Casey’s General Stores Inc. has acquired five DeliMart convenience stores in the Iowa City, Iowa, area.
“We look to acquire convenience stores to grow our presence in communities where we think Casey’s has a role to serve the guest,” Katie Petru, spokesperson for the Ankeny, Iowa-based chain, told CSP Daily News.
- Casey’s General Stores is No. 3 on CSP’s 2023 Top 40 update to the 2022 Top 202 ranking of convenience-store chains by total number of company-owned locations.
The retailer intends to retain DeliMart’s employees. “Our goal is to keep these team members by offering them a role at Casey’s if that is what they’d like to do,” said Petru. “We are excited to welcome these employees to our team and be part of this community.”
The stores all closed March 25 and are reopening as Casey’s locations, a report by The Gazette said.
“Thank you for your business for the last 37 years,” a sign posted on the door of one of the DeliMart stores said, according to the report.
Brothers John and Frank Moreland opened the first DeliMart in Iowa City in 1985, the newspaper said. “To make a long story short, we decided to build a convenience store so he could run it,” John Moreland said of his brother.
No April Fooling
More acquisitions are coming in April, along with additional organic store growth, Casey’s President and CEO Darren Rebelez said in March in reporting a “stellar” fiscal third-quarter 2023.
As of Jan. 31, 2023, Casey’s had 2,472 convenience stores in 16 states, up from 2,452 as of April 30, 2022. That growth included the opening of 16 new-to-industry (NTI) sites, 12 newly acquired stores and two previously acquired stores, as well as four unopened acquired stores. It also closed six locations.
Casey’s expects to add approximately 80 stores in fiscal 2023 and expects to exceed its stated three-year goal of 345 units, the company said.
“In this current environment, we’re seeing a lot of potential acquisition activity. Our business development team is really busy talking to a lot of folks,” Rebelez said on the latest earnings call. “We have a number of smaller deals under agreement right now that will close before the end of the fiscal year, so we’re very confident we’ll get to the number for this year. … We’re going to have a very busy April realistically in terms of opening and buying stores.”
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