Honoring Toot’n Totum

Toot’n Totum wins CStore Decisions’ Chain of the Year Award for excellence in operations, innovation and strategic direction.

With more than 75 years in business and 98 c-stores across Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas and New Mexico, Toot’n Totum is distinguishing itself through operational excellence, innovation and its forward-looking vision.

Among Toot’n Totum’s many strengths are its values-based, people-first culture; commitment to technology and vertical integration; robust proprietary foodservice, grab-and-go and commissary programs; and state-of-the-art new-to-industry (NTI) stores, alongside continued investment in internal growth and footprint expansion.

At the heart of these initiatives is Toot’n Totum’s operating philosophy, which it calls the “Toot’n Totum Way,” that brings together its mission, values and vision. Its mission is to “create experiences worth repeating” for every guest, vendor and partner it encounters. And it brings that mission to life by focusing on its core values: honor and value; being team focused and guest ready; taking ownership; and providing a quick, clean and convenient experience.

Toot’n Totum doesn’t just give lip service to these values. It ensures they guide how Toot’n Totum operates its stores and serves customers. At the start of every meeting the chain reviews its values and vision and reinforces its commitment to passing those values on to its guest.

CStore Decisions is proud to honor Toot’n Totum as its 2026 Chain of the Year. Toot’n Totum marks the 37th winner of the award, which is the oldest and most prestigious award in convenience retailing. The award doesn’t focus on chain size but on operational excellence, innovation and direction.

Andrew Mitchell, CEO and president of Toot’n Totum and a third-generation member of the family business now helms the company that was founded by his grandparents, with his wife Dottie. The chain celebrated its 75th anniversary in 2025.

Toot’n Totum began in 1950 when Mitchell’s grandparents, Eldon “Lefty” Mitchell and his wife Novie, opened their first c-store on 15th and Washington in Amarillo, Texas. When Lefty passed away in 1955, Novie took the reins. Her entrepreneurial spirit and unwavering work ethic laid the foundation that shaped Toot’n Totum into the success it is today.

In 1996, Novie’s son, Greg Mitchell, as president and CEO, and his wife Julie began to steer the chain’s expansion across the Texas Panhandle via acquisitions. Through their leadership the company began to prioritize vertical integration, expanded into the lube center and car wash business, and moved into new operating areas, including Kansas and Oklahoma in 2015 and New Mexico in 2020. Today, Greg serves as chairman.

Andrew Mitchell, Greg’s son, stepped into the CEO role in 2023.

But Andrew Mitchell is quick to point out that it is the chain’s team members that are the driving force behind the chain’s success. “Our team members are really the ones that make Toot’n Totum move,” he said.

As Mitchell reflected on the Chain of the Year win, he imagined his grandmother’s reaction if she was here today to see it. “She expected perfection … I think that she would look down and say, ‘Well, you have perfected it.’ Are we always perfect? No. … But I think she would be exceptionally proud of what this team has done,” he said. “And I think she would be exceptionally proud as well of what my father did to really grow the business when the acquisition stages were occurring in his tenure of employment.”

Toot’n Totum is known for its emphasis on vertical integration, enabling the company to oversee and control nearly every aspect of its convenience store operations from “curb-to-curb and door-to-door.”

“What really sets us apart from other convenience store chains is how we’ve vertically integrated,” Mitchell noted. “It all started back with a whole warehouse distribution center, where we could bring in items and things that other convenience stores couldn’t get.”

The warehouse distribution center first opened its doors more than 15 years ago, and the chain has been handling its own warehouse distribution ever since. These days, it distributes supplies and retail items to its stores once or twice a week, depending on the location. This shift has allowed the c-store chain to move product quickly. It has also allowed the chain to bring in local and niche items.

“A local distributor, a local provider can’t get to 98 stores on a weekly basis … so we can bring that (item) into our distribution center and move,” Mitchell said.

Seven years ago, it added transportation affiliate, SUPA Inc., which handles about 90% of the chain’s fuel transportation to its sites, including diesel exhaust fluid deliveries. By owning its own dispatch system, the company has greater control over fuel deliveries and can better ensure its locations have the supply they need.

Toot’n Totum also operates its own commissary, proprietary Toot’n Totum gas (in addition to partnering with major gas brands Valero and Phillips 66), Wendy’s QSRs, car washes, lube centers, a signage division (SignPros), a lawn care business LawnPros) and a cleaning and power-washing business (Cleaning Pros). It also has in-house marketing, maintenance and IT teams. This approach allows Toot’n Totum to maintain high standards of consistency, speed and quality across locations.

For example, in the world of convenience, “there’s so many light bulbs and moving parts,” Mitchell noted, not to mention inclement weather that can cause damage, and operating its own maintenance department allows Toot’n Totum to address any issues that arrive immediately without having to wait for a third-party to respond.

“We pride ourselves on equipment being up and functional because if the equipment isn’t working properly, that interferes with our guests,” Mitchell said. “When we look at operational excellence, sometimes it’s the numbers on a graph … or it can be the fact that you drive by a competitor and you see that they’ve had a pump down for five days, and you know that your team would have had that fixed in five minutes. And so, again, it’s all focused on operational excellence delivered to the guest.”

Owning its own lawn care and cleaning verticals likewise ensures that the guest experience is top of mind at all times. Toot’n Totum schedules the crews to arrive at times that won’t interfere with guest traffic. Power washing, for example, takes place late at night.

“There’s nobody that takes care of Toot’n Totum like Toot’n Totum,” Mitchell said. “We’re going to take care of ourselves, and we’re going to make sure that our guests never have an issue as they as they frequent our stores.”

Toot’n Totum has been rapidly expanding in the Lubbock, Texas, area, opening 10 new-to-industry (NTI) stores there over the past three years, as well as another NTI store in Lamesa, Texas, that opened in 2026. It has three NTI stores slated for 2027, with six more on the docket — three in the design phase, and three potential purchases. Two of those stores will be travel centers.

The chain currently operates 16 travel centers that span 7,600 square feet and feature high-speed diesel and trucker amenities. Its Stratford, Texas truck stop was honored this February as “the No. 1 Truck Stop in America,” by Trucker Path.

The NTI stores feature the chain’s Gen-3 prototype, which measures 5,200 square feet and includes a modern design, expanded grab-and-go food section and a larger checkout area to enhance its drive-through operations.

**“**Every store will always be accompanied with a drive-through operation for the convenience of our guests,” Mitchell said.

The drive-through concept ties into Toot’n Totum’s values of quick, clean and convenient. Guests can order anything from the drive-through except for refills, lottery, prepaid fuel or money orders.

Toot’n Totum is also committed to refreshing legacy sites and has completed 10 remodels in the last two years. In Q4, it plans to remodel four stores and complete cooler upgrades in another 12 sites.

Toot’n Totum is prioritizing fresh grab-and-go and proprietary food programs, matching the right food menu with the needs and preferences of each community.

The chain uses a centralized kitchen three miles from the company’s headquarters in Amarillo, Texas. The centralized kitchen acts as its commissary, delivering fresh grab-and-go foods to the stores under the chain’s proprietary Fast’n Fresh brand. That includes items like fresh-made sandwiches, salads, burritos and subs, parfaits and breakfast burritos. Brick & Elm, an Amarillo lifestyle magazine recognized Toot’n Totum’s Fast’n Fresh Breakfast Burritos as the winner of its 2026 Convenience Store Breakfast Burrito Tour.

The chain also offers a number of proprietary foodservice offerings. Seven stores feature its Mitch’s Texas Style BBQ program. New this year, the chain is also compiling the fixings for Mitch’s brisket sandwiches in the centralized kitchen and delivering the ingredients to stores without the full concept so they can make the brisket sandwiches fresh at the stores.

Some 64 sites offer the chain’s Red’s Pizza concept, which launched in 2024. It also offers a proprietary Oasis Tea program, which is a fresh-brewed tea offering, at 14 sites with plans to expand that to 30 locations by the end of the year. Most recently, Toot’n Totum introduced a new Jacket Potato concept, beginning at two c-store sites and a standalone location.

The chain also offers order ahead, third-party delivery, as well as bean-to-cup coffee at 75% of sites.

Toot’n Totum is also committed to ongoing tech innovation as it works to live up to its mission of create experiences worth repeating.

In May, Toot’n Totum relaunched its upgraded TNT Rewards mobile app, designed to further deepen guest engagement and drive in-store purchases. The enhanced rewards program delivers more personalized offers, smarter earn-and-burn mechanics, and tighter integration with the services guests already rely on — from scheduling oil changes and redeeming car wash deals to ordering food for delivery.

Ease of use was also a key consideration. Guests can now access the loyalty program simply by entering their phone number at the point of sale. When it began the roll out of the new app, Toot’n Totum had roughly 48,000 members and by August that had grown to 130,000 members. The app includes a portal specifically for team members, so they can also take advantage of employee rewards.

Beyond the loyalty relaunch, Toot’n Totum is using artificial intelligence (AI) to develop purpose-built tools that drive efficiency across its organization.

**“**We’re using AI to develop coding … to take our information that is proprietary and use internally,” Mitchell said.

To that end, the chain developed Insight 360, an AI-powered platform that lets stores submit requests for maintenance, IT, lawn care, cleaning and other services through a single dispatch system. Requests are then routed to the appropriate person, eliminating the need for managers to coordinate with multiple contacts while creating greater efficiency and freeing up managers to focus on the guest experience. Going forward, Toot’n Totum is prioritizing in-store data analysis and building in-house AI tools that are equipping store managers with detailed, actionable metrics to enhance daily operations and decision-making.

A key part of operational excellence is the culture that drives a chain. Toot’n Totum is known for having a people-first culture, and it prioritizes internal growth through team development.

“We’ve really redeveloped all of our leadership training for upper management in the store levels as well,” Mitchell said.

Its human resources department introduced a leadership academy called LEAD, which stands for Lead, Engage, Act and Develop, to ensure its managers have as much leadership training as possible. Every manager and select assistant managers go through the program, which includes a handful of full-day sessions over three months.

The company also invests in its team members through programs like LiO — Leadership from the Inside Out — a homegrown culture and leadership development class designed for high-performing non-managers who embody the Toot’n Totum values and are being groomed for future leadership roles. It has also introduced LIT (Leadership In Training), an eight-week training that sets managers up for success where they spend time with a trainer and then visit three of the chain’s top managers for two weeks at a time.

The chain also launched Fit, a group of 13 internal team members, from front-line associates through support center managers, who gather on a quarterly basis to discuss

policies, procedures, activities that happen the quarter before, providing an opportunity to communicate needs across the chain.

“The notes and the details from that go directly to each VP of our company to diagnose and to (determine) the best direction in their department,” Mitchell said.

“When I say we are we’re a people-first culture … we always put our team members first and foremost in any possibility,” Mitchell said. This includes providing career paths through the company for team members who wish to grow, as well as offering access to fuel, meal, car wash and oil change discounts through its rewards program.

Toot’n Totum’s team members, “drive absolutely everything we do,” Mitchell said. “Without our team members, we’re rowing a boat by ourselves. Truthfully, it takes each and every one of us to row this thing. …” Toot’n Totum is focused on setting its team members up for success by giving them every tool they can to make tasks easier. “But it’s really up to them to execute it, and it’s up to them to continue to lead the Toot’n Totum Way through our five values,” he said.

As he looks to the future, Mitchell is focused on “growing gallons.”

“Whether it takes one store or it takes 50 stores to get to that number, we’ve got to get to a goal number of gallons that we want to achieve,” he said, adding that his goal number is under wraps for now.

“We’re also, at the same time, expanding into newer markets and different territories. …” he said. As the chain grows into new communities, it’s intentional about its steps.

“One of the most important factors before we ever jump into a community and decide we’re going to start to try and serve those guests, is we’ve got to make sure that we’re a fit for that community as well,” Mitchell said. “We don’t want to just come in and start making money off the community and not giving back. We’ve got to do our due diligence in how we can participate in the communities, how we can be a part of that community.”

That includes identifying which local charities to partner with to best serve the local area.

“We continue each and every year to do our spirit pumps,” Mitchell said.

A spirit pump is a designated fuel pump where a portion of the proceeds from fuel sales at that pump are donated to a local school or athletic program, charity or other community cause**.**

“That is a big driver for us because it’s our one way of knowing that regardless of where we have put a Toot’n Totum location, there’s always going to be a high school. There’s always going to be a school in need, and so we know we can continue to carry the spirit pumps all throughout and hit the needs of every community that we encounter.”

Education is the chain’s largest donation effort, and through that lens it looks at what individual communities are working to accomplish.

“We were a very large partner in a very big project that involved athletic fields for our community in the past four years as they’re starting to develop it,” Mitchell said.

Whenever a community is working to accomplish a large project, Toot’n Totum looks at how it can be a part of it, whether that’s through a financial contribution, sponsorships or something else.

Mitchell said he’s proud of the way the chain has prioritized local communities from helping local schools and sports teams to stocking local products.

“We always try and use local providers anytime we possibly can, and that’s a part of the local community,” he added.

Mitchell noted that winning the 2026 Chain of the Year Award was like winning the Super Bowl or World Cup for the convenience store industry.

He noted that what stands out most to him is that Toot’n Totum is being recognized, not because of its size, but because of the day-to-day execution and consistent actions by team member that drive operational excellence.

“What an honor to be awarded CStore Decisions Chain of the Year! This esteemed award illustrates our team members commitment to create experiences worth repeating for every guest we get the opportunity to serve in our communities,” said Mitchell. “Our team members everyday work to enhance our guest’s experiences at our locations throughout Kansas, Oklahoma, New Mexico and Texas Panhandles for the past 76 years. Thank you CStore Decisions and thank you to our incredible team members.”