If you drive through Iowa, Missouri, or Illinois, you’ll pass a Casey’s about every few exits. People in the Midwest are familiar with the red-roofed supermarket and gas station where people buy diesel, a bag of ice cream, a lottery ticket and, increasingly, a hot pizza. Maybe it’s one of their signature creations, like the taco pizza or the breakfast pizza.
Casey’s joins 3,000 stores, nearly half of which are in cities with 5,000 or fewer residents and about two-thirds in cities with fewer than 20,000 residents. The Fortune 500 company’s stock price is soaring as America wakes up to the secret pizza empire under its nose: its stock price is up more than 50% in the last 12 months and has a market cap of $28 billion.
Bank of America A recent study crunched the numbers and concluded that Casey’s Pizza Company is the fifth-largest pizza chain in the entire United States based on prepared food sales and beverages served.
Tom Brennan, Casey’s chief merchandising officer, confirmed this Assets that it is the fifth-largest pizza chain and fourth-largest liquor license holder in the United States, not to mention the third-largest supermarket.
“You don’t hear the other major pizza players talking about Casey’s,” he added, “but at the same time, it’s evident in our growth…we’re participating in our continued growth.”
When you ask Brennan if “stealth” is an appropriate word for his company, he laughs a little about his out-of-touch, coastal mindset. “Certainly secretly, I think, in many parts of the United States,” but ask anyone in the 19 states and they will know Casey’s.
This is starting to change somewhat online. TikTok and YouTube have a small, strangely long-lasting genre around “Gas station pizza” — creators who embrace something that’s under a heat lamp and then get excited about something really good. Casey’s pops up in the genre all the time, praised for its homemade dough and on-site pizza ovens, and Brennan said he welcomes it.
Casey’s social media team found that its penetration among Gen Z increased by 600 basis points based on engagement over the last three years. “What underlies all of this is just this incredible fan base and brand love that we’ve generated.” It all comes down to something an algorithm can’t fake, he added, an authenticity so popular in the age of AI setbacks and analog fever.
“It’s truly based on decades of experience providing quality pizza and food, a great experience.” Brennan argued that Casey’s is the “meeting place” for its communities and is constantly adding new features, such as its sauced wings, which began as “Sauced Wings.” Pilot in January 2025 and has now grown to almost 900 stores, which will be phased in across the chain over the next two years.
Courtesy of Casey’s
A moat across the small American town
Casey’s origins date back to 1968, when Donald Lamberti opened a converted gas station in Boone, Iowa. Brennan said he talked to Lamberti about his strategy and described it as, “Hey, this will probably work in the next small town.” He described gradual, slow and steady, now explosive growth: “Literally, they just went from little town to little town and built Casey’s.” Over time, this became what Wall Street calls a “defensible moat” because most other brands simply aren’t keen on “developing locations in such small cities.”
The company is still pursuing the same small-but-beautiful bet: Build where the population is too small for anyone else to care, and you’ll end up outdoing Big Pizza in territory it never thought it would conquer. Pizza hit the menu in 1984, and about two decades later, breakfast pizza, what Brennan called an “iconic” mix of sausage gravy, egg and cheese.
This strategy also means that Casey’s is fighting a different war than its pizza rivals – if you look at them as competitors. According to Technomic, the roughly $31 billion quick-service pizza category turned negative in 2025 after barely growing the year before. The Wall Street Journal reported in January 2026 that America appears to be “losing the love of pizza.” Brennan said Casey’s has been watching the trend closely, but the company disagrees.
“About half of our stores do not have a national pizza competitor as part of our competitive assessment,” he said. And when Casey’s comes to a nearby city, “we bring something that doesn’t really exist there yet. And it’s very well received.”
Brennan added that Casey’s is working to keep prices on pizza and other essential items slightly below the prevailing market price. Citing inflation data, he pointed out that prices for food sold away from home have risen about 14% over the past three years, while Casey’s prepared foods and beverages business has increased only 5%. “We can leverage the other parts of the business to optimize the entire P&L while essentially investing in growing food.”
BofA noted the unglamorous math: Prepared foods and beverages generated an estimated gross margin of 58% in fiscal 2025, more than double Casey’s overall margin of about 23.5%. Brennan calls the Casey model “three legs of the stool” because food, convenience and goods work together to support each other. Pizza is the “crown jewel” of the food industry, he said, but for him, Casey’s is a “category unto itself” with “the magic of the brand.” [being] when all three legs of the stool work together.”
Math points to Casey’s next frontier: Texas. Iowa is home to about three million people and has 550 Casey’s stores, while Texas is home to about 30 million people and has space to operate. “We see this as Casey’s land,” Brennan said, pointing to the small towns along the Interstate 35 corridor that have nothing comparable to Casey’s offerings.
Asked if gas station food is having a moment, Brennan said Casey’s is an example of something in the Midwest that has been bubbling up in certain regions of the U.S. for decades and spreading to others. He spent three years at 7-Eleven in the Mid-Atlantic a little more than a decade ago, he added, and remembers how the gas station culture there turned into a rising tide that lifted all boats. Its stores had the company’s highest food sales in the United States, not because they were fundamentally different from other 7-Elevens, but “because Wawa and Sheetz had legitimized gas station food.”
Brennan added that he serves on the retail board of the National Association of Convenience Stores and that the “collegiality” of different brands is unique to convenience retail. “We definitely support each other,” he said. “We are definitely in competition, but the more good operators we have that deliver really delicious food in our channel, that puts everyone ahead.”
When asked what his favorite Casey’s pizza was, he said it was hard to argue against the bacon breakfast pizza, but a new product caught his attention: the four-cheese pizza, which features a mix of provolone, mozzarella, cheddar — and then a special “post-bake shake” with cheese seasoning. “It’s a game changer.”
Courtesy of Casey’s