Espa Service Station finds success with Epson colour labels

At Espa Service Station, the legendary Espa buns sell like hot cakes, of course. And it looks like this year the goal of selling 1.5 million might be within reach. A new C3500 label printer from Epson has added colour to Espa's food packaging, and given sales a major boost.

Espa Service Station on Norway's E6 motorway is the country's largest petrol station. However it's far more famous for being the home of Norway's most popular car snack – Espa buns. The goal is to sell 1.5 million buns this year, which if you laid them end to end, would form a line nearly 150 kilometres long. Rune Gulbrandsen, Roger Danielsberg and Morten Støen have run the station since 1994, and sell an average of 4,109 buns per day, all year round.

However, there are more than just buns to tempt travellers. Espa also wanted to give local producers a place to sell their quality products, so there's a range of locally-sourced food on offer, under the label “Bolleland! Good Local Food from the Mjøsa area”. Honey, soft cheese, cured meats and goat's cheese are just some examples.

Also goods such as baguettes, calzone, panini and packed lunches make up a large proportion of sales to hungry motorists. Until recently, these products were marked with simple black and white labels.

“They were a little bit boring and anonymous, so we decided to buy a colour label printer from Epson, and design and print the labels ourselves," says Roger Danielsberg from Espa Service Centre

Espa chose the ColorWorks C3500, which has individual DURABrite Ultra ink cartridges. This keeps costs low, as colours only need to be replaced as they're used up.

Espa Service Centre has discovered that products carrying labels printed on the Epson printer have increased sales by around 22 per cent. During the year to date, Espa Service Station has printed out 27,187 labels using the Epson printer, with total sales value of over NOK 1.8 million. In other words, the additional sales that were made as a result of the new, visually appealing labels have put a lot of extra cash in the till.

“A great deal of the sales increase – if not all of it – can be attributed to the new colour labels. The printer was a very good investment. Operating costs are reasonable and it offers greater flexibility compared to using an external labelling service. Plus the label design software provided is simple to use,” says Danielsberg.