Casey’s General Stores Inc. has promoted Eric Long into the newly created role of vice president of proprietary brands, a spokesperson for the convenience-store retailer told CSP.
Long, who previously was director of prepared foods and dispensed beverages, has been with Casey’s for more than five years and has played a critical leadership role in driving success across the private brands, packaged beverages and prepared foods and dispensed beverages (PF&DB) business, the company said. In this new position, he will oversee both PF&DB category management and the private brand program.
Long will continue to report to Brad Haga, senior vice president of prepared food and dispensed beverages at Casey’s.
Before joining Casey’s in 2020 as director of private brands, Long was with West Des Moines, Iowa-based grocer and convenience-store retailer Hy-Vee Inc., most recently as group vice president of private brands, according to his LinkedIn bio.
- Casey’s General Stores Inc. is No. 3 on CSP’s 2025 Top 202 ranking of convenience-store chains by store count.
Casey’s launched a line of private-label carbonated soft drinks (CSDs), juices, ready-to-drink (RTD) iced teas and lemonades in 2020. The chain added more than 100 private-label snack and beverage products in 2021. The broadened assortment included chips, jerky and nuts. It complemented Casey’s updated offerings in water and automotive needs.
In 2023, Casey’s unveiled a new three-year strategic plan. As part of this plan, Casey’s expanded its private-label offerings, building on more than 300 snack and beverage options. In its fiscal 2023, Casey’s private-label products reached over 9% penetration in both units and gross profit dollars in its grocery and general-merchandise category, it said.
The attention to the category has continued.
“We've got a lot of work going on with our private-label products right now,” President and CEO Darren Rebelez said during the company’s fourth-quarter fiscal 2025 earnings call in June. “When we first launched our private label several years ago, we really kind of targeted national brand equivalents, and it was really somewhat of a one size fits all, and we have some really good success with that.”
The retailer is “evolving that assortment and that approach to more of a tiered approach,” Rebelez continued. “We'll have a premium tier, so more premium products, higher-quality ingredients, more differentiated products in that premium tier. The middle tier will be more of that national brand equivalent, and that will have a more value-oriented tier that would be more commoditized. And so we're in the process of refreshing the assortment across all of those tiers.”
Ankeny, Iowa-based Casey’s has approximately 2,900 convenience stores in 19 states—Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas and Wisconsin.
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