(YSWY) starts trading on the Nasdaq

Deep-fried burritos and chimichangas from convenience store chain Allsup’s are helping its parent company Yesway steal customers from fast-food chains, even with higher fuel prices, Yesway CEO Tom Trkla said Wednesday.

“A lot of the data that we get from our data providers show that our sales are up and some of their competitors’ sales are down,” he told CNBC. “We infer that we are taking some market share, both from other c-store chains and from other [quick-service restaurant chains] that sell food and compete with our burrito platform.”

Yesway made its public market debut on Wednesday, trading on the Nasdaq Stock Exchange under “YSWY.” It raised $280 million in its initial public offering, pricing shares at $20 for a valuation of $1.21 billion. The stock began trading at $22 a share.

The jump in the stock — and demand for Yesway’s food offerings — underscore how the convenience store industry has steadily chipped away at fast food’s dominance.

In 2025, Allsup’s sold roughly 41 million proprietary food products, including 24 million burritos, according to regulatory filings.

About two-thirds of Yesway’s revenue comes from fuel, while the merchandise sold inside stores accounts for the remaining third. And while fuel prices have risen as a result of the war in Iran, Yesway is still seeing high demand for its food.

“People come to our stores, not just for fuel, and that helps a lot too in these environments,” Trkla said. “The other thing I should mention is that we’re already a value shop … We actually are already at the $4, $5, $6 price for our meals, so we’ve actually seen increases of inside merchandise sales.”

Over the last decade, c-stores have been taking market share from fast-food chains. Chains like Wawa, Buc-ee’s and Casey’s General Stores have won over customers with their fresh food, boosted by their offerings’ low prices and convenience. Breakfast, in particular, has become a battleground between c-stores and fast-food rivals like McDonald’s and Taco Bell.

The c-store industry’s overall foodservice 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. By the end of 2025, Yesway and Allsup’s combined had 448 locations, primarily concentrated in the Midwest and Southwest.