Brad Haga's philosophy for prepared food success at Casey’s General Stores is straightforward: Offer delicious, craveable food, be willing to do hard things and let a strong team execute the vision.
“When you’re willing to do hard things consistently at scale, the guest will reward you,” said Haga, senior vice president of prepared food and dispensed beverages at the Ankeny, Iowa-based convenience store chain. “Making pizza from scratch is hard.”
That commitment to scratch-made food and strategic innovation recently earned Haga recognition when he received the Silver Plate award in May in the grocery, convenience and specialty retail category from IFMA, The Food Away from Home Association. But Haga credits the honor to decades of Casey’s prepared food performance and the team that executes daily in stores and kitchens.
IFMA since 1954 has been spotlighting legends-in-the-making who have made a difference through their hard work and integrity. Haga was nominated by Nestle. The award was in one of nine categories.
“We work with Nestle on a lot of things,” he told CSP Daily News on Tuesday. “They’re a great partner and it was amazing to be recognized for the Silver Plate. I was extremely surprised, I can tell you that.”
“I’m accepting this award on behalf of decades of Casey’s General Stores’ prepared food performance,” said Haga, who has been at Casey’s since February 2020 and spent the previous 17 years in several roles at Irving, Texas-based 7-Eleven. “I think lots of decisions that were made far before me back in the ’80s to start making pizza from scratch—and then us to kind of take those things and maybe tweak them slightly for the better—has turned out.”
- Casey’s General Stores is No. 3 on CSP’s 2026 Top 202 ranking of U.S. c-store chains by store count.
This is the first time a Casey’s employee has won an award in this competition, Haga said.
“We have an amazing team and, I can promise you, I would have not been awarded anything without that team and all the people in the stores and our kitchens that go to work every day and night," he said.
Haga attended the event, which was held May 16 in the Great Hall at Chicago’s Union Station.
Setting strategic direction
Haga, who has a Bachelor of Arts in communications from the University of California, Santa Barbara and an MBA from Southern Methodist University Cox School of Business, said his job is to set strategic direction on where Casey’s is going with preparing food in its stores.
“Our job is one where between a cup of coffee or making a pizza in a store, we’ve got to lean heavily on the kitchens to get things done,” he said, adding it's not as simple as placing a packaged product on a shelf.
Because of this complexity, Haga said, Casey’s works with many partners to get done what it wants to accomplish—either at its store support center or in the stores.
“Setting strategic direction is probably my primary objective, and then building a team of really sound, capable folks and getting out of their way,” he said.
The fact that no two days are the same is his favorite part of his job, he said.
“It’s always something new,” he said. “A great part of our job is we’re able to build things from scratch.”
The company’s new sauced chicken wing platform didn’t exist a year and a half ago, he said, but, “the team had an idea, we sized the opportunity and we collectively locked arms with internal and external stakeholders and went after it. And fast-forward two years from now, we’ll be fully scaled across a 3,000-store chain, which is really exciting for us.”
No two days being the same also is the most challenging part of Haga’s job, he said.
“If we keep the guest in the store as our primary stakeholders in front of us, that no matter how tough the environment gets, the guest is always going to be looking for something, and if we listen close enough and we keep the stores in mind and give them an opportunity to execute consistently, we’ll continue to win,” he said.
There will always be pizza
Even with the early success of the new chicken wing program, made-from-scratch pizza will always be Casey's crown jewel, Haga said.
"And I think we’ll always continue to innovate there,” Haga said, noting that 80% of Casey’s pizza growth is coming from specialty pizzas. “So, not your run-of-the-mill pepperoni or cheese, but really exciting new builds that we’ve partnered with our culinary team to bring forward.”
He said that in his professional career, he’s most proud of the Casey’s team—in prepared food and beyond, from the marketing team to the operations excellence team to the truck drivers and more.
Haga also said they have an incredible group of external partners on the ingredient and packaging side that help them get things done and make the c-store chain different.
Doing food well is challenging, and there’s lots of reasons why people succeed or don’t succeed, Haga said. The best way to succeed? Offer great food, he said.
“It’s got to be delicious and craveable, abundant and convenient, and when you get those things right, the guest will give you credit for it,” he said.
IFMA The Food Away from Home Association is a trade association founded in 1952. The organization empowers, nurtures, and connects an inclusive and diverse $1.5 trillion food-away-from-home ecosystem of manufacturers, distributors, operators, and others. By sharing insights, fostering best practices, and developing networking and educational opportunities through events, IFMA The Food Away from Home Association informs and instructs its members, and motivates change to improve both individual organizations and the food-away-from-home industry at large.
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