Motorway Services Online

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Own brand

onRoute branding.
An example of a short-lived restaurant name.

Own-brands (or self-brands) are names created and managed by the company running them.

The most common alternative to an own-brand is a franchise, but with own-branding the owner is able to take all the income from sales, with no licensing fees to pay. A successful own-brand could also be used to promote the company that own it.

In the early days of motorway service areas, they were almost entirely made up of own-brands, as was most of the transport industry. Many operators found these to be toxic, as they become tarnished by the poor reputation of service stations even when they were actually pretty good. Initially, this was tackled by regularly changing names and styling.

Today, franchising, licensing and leasing units are more popular solutions, as it allows the use of more popular names and avoids expensive development work. This became possible as the well-known brands became so large they had to exploit new markets, while for the service stations, people's affection and loyalty to High Street Brands also became something to exploit.

Despite this, own-brands continue to be found at a lot of service areas, and there have been some success stories. Westmorland is probably the most well-known example.

Some more recent examples of own-brands: