Dive Brief:
- Mega Saver has agreed to acquire Yesway’s convenience stores in Iowa and Kansas, a spokesperson from the Nebraska-based retailer confirmed to C-Store Dive.
- Although the deal is still in the closing process, store rebrands are expected to begin as early as next week, the spokesperson said. According to its website, Yesway has 22 c-stores in Iowa and seven in Kansas.
- The deal significantly expands Mega Saver’s c-store count in Iowa and introduces the company to Kansas, bringing its retail network to nearly 100 locations across five states.
Dive Insight:
C-Store Dive first reported in February that Yesway intended to divest its convenience stores across Iowa and Kansas by the end of 2025. At the time, a company spokesperson didn’t offer specifics about the move, only noting that these stores didn’t match the company’s strategy and that Yesway intended to reinvest the proceeds from a sale into sites “that enable us to provide a better customer experience.”
In June, employees from 10 different Yesway locations across Iowa and Kansas confirmed that the company was in talks to sell these sites to Mega Saver. Yesway’s spokesperson at the time emphasized that the stores had not yet been sold, while Kamol Samiev, Mega Saver’s vice president, said he couldn’t confirm or deny a deal being in the works.
Five months later, the deal appears set to materialize in the coming days.
Mega Saver isn’t wasting any time carrying out store rebrands. Six locations in Ottumwa and Mason City, Iowa — the only cities that each have a trio of Yesway stores in the Hawkeye State — are expected to get rebranded on Nov. 10 and 11, respectively, according to store-level employees in those cities. Meanwhile, in Hutchinson, the only Kansas city with three locations in that state, rebrands are planned for Nov. 17, employees said.
Representatives from Yesway did not respond by press time when asked to comment on the transaction.
The deal continues an acquisitive year for Mega Saver, which purchased 26 Kum & Go c-stores from Maverik across Iowa, Nebraska and South Dakota in two separate transactions this summer. These sites are also being rebranded to the Mega Saver banner.
For Yesway, the deal reduces its footprint to about 414 locations across seven states. All but 52 of those locations now operate under the company’s Allsup’s banner, according to its website.
Iowa played a significant role in Yesway’s growth over the past decade. In July 2016, Massachusetts-based private equity firm Brookwood Financial Partners acquired 21 c-stores in Iowa through its retail arm, BW Gas & Convenience, which had less than 70 locations in its network at the time. Soon after that, BW rebranded itself as Yesway and outlined plans to acquire hundreds more c-stores over the coming years. The company even made Des Moines its headquarters in 2016, then moved to Fort Worth, Texas, after its 2019 acquisition of Allsup’s.
