Joseph Petrowski, Yesway’s director of fuels and advisor to the chairman, has passed away, according to a LinkedIn post by Thomas Trkla, the chain’s chairman and CEO. The post did not note the date or cause of Petrowski’s passing.
Petrowski joined Yesway and its owner, Brookwood Financial Partners, in 2016 as a senior advisor and member of the company’s executive committee. He brought decades of experience as an industry executive to the role, most notably with the Cumberland Farms Gulf Oil Group.
From 2005 to 2013, Petrowski led the retail and fueling company as both president of Gulf Oil and CEO of Cumberland Farms. He helped breathe new life into the Gulf Oil brand, expanding the number of stores that sold its gas from 400 to 3,500, and growing its operating area from 13 states to 35, according to a 2014 profile in the Boston Business Journal.
He also helped Cumberland Farms expand to 700 stores during his tenure, according to a 2016 story by CSP.
Petrowski helped fuel a similarly ambitious growth trajectory at Yesway, which has around 450 stores and plans to operate double that amount within the next several years, Trkla said in an interview earlier this year. In 2019, the company completed its acquisition of Allsup’s, the largest of many M&A deals it has done in recent years.
“Joe’s proven track record, decades of experience, and industry connections were invaluable to Yesway’s senior management team and me as we executed our strategy to build the Yesway portfolio,” Trkla said in his LinkedIn post. “His vision, leadership, and commitment to excellence played a pivotal role in shaping Yesway into what it is today.”
Petrowski began his career at international commodities trader Louis Dreyfus and helped build its energy trading business. As a student at Harvard, he became so interested in the fueling business that he wrote his thesis on the future of gasoline distribution at retail stores, according to the Boston Business Journal profile.
The paper noted that he still had a bound copy of the thesis on the bookshelf in his office all those years later.
