New Casey’s store in Hull
Ankeny, Iowa — The Ankeny-based Casey’s convenience store chain continues pushing toward its goal of adding 150 stores this fiscal year. Senior Vice President of Business Development, Brian Johnson, talked about it in an investor update on the third quarter.
Casey’s President and CEO, Darren Rebelez, says they like to have a mix of building new stores along with merging or acquiring existing stores. He says acquiring stores is more attractive now as the cost of construction has gone up, so installing or upgrading the kitchen in an existing store is less than the cost to replace the whole store.
He says that allows them to gain the advantage from the prepared food sales much quicker than in the past. Rebelez says the acquisitions recently have mostly been competitors with under 100 stores.
Rebelez says even with the acquisitions, they will still end up building in the neighborhood of 50 new stores this year. Casey’s now has more than 26 hundred stores in 17 states.
Locally, in the last month, Casey’s has purchased the former Junction 9-75 Sinclair in Rock Rapids and has moved its operations to that store, and they plan to put their former Rock Rapids Casey’s property up for sale. And Casey’s has opened a brand new store in Hull after a fire totaled their former store in the same location at the corner of Hickory Avenue and Highway 18.
