Thomas Trkla, chairman and CEO of Yesway, in the course of the firm’s preliminary public providing on the Nasdaq MarketSite in New York, April 22, 2026.
Michael Nagle | Bloomberg | Getty Photographs
Deep-fried burritos and chimichangas from comfort retailer chain Allsup’s are serving to its mum or dad firm Yesway steal clients from fast-food chains, even with increased gasoline costs, Yesway CEO Tom Trkla mentioned Wednesday.
“Numerous the info that we get from our knowledge suppliers present that our gross sales are up and a few of their rivals’ gross sales are down,” he informed CNBC. “We infer that we’re taking some market share, each from different c-store chains and from different [quick-service restaurant chains] that promote meals and compete with our burrito platform.”
Yesway made its public market debut on Wednesday, buying and selling on the Nasdaq Inventory Change underneath “YSWY.” It raised $280 million in its preliminary public providing, pricing shares at $20 for a valuation of $1.21 billion. The inventory started buying and selling at $22 a share.
The leap within the inventory — and demand for Yesway’s meals choices — underscore how the comfort retailer trade has steadily chipped away at quick meals’s dominance.
In 2025, Allsup’s bought roughly 41 million proprietary meals merchandise, together with 24 million burritos, in response to regulatory filings.
About two-thirds of Yesway’s income comes from gasoline, whereas the merchandise bought inside shops accounts for the remaining third. And whereas gasoline costs have risen because of the struggle in Iran, Yesway remains to be seeing excessive demand for its meals.
“Individuals come to our shops, not only for gasoline, and that helps quite a bit too in these environments,” Trkla mentioned. “The opposite factor I ought to point out is that we’re already a worth store …. We truly are already on the $4, $5, $6 worth for our meals, so we have truly seen will increase of inside merchandise gross sales.”
During the last decade, c-stores have been taking market share from fast-food chains. Chains like Wawa, Buc-ee’s and Casey’s Basic Shops have gained over clients with their recent meals, boosted by their choices’ low costs and comfort. Breakfast, specifically, has grow to be a battleground between c-stores and fast-food rivals like McDonald’s and Taco Bell.
The c-store trade’s general meals service gross sales reached $121 billion in 2024, in response to knowledge from the Nationwide Affiliation of Comfort Shops.
Brookwood, an actual estate-focused non-public fairness agency, based Yesway in 2015. In 2019, the corporate acquired Allsup’s. By the tip of 2025, Yesway and Allsup’s mixed had 448 places, primarily concentrated within the Midwest and Southwest.
