VIP Tires & Service has expanded its Brunswick, Maine, store in order to meet its growing business at the location and better serve its customers. To celebrate the expansion, VIP hosted a re-opening celebration for the local community with an official ribbon cutting ceremony yesterday at its Brunswick auto store. Joining VIP at the event and ribbon cutting was Ryan Leighton, assistant Brunswick town manager.
VIP began remodeling the Brunswick store located at 51 Bath Road in March, adding 5,000 square feet to the existing auto store. The renovated Brunswick VIP store now features seven service bays, an increase from three; new shop equipment; inside storage for up to 2,000 tires; and an improved and expanded customer area.
As a customer-focused service organization, VIP has been strategically identifying and renovating the customer waiting spaces in many of its older 59 stores.
“We value our customers and believe in giving them an outstanding in-store experience,” said Tim Winkeler, president and CEO, VIP Tires & Service. “In order to deliver on that, it’s important we not only provide our customers with exceptional auto care service by highly trained technicians, but also with friendly and knowledgeable store staff, and a place where they can work or relax while they wait.”
In Brunswick, VIP has expanded its customer area by 500% and added a number of amenities including a much larger waiting area, laptop bars for working, a new coffee and drink station, and large windows into the service bays so customers can see the work being done on their vehicles.
“Additionally, with more on-site tire storage, we can offer our customers a greater variety of tire manufacturers and price points to choose from, which helps to reduce total customer wait times,” Winkeler added.
Oil Changes For Education – To Benefit Local Schools
At the re-opening event, in addition to festivities and food provided by local bakery and café the Union Street Bakery, VIP launched its “Oil Changes for Education” fundraiser. From Sept. 11 through Nov. 15, VIP is offering $10 oil changes to all customers at its renovated Brunswick store with 100% of the proceeds benefiting local public schools.
“Connecting to the local community is a big part of who we are as a company,” said Winkeler. “Our Oil Changes for Education program is an initiative we started more than a year ago and have rolled out to a number of our store locations. In fact, we’ve raised more than $12,000 for local schools in Williston, Vermont, and Framingham, Massachusetts, and can’t wait to kick off this effort in Brunswick.”
He continued, “It’s a fun program that makes our customers feel good because they can take care of something in their routine auto maintenance schedule and know that by doing so, they are in turn helping the local school children in their community.”
VIP Tires & Service operates 59 locations throughout New England. VIP now has 19 store locations in New Hampshire, four in Massachusetts, one in Vermont and 35 in Maine. All VIP Tires & Service locations offer a tire shop and full-service automotive repair, everything from brake repair, preventative maintenance, muffler and exhaust repair, multi-point vehicle inspections, wheel alignments, state inspections and oil changes.
