Petrolimex and Ohmee open Vietnam store format

The first two Ohmee Express stores opened on Sept. 5 at Petrolimex sites in Ngoc Hoi and Nguyen Quy Duc in Hanoi. They are the chain’s first locations inside Petrolimex stations, after earlier Ohmee stores were placed mainly in residential and urban districts. For Petrolimex, Vietnam’s dominant fuel retailer, the partnership turns forecourts into higher-yield retail stops, adding snacks, drinks and daily essentials to a business that has traditionally depended on fuel margins and traffic volumes.

For investors, the attraction is clear: convenience retail offers a way to lift spending per customer without needing the same footprint as a supermarket or large-format chain. Fuel stations already capture predictable commuter and intercity traffic, which is valuable in Vietnam’s fast-urbanising consumer market. If the format works, it could support better economics for Petrolimex’s site network and give Ohmee a faster route to scale than standalone stores alone. The downside is execution risk: the store mix, checkout speed, inventory control and customer flow have to work in a much tighter space than a traditional convenience outlet.

Ohmee, which was launched in Vietnam in April and says the country is its first international market, has already expanded to 35 stores across Hanoi and several northern provinces. The rapid build-out suggests Meiyijia is treating Vietnam as a strategic beachhead before planned moves into Malaysia and Indonesia. That matters because Southeast Asia remains one of the most contested convenience-retail markets, with local incumbents and global chains competing for commuter spend, impulse purchases and small-basket grocery demand.

Meiyijia’s scale in China helps explain why the experiment matters. The company says it reached more than 20,000 stores in 2020 and has doubled that in less than five years, serving about 250 million customer visits a month and more than 87 million online members. Its growth has been powered in part by franchising and digitalised operations, giving it a template that can be transplanted into markets where convenience retail is still fragmented.

For Petrolimex, the partnership is also a strategic diversification play. As fuel demand faces longer-term pressure from electrification and efficiency gains, the value of each station increasingly depends on whether it can generate non-fuel revenue. Turning forecourts into micro-retail hubs is one way to defend margins and deepen customer loyalty. For Ohmee, the bet is that Vietnam can validate a format that combines gasoline, food, beverages and immediate-use goods in a single stop.

The next test is whether the model can scale beyond a few Hanoi locations and into other cities this month, as Ohmee says it plans. If the rollout gains traction, it could signal a wider shift in how foreign convenience groups enter Southeast Asia: not by building from scratch, but by plugging into existing fuel networks and turning traffic into retail sales.