Meet the son of MAMO KACHA, a DC business tycoon

Mamo scraped together his savings and a little money from his father for a down payment. Within months of arriving in Washington, he signed a lease on his first station, an Amoco on South Dakota Avenue. His two brothers were his only employees, Mamo says; they all worked 18-hour days Mamo still owns the station, which now operates as a Shell. Over the next quarter century—and in a manner more deliberate than accidental—he has built a network of stations around the region, acquiring them slowly, at first, and then, starting in 2009, at high speed. Riding a wave of industry transition, he went on a buying spree that expanded his empire from 25 to around 240 stations. Nearly half of all stations in the District are controlled by Mamo; he runs a quarter of the region’s stations. Read more…