Casey’s General Stores in early 2026 will begin rebranding the 198 CEFCO Convenience Stores it acquired in November 2024, Darren Rebelez, chairman, president and CEO of the c-store chain, said during the company’s 2026 second-quarter earnings call Wednesday.
Casey's acquired the CEFCO stores when it purchased Fikes Wholesale, owner of CEFCO, for $1.145 billion in November 2024.
“That effort in terms of rebranding will all start to kick off in earnest at the beginning of the calendar year,” Rebelez said. “We’ll start converting their larger stores that have kitchens in them already. Those are a little bit easier from a conversion standpoint. And then once we get those done, then we’ll start to convert the other stores.”
- Casey’s General Stores Inc. is No. 3 on CSP’s 2025 Top 202 ranking of convenience-store chains by store count.
Rebelez said the CEFCO stores are carrying a lower margin than Casey’s stores, both in prepared foods and in grocery and general merchandise, “because they’re still CEFCO stores, they are not Casey’s stores yet.”
He added he expects the “trajectory will change a bit on the prepared foods side in particular, once we get those kitchens in and rebranded to Casey’s and they get our full assortment with private label and all the rest.
“We expect that margin to accrete over time,” he continued. “But as it stands right now, their margin rate in prepared foods is about half of what the mothership Casey’s prepared foods margin is. So it is going have an impact. I was really proud of the team this quarter in terms of managing the rest of the business, whether it’s through cost of goods management, waste management and overall execution, so that we mitigated that impact from the CEFCO stores on to the overall Casey’s portfolio.”
The acquisition gave the convenience-store retailer 148 additional locations in Texas, a highly strategic market for Casey’s, as well as 50 stores in the southeastern states of Alabama (27 stores), Florida (13) and Mississippi (10).
“This acquisition is the largest in Casey’s history and in line with the strategic plan laid out at the June 2023 Investor Day,” Rebelez said in November 2024. “We are thrilled to complete this transaction, welcome Fikes to the Casey’s team, and look forward to bringing Casey’s pizza to these high-volume stores.”
Casey’s was expecting to invest about $150 million of remodeling capital into CEFCO stores, Steve Bramlage, Casey’s chief financial officer, said earlier in 2024.
Ankeny, Iowa-based Casey’s has approximately 2,900 convenience stores in 20 states. It is the third-largest c-store retailer and the fifth-largest pizza chain in the United States. In fiscal 2025, Casey’s built or acquired 270 stores, a record for the company. The majority came via Casey’s November 2024 acquisition of 198 CEFCO stores from Fikes Wholesale.
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