EG Group Brand Guidelines: A Bury Forecourt, Euro Garages and the Cumberland Farms Name

One forecourt in Bury.

EG Group started as Euro Garages, founded in 2001 by the brothers Mohsin and Zuber Issa. City A.M. reported in January 2025 that the brothers bought a derelict forecourt in Bury, Greater Manchester, in 2001 and later added a newsagent and a grocery, after a childhood spent helping at their father’s garage. English Wikipedia dates the purchase, of a BP forecourt, to March 2001, and says more forecourts followed later that year.

The model was to take over forecourts from oil companies and build up the shop and the food. English Wikipedia says Euro Garages began adding Subway counters in 2006, worked with Spar and Costcutter for groceries, and by February 2009 had 73 forecourts across the north of England and the Midlands. In July 2009 it bought its first motorway service area, Rivington services in Lancashire, a date City A.M. also gives. The paper quoted Zuber Issa, speaking to the Financial Times in 2018, on the aim of a destination “where you could get fuel, food-to-go and shopping.”

Franchised food became the signature of the business. English Wikipedia lists Starbucks and Burger King franchises from 2010, a Greggs trial from 2013 and a KFC partnership from 2016. Forecourt numbers rose through purchases of Esso sites in the north of England, Wales and the Midlands between 2013 and 2015, and of 68 Shell sites in October 2015, by which time English Wikipedia counts the UK network in the hundreds.

Intervias, Europe and America.

In October 2015 the private-equity firm TDR Capital bought a minority stake in Euro Garages, as both City A.M. and English Wikipedia report. A year later, in October 2016, Euro Garages merged with TDR’s European Forecourt Retail group, which ran sites in France and the Benelux countries, to form Intervias Group; English Wikipedia puts the combined business at about 1,450 locations. The UK companies register shows the holding company’s name history: incorporated in October 2015, it was Intervias Group Limited from September 2016 and became EG Group Limited on 1 September 2017.

Expansion was rapid. English Wikipedia records about 1,000 Esso stations in Germany secured in 2017, about 1,200 Esso sites in Italy completed in January 2018 and, in Britain, the former Little Chef roadside restaurants, which were turned over to franchise brands, with an EG Diner name used as a stopgap from 2018. In February 2018 the group agreed to buy convenience stores from Kroger in the United States, and in December 2018 it completed the purchase of 225 Minit Mart sites, according to English Wikipedia; City A.M. gives February 2018 as the start of the American business. Woolworths’ fuel sites in Australia followed a November 2018 agreement, creating EG Australia, and in 2019 the group bought Fastrac sites and agreed to buy Cumberland Farms, the New England convenience chain whose name it would later take for the whole group.

In 2020 and 2021 the group added restaurant businesses in Britain, among them KFC outlets, the Leon chain and the Cooplands bakery, according to English Wikipedia. In October 2020 the Issa brothers and TDR Capital agreed to buy the supermarket chain Asda, a purchase made alongside EG rather than by it.

How roadside chains present themselves.

A motorway service area or a fuel-and-convenience chain has to be recognised at speed, from a slip road or a forecourt, and then again at the counter. The identities in this group are therefore spread across many surfaces: the roof sign and the forecourt canopy, the store fascia, the cup and the receipt, and a website where the company sets out who it is. The guides that follow look at what each company publishes about itself and what dated independent sources add.

In Britain the operator’s own name often sits above a row of partner brands. Moto’s website lists coffee, bakery, burger and food-hall partners alongside its own name and its own charging brand, Moto CHARGE, launched in 2026; English Wikipedia describes how Welcome Break’s 2006 wordmark set a green word and a white word on black, and how each site was given a mural of a local landmark. The operator’s mark becomes the frame, and the partners fill it.

Food sub-brands, mascots and member programmes carry much of the personality. Some chains put their own name on a food counter, as Welcome Break does with The Good Breakfast, and some gather offers into a named section of a website or an app, as Moto does with My Moto for families, business travellers, coach drivers and HGV drivers. Where a chain uses a mascot or a member programme, the guides describe it as the company presents it.

Ownership is part of the story too. Several of these businesses have passed between caterers, investment funds, pension schemes and fuel retailers, and some carry a different name in a neighbouring market, as Welcome Break’s Northern Ireland sites carry Applegreen’s. Each guide gives owners and site counts only as a dated source states them, and marks clearly what rests on the company’s own word.

From EG to Cumberland Farms.

From 2023 the group narrowed. In May 2023 it agreed to transfer most of its UK business, including the majority of its forecourts, its Greggs, Subway and Burger King franchises and Leon, to Asda; City A.M. reported the announcement, and English Wikipedia says the deal was finalised on 31 October 2023. Its KFC restaurants in the UK and Ireland went to Yum! Brands, a sale English Wikipedia says completed in April 2024. In June 2024, City A.M. reported, Zuber Issa and Imraan Patel founded EG On The Move as a business separate from EG Group, taking on the remaining UK forecourts; Zuber Issa moved to a non-executive role and Mohsin Issa stayed as chief executive. The same report said TDR Capital and the Issa brothers each owned roughly half of EG Group in January 2025.

English Wikipedia says the Australian business was sold to Ampol, a sale completed in June 2026, and that the headquarters moved from Blackburn to Charlotte, North Carolina, completed in March 2026, with UK offices in Bolton. The group’s own news page shows Roland Smith succeeding Lord Stuart Rose as chairman in January 2026 and, in February 2026, an agreement to sell the French business to EG On The Move through a put option; English Wikipedia says that sale completed in July 2026. In March 2026 the group said it had agreed to acquire Coen Markets, a Pittsburgh-area convenience and fuel retailer: agreed in March 2026; not completed at the time of writing.

The name has changed too. The old eg.group web address now forwards to a corporate site that presents the business as Cumberland Farms, based in Charlotte, with about 3,300 sites in five markets as of June 2026; its January and February 2026 announcements still carried the EG Group name, and its March 2026 announcement was issued as Cumberland Farms. In the UK companies register the holding company remains EG Group Limited. English Wikipedia says the group filed confidentially for a US public offering in June 2026.

For a design guide, EG Group shows a business whose public face was largely its franchised food brands and the chains it bought, until it took one of those names for itself. Compare Circle K, another international convenience banner, and Wawa, an American chain built on its own store name. For this guide we use a forecourt green, a pale mint and an ink blue with a geometric sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep EG Group’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.