Dive Brief:
- Yesway has sold its 29-store portfolio in Iowa and Kansas to Texas-based convenience retailer Now & Forever for $21 million, including payment for inventory, according to a Thursday announcement.
- The deal included 22 convenience stores in Iowa and seven in Kansas, as previously outlined on Yesway’s website. The retailer now operates around 420 convenience stores across eight states, after debuting its first site in Arizona this month.
- The deal marks Yesway’s exit from the Midwest and ends with an unexpected buyer. Nebraska-based convenience retailer Mega Saver said last year that it would acquire those locations.
Dive Insight:
Now & Forever operates over 20 convenience stores in the Houston area, according to its website, meaning its latest acquisition not only more than doubles its store count but pushes the company into two new states and an entire new region of the country — an uncommon jump for a retailer of its size.
Representatives from Now & Forever did not respond by press time to comment on the acquisition.
For Yesway, the sale, which had been in the works for a year and a half, advances its strategy of redeploying capital into investments with higher-return potential, according to the announcement. Yesway said it will use the proceeds to strengthen its balance sheet and support its current plan to open 130 new convenience stores over the next five years.
“This transaction is fundamentally about putting our capital to work where we believe it can generate the greatest long-term value,” Tom Trkla, chairman, president and CEO of Yesway, said in the announcement.
This sale had been a long time coming, as C-Store Dive first reported in February in 2025 that Yesway was looking to sell these 29 locations. At the time, a company spokesperson said these stores didn’t match Yesway’s strategy and that they were expected to sell by the end of 2025.
That 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, which that summer went on to acquire over two dozen former Kum & Go sites across Iowa and South Dakota from Maverik.
Last November, a spokesperson from Mega Saver confirmed that it had agreed to acquire Yesway’s Iowa and Kansas sites. Store-level employees at some of these stores told C-Store Dive at the time that rebrand dates for their locations had already been set.
However, nearly a year after Mega Saver said it agreed to acquire the sites, the transaction still had not closed.
Although Yesway did not respond to inquiries in November about the apparent deal with Mega Saver, the retailer outlined in a series of filings between February and April 2026 with the Securities and Exchange Commission that it had agreed to sell these sites to an undisclosed buyer for $17.5 million plus inventory. The final sale price, including payment for the inventory, ended up being $21 million.
Still, the change in buyer raises questions about when and why the transaction shifted from Mega Saver to Now & Forever.
Representatives from Yesway and Mega Saver did not respond by press time when asked about the transaction or what happened to the previously reported agreement with Mega Saver.
