FORT WORTH, Texas — Convenience-store retailer Yesway announced today that it has completed the private placement of an additional $235 million of equity. The new capital will be used to fund an extensive raze-and-rebuild and store-remodel campaign across the chain’s portfolio, and to pursue complimentary acquisitions to further expand the Yesway and Allsup’s retail brand presence. Brookwood Financial Partners LLC, the private equity firm that founded Yesway, was the sole private placement agent for the offering. In total, Brookwood has raised more than $642 million in equity capital for its Yesway affiliate in addition to arranging over $237 million in sale-leaseback proceeds.
- Yesway ranked No. 17 on CSP's 2020 ranking of the Top 202 largest c-store chains in the United States.
“Since founding Yesway approximately five years ago and acquiring the Allsup’s Convenience Store chain last November, we have been extremely pleased with our integration efforts and how well the company has performed,” said Tom Trkla, Yesway’s chairman and CEO. “Given this success, we decided to raise additional capital to accelerate our real estate capital programs and to finance additional portfolio acquisitions. In addition, we will likely further de-lever the company’s balance sheet by pre-paying a significant amount of our Term Loan B debt.”
He added, “As part of our integration of Allsup’s, we have identified over $135 million in real estate capital projects within the portfolio.” Those projects include:
- Razing and rebuilding 27 existing Allsup’s stores.
- Performing targeted upgrades to more than 100 additional Allsup’s stores.
- Converting several existing Yesway stores in Texas to the Allsup’s brand.
- Significantly upgrading many existing Yesway-branded stores.
- Adding new-to-market stores in communities that the company determined could benefit from an Allsup’s store.
“In particular, these improvements will allow us to offer the complete Allsup’s foodservice program to Yesway customers, including, of course, the world famous Allsup’s Burrito,” Trkla said.
- Trkla discusses these growth initiatives on an exclusive Talks From the Top interview as part of CSP’s Outlook Leadership Community.
Over the past several years, under the direction of Mark Allsup, the son of Allsup’s founders Lonnie and Barbara Allsup, Allsup’s has completed more than 100 raze and rebuilds of existing Allsup’s convenience stores, increasing the store size from an average of 2,400 square feet to more than 4,800 square feet and allowing for an expanded selection of in-store merchandise and private-label product offerings and, in most cases, an increase in the number of diesel and gasoline fueling stations.
“We are also pleased to announce that we recently completed over $7 million in technology upgrades to all Allsup’s stores, including the installation of a state-of-the-art PDI backoffice software system, the migration of all Yesway and Allsup’s stores to a consistent point-of-sale system, and the installation of significant in-store hardware systems and upgrades,” Trkla said. “These technological and telecommunications improvements will allow us to dramatically improve our reporting capabilities and repair and maintenance turnaround times, in addition to serving as the platform for our soon-to-be unveiled Allsup’s customer loyalty program, which has been modeled after our award-winning Yesway Rewards loyalty offering.
“All of this was done with the singular goal of making an already-terrific Yesway/Allsup’s shopping experience even better.”
BW Gas & Convenience Retail LLC does business as Yesway and is based in Fort Worth, Texas.
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