed as heavily.
(By the way, caipirinha is an alcoholic beverage made by crushing lime wedges into granulated sugar, and adding crushed ice and cachaca, a Brazilian rum made from sugar cane. As a crack investigative reporter, I made sure to do extensive taste tests at every stop of my whirlwind trip.)
I’ll be writing a complete analysis of the convenience store scene in Brazil, along with many market statistics, for CSNews’ November 9 issue, but here’s a quick look at five things I liked best about the country:
1. The beaches on Florianopolis, the capital of the state of Santa Caterina were just beautiful. Even in Brazil’s spring, the ocean water was temperate and there were plenty of sun-bathers out, along with wind- and kite-surfers.
2. Guarana Antarctica. This popular guarana-flavored soft drink is refreshing and tastes better than most of the high-octane energy drinks sold in the U.S.
3. Caipirinhas. Mentioned earlier, these sugar-cane rum based drinks go down easy, but pack a wallop.
4. The food. Whether we ate seafood (the moqueca was the best fish stew I ever ate), meat (at authentic churrascarias), or baked goods (loved the cheese bread), the food was as good or better than I’ve tasted anywhere in the world.
5. The people. Diversity, thy name is Brazil. British columnist and author A.A. Gill writes, “There’s no shade of the human color chart that isn’t indigenous. Here you’ll find cities of blue-eyed, blond Germans and Pradablack West Africans. Brazil boasts the largest expat population of Japanese outside Japan.” And there are millions of Italians, not to mention a large Jewish area in Sao Paolo.
-- Don Longo, Editor-in-Chief, Convenience Store News
