CLOVIS, N.M. — Allsup’s convenience stores are every bit as iconic in the Southwest as Wawa and Sheetz are in the East and Casey’s is in the Midwest. So it shouldn’t come as a surprise that Yesway, the company that is acquiring Allsup’s and its 304 location in New Mexico, Texas and Oklahoma, is keeping the brand and its products.
“We look forward to building on Allsup’s legendary heritage and continuing to offer many of the amazing products and services Allsup’s customers are so passionate about, including, without question, the world-famous Allsup’s burrito,” Thomas Trkla, CEO of West Des Moines, Iowa-based Yesway, said in announcing the deal.
“All the stores will continue to sell Allsup’s products and keep the name,” Trkla told the Carlsbad Current-Argus.
While some of the locations might be renovated, Trkla said the company does not plan to close any of the stores. “We might raze and rebuild, but there are zero plans to close any stores,” he said.
Yesway also does not expect to lay off any of Allsup’s approximately 5,000 employees during the integration, he said. As part of the integration plan, Trkla said the company will identify “duplicative” positions, but those employees will likely be reassigned to a different store rather than being laid off.
“We’ll certainly leverage the Allsup’s name in Texas and New Mexico,” he told the Current-Argus.
Many of the Allsup’s c-stores in Texas are near Yesway locations in the Permian Basin oil region, Trkla said, creating greater regional delivery synergies. “It’s more cost-effective to have stores closer together. It’s good geographically and operationally,” he said.
Brookwood Financial Partners, a real estate and private equity investment and asset management company based in Beverly, Mass., founded BW Gas & Convenience Holdings LLC, doing business as Yesway, in 2016 with the purchase of 31 c-stores, mostly from West Des Moines, Iowa-based Kum & Go LC. Other deals followed, and the chain expanded into Texas in 2017 with the acquisition of 35 Wes-T-Go and Chillerz c-stores in the Abilene area. In 2018, it acquired 13 Chisum Travel Center and Fast Stop c-stores in the Lubbock and Amarillo area and reached its 150-store milestone. Yesway has said it plans to assemble a portfolio of more than 500 c-stores in selected regions of the United States over the next several years.
With 150 stores, Yesway is No. 43 in CSP’s2019 Top 202 ranking of c-store chains by number of retail locations. With the acquisition of Clovis, N.M.-based Allsup’s (No. 24), Yesway will own and operate more than 450 convenience stores and truckstops in nine states: Iowa, Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, New Mexico, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Texas and Wyoming.
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