Thomas Trkla, Chairman and CEO of Yesway, during the company’s IPO on the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, April 22, 2026.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Images
Fried burritos and chimichangas from convenience store chain Allsup’s help its parent company Yes stealing customers from fast-food chains, even with higher fuel prices, Yesway CEO Tom Trkla said Wednesday.
“A lot of the data we get from our data providers shows that our sales are up and some of their competitors’ sales are down,” he told CNBC. “We deduce from this that we are taking a certain market share, both from other convenience store chains and from others [quick-service restaurant chains] who sell food and compete with our burrito platform.
Yesway made its public market debut on Wednesday, trading on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange under the name “YSWY.” It raised $280 million in its IPO, pricing shares at $20 for a valuation of $1.21 billion. The stock began trading at $22 per share.
The increase in inventory — and demand for Yesway’s food offerings — underscores how the convenience store industry has gradually chipped away at fast food’s dominance.
In 2025, Allsup’s sold approximately 41 million proprietary food products, including 24 million burritos, according to regulatory filings.
About two-thirds of Yesway’s revenue comes from fuel, while merchandise sold in stores accounts for the remaining third. And even though fuel prices have increased due to the war in Iran, Yesway still experiences strong demand for its food products.
“People come to our stores, not just to fuel, and it also helps a lot in those environments,” Trkla said. “The other thing I should mention is that we’re already a value store… In fact, we’re already priced at $4, $5, $6 for our meals, so we’ve seen an increase in internal merchandise sales.”
Over the past decade, convenience stores have taken market share from fast food chains. Chains like Wawa, Buc-ee’s and Casey’s General Stores have won over customers with their fresh products, boosted by the low prices and convenience of their offers. Breakfast, in particular, has become a battleground between convenience stores and fast-food competitors like McDonald’s and Taco Bell.
Overall convenience store industry sales reached $121 billion in 2024, according to data from the National Association of Convenience Stores.
Brookwood, a real estate-focused private equity firm, founded Yesway in 2015. In 2019, the company acquired Allsup’s. At the end of 2025, Yesway and Allsup combined had 448 locations, primarily concentrated in the Midwest and Southwest.