Fueling Up is a column from C-Store Dive offering a fresh perspective on the top news and trends in the convenience store industry.
While many companies in the convenience store industry are lauded for their growth plans or innovation strategies, Mountain Express Oil and SQRL Holdings have made headlines for their financial mishandlings, tumultuous lawsuits and secretive company cultures. One retailer is in the thick of an ongoing bankruptcy case, while the other may be forced into bankruptcy by its creditors.
Connections between Mountain Express and SQRL became clear late last year when SQRL burst into the spotlight by acquiring 210 locations from an undisclosed seller. About a month later, C-Store Dive uncovered that the seller was Blue Owl Capital, which previously leased those stores to Mountain Express, and terminated those leases amid the retailer’s bankruptcy.
Those leases are only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the similarities between Mountain Express and SQRL. Both companies were formed and operated under many of the same methodologies, including how its leadership acquired stores and the manner in which they communicated with employees.
That connection starts with Barry Bierenbaum, who founded Mountain Express in 2000. Bierenbaum spent several years overseeing the company’s future co-CEOs, Lamar Frady and Turjo Wadud, who joined in 2003 and took over in 2020, when Bierenbaum departed.
Once in charge of the company, Frady and Wadud went on a rapid growth spree. By mid-2022, they had acquired 286 properties across 60 sale-leaseback deals worth more than $825 million.
Less than a year after that, Mountain Express terminated operations amid Chapter 7 bankruptcy. Former employees pointed to how leadership acquired and took care of its stores as a major contributor to the company’s demise.
Not only did SQRL acquire many of its convenience stores via sale-leaseback, but according to a source who was close to the situation, SQRL’s founder, Blake Smith, was occasionally mentored by Bierenbaum, who also became a landlord for some of SQRL’s stores in his post-Mountain Express days.
By now, the c-store industry has become familiar with SQRL’s countless lawsuits and controversies, including claims that it owes millions of dollars to several parties.
Regarding his ties to SQRL, Bierenbaum said in a statement to C-Store Dive that he was “strictly a landlord” and hadn’t done anything with SQRL in about two years.
When asked to comment on his relationship with Smith and any advice he’d given him through the years, Bierenbaum said the two met through a broker about four years ago and haven’t talked in a while.
“In the unlikely event I do [talk to him], I would urge him to pay any money he owes if he does indeed owe it,” Bierenbaum said of Smith.
When asked if he is still in touch with Bierenbaum, Smith said via text message the two “rarely” speak to one another.
Store-level ties
The similarities between SQRL and Mountain Express run down to the store level. Many employees who were let go amid Mountain Express’ bankruptcy were then hired — and shortly thereafter terminated — by SQRL.
“Anybody that worked for Mountain Express and went to work for SQRL did so because they were looking for a job in the convenience store industry,” a former operations director at both companies said in an interview. “I went because my old boss at Mountain Express went over there, and he told [SQRL] if he was going to work for them, they had to bring me along with him.”
The operations director — who wished to remain anonymous to avoid retaliation from SQRL and Mountain Express — cited several similarities while working for both companies. These notably included practices the operations director characterized as poor planning and insufficient diligence regarding their sale-leaseback strategies, as well as deficient communication from leadership.
These were common issues that several former Mountain Express employees have cited in the past as well.
“If you needed an answer on something that had to be approved by Lamar and Turjo, that took a lot of time… I’m talking 30 to 60 days for something that should be answered in less than a week,” said the former operations director. “At SQRL, the answer would always be ‘just get [the store] open however you can.’”
The biggest similarity between Mountain Express and SQRL, though, was that they both tried to grow too fast, the operations director said.
“They had high ambitions, and they overextended themselves in different ways to try to reach those ambitions.”
