Why Mad Max Is Exiting Retail
By Greg Lindenberg on Aug. 27, 2017SAUKVILLE, Wis. -- With the sale of its 11 locations, nine to Yesway and two to other buyers, Mad Max Convenience Stores has exited the retail business.
Steve Magestro opened his first gas station in 2000. Along with his wife, Janiece Maxwell, CEO and co-owner of the company, the couple opened the first Mad Max location in Sheboygan, Wis., in 2007. The company grew to 11 c-stores, and it acquired O'Connor Oil in 2014, adding a fuel-hauling transport division and wholesale gas jobbership to the company. Mad Max was also in the process of rolling out its new Coffee Syndicate coffee and foodservice program across the brand, featuring hot and cold sandwiches made to order, as well as prepared grab-and-go items and fresh baked goods.
Click through for details on why they are selling Mad Max and why they accepted Yesway’s offer …
Offers
“We weren’t interested in selling or looking to sell, it just happened,” Maxwell told CSP Daily News. “We had just built a brand-new store and were actually looking at buying a few other locations. But there’s a lot of competition coming into Wisconsin by national companies. I don’t get emotionally involved in the companies I own. To me it’s like a stock purchase. A lot of people wanted [Mad Max], so the time to sell is when you’re on top, not when you’re on the decline.”
Maxwell said that Yesway’s parent company, Brookwood Financial Partners LLC, approached them early this year.
“We had been talking since January,” she said. “We had gotten calls from different national companies in December and January, and we talked to all of them. We ended up going with Yesway.”
Competition
Maxwell did not name the other companies that expressed interest in Mad Max.
The Upper Midwest has been a hotbed of merger and acquisition (M&A) activity recently. Some of these deals are changing the competitive landscape of the region, including southeastern Wisconsin.
In June, San Antonio-based Tesoro closed on its $5.8 billion acquisition of Western Refining Inc. The deal included approximately 290 c-stores under the SuperAmerica brand in Minnesota and Wisconsin, acquired in June 2016 through a merger with Northern Tier Energy LP.
In July, Laval, Quebec-based Alimentation Couche-Tard Inc. signed an agreement with Holiday Cos. to acquire Holiday’s 522 c-stores.
Also in July, La Crosse, Wis.-based Kwik Trip Inc. signed a deal to acquire Middleton, Wis.-based PDQ Food Stores Inc. and its 34 c-stores.
People
“Upward mobility” for Mad Max employees was also a major factor for selling to Yesway, Maxwell said.
“The people who work for us have been with us for a long time,” she said. “We tend to hold onto the people who work for us. We’re kind of like a big family, and everybody has come up through the ranks. I just wanted to make sure that the company I sold to had mobility for those people, and they definitely have. They’re going to pay them as well as we do and give them additional benefits.”
Referring to territory and district manager positions, Maxwell said, “a few have already gotten jobs higher up than what I could offer them.”
Yesway
Maxwell expects the sale to Yesway to close in late October.
West Des Moines, Iowa-based Yesway, previously known as BW Gas & Convenience Stores LLC, joined the c-store industry in 2015 with ambitions to operate up to 1,000 stores. It first acquired 10 Country Store sites in Iowa in 2015, then purchased 21 sites in Iowa from Kum & Go, which is also based in West Des Moines.
In March 2017, Yesway entered Kansas when it acquired five Pic Quik stores in Hutchinson, Kan., one Krueger's BP location in Grimes, Iowa, and one Pronto Market in Kanawha, Iowa.
In May 2017, Yesway acquired 35 Wes-T-Go and Chillerz Convenience Stores in Abilene, Texas.
The company is an affiliate of Beverly, Mass.-based Brookwood, a real-estate and private-equity investment and asset management company with more than $2.2 billion in holdings.
These newly acquired Mad Max c-stores are Yesway’s first locations in Wisconsin. It operates 66 stores in Iowa, Kansas and Texas.