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Casey's General Stores

The Firm

Casey's is a Fortune 500 convenience retailer founded more than fifty years ago in Iowa, and by its own description the third-largest convenience store chain and the fifth-largest pizza chain in the United States, with roughly 2,900 stores after the CEFCO acquisition. The pizza claim is not a joke; prepared food is the economic engine, and its stated synergy plan for acquired stores is literally kitchen installations.

The buying runs at two scales. The headline deal was Fikes Wholesale, owner of CEFCO Convenience Stores, a family business that began as a single filling station in Cameron, Texas in 1952: $1.145 billion all cash for 198 stores, a fuel terminal, and a commissary, at about eleven times EBITDA. But the same release notes a recent 22-store acquisition in northern Texas, and the stated strategy from its 2023 investor day is unit growth, which means small chains and single stores in its footprint have a standing strategic buyer.

For a convenience-store searcher the read is direct: Casey's is rarely bidding on the one-store deal an individual buys, but it is the exit that makes the trade investable, because a well-run store cluster in the Midwest or Texas sits squarely in its stated growth plan. Anyone meeting the company should know the Ankeny, Iowa base, CEO Darren Rebelez's unit-growth pillar, and the kitchen-led integration model that turns fuel stops into food stores.

What It Buys

Ankeny, Iowa. Convenience stores across the Midwest and South, grown store by store and chain by chain, including the $1.145 billion purchase of 198 CEFCO stores, which makes it the strategic buyer that sets the ceiling for c-store multiples in its markets.

Casey's General Stores ↗

Selling to them one day, or watching them as the other bidder? Track them in the Contact Book so the relationship has a next-touch date.

Confirmed Deals

Every deal traced to the firm's own announcement.

Where It Hunts

Buying a Convenience Store or Gas Station