Brake Time Corner Market CEO Usman Bashir has been a “shark” on “Shark Tank Pakistan” since 2024 and has the distinction of leading the show’s biggest deal to date—an investment of around $5.3 million USD in a Karachi-based commodities sourcing company.
But the Pakistan-based investor and executive (pictured above) is quick to give credit to Brake Time’s larger team for leading the company’s rapid expansion in the U.S. in the past five years. When Bashir and his brother, Omair, took over the company from their father in 2014, Brake Time operated a handful of stores. By the end of 2026, BTCM looks to have more than 300 units across 21 states.
- Brake Time Corner Market is No. 35 on CSP’s 2026 Top 202 list of convenience stores by U.S. store count.
“What I focus on all the time is team building,” Bashir said in an interview from Pakistan. “I feel like me and my brother, we’ve come a long way, but we couldn’t have done anything without our team.”
Among Bashir’s hires helping to accelerate Brake Time’s growth and brand-building are Bret Sullivan, regional operations director, and Rene Dacosta, vice president of food, dispensed beverage and QSRs. Sullivan joined Brake Time through the company’s 2020 acquisition of several dozen Circle K stores in Kansas; Dacosta was brought on in September 2025. Both have been tasked with bringing consistency to a quickly expanding portfolio that includes recently acquired stores built 30 or more years ago as well as new-build locations.
For Sullivan, that means staying on top of product trends and creating workable planograms for stores with a wide variety of physical footprints; for Dacosta, it’s about forging partnerships with big-name QSRs as well as building the made-to-order Amazin’ Asian concept.
The task is large, but Sullivan and Dacosta said they’re grateful for how invested the Bashir brothers are in day-to-day operations—and also for giving them the freedom to experiment.
“At the end of the day, we’re gas station operators; we haven’t spent our whole lives in QSRs,” Usman Bashir said. “When I talk about QSRs, I have to depend on my team.”
Another of the Bashirs’ infrastructure-building strategies has been to build a technical support team in Pakistan that now employs more than 500 specialists who can provide round-the-clock tech assistance to teams.
“No one person or two people can really reach milestones,” Usman Bashir said. “You’ve got to have a good support team with you. I always look for good talent to hire, and I’m always there for my team. ... If something has to be done, I’ll work with them, whether it’s at the gas station, at the operations where we have to go fill up the coolers or do manual pricing.”