Casey's holds grand opening in Roachdale this weekend
ROACHDALE -- A new convenience store opened in Roachdale this weekend. Residents in this small town now have easy access to Casey's well-known homemade pizza and delicious doughnuts.
The chain markets itself toward smaller communities. Most Casey's stores sell their own freshly made pizza and doughnuts (according to Casey's, over 27,000 pizzas and over 269,000 doughnuts per day) in addition to gasoline and other convenience store products.
During their grand opening Saturday and Sunday, customers registered to win $500 of free gasoline. Specials on their famous doughnuts and pizza as well cookies and submarine sandwiches were also available. The new store is located at 2 S. Indiana Street.
Casey's is a chain of convenience stores throughout the Midwestern, primarily within the states of Iowa, Illinois, Missouri and Nebraska. The company is headquartered in Ankeny, Iowa.
According to the company Web site, in 1959 Don Lamberti leased a service station in Des Moines, Iowa from his father. After remodeling the station into a convenience store and operating it for nine years, his gasoline supplier and friend, Kurvin C. (K.C.) Fish, suggested he purchase the Square Deal Oil Company, a service station available for sale in Boone, Iowa.
Lamberti followed Fish's advice and purchased the station, which he renamed "Casey's" after Fish. As with his leased store, he converted the station into a convenience store.
The Boone store did well, Lamberti decided to see if he could duplicate his success. He purchased another store in Creston, Iowa and that store also did well. Lamberti became more ambitious and opened a store in the even smaller town of Waukee, Iowa (population 1,500).
The Waukee store proved to be the most successful of the three, so Lamberti decided to open more stores, concentrating on towns of less than 5,000 in population.
By the late 1970s, the chain had 118 stores.
In 1982, Casey's opened its first Distribution Center in Urbandale, Iowa.
They became a publicly traded company in October, 1983, with an initial public offering of 700,000 shares. Around this time, Casey's began to sell doughnuts in its stores; in December 1984 it introduced pizza into its stores and it remains one of the company's signature items today.
In 1990, Casey's moved to its current facility in Ankeny.
Casey's 1,000th store opened in Altoona, Iowa in 1996, the same year the company exceeded $1 billion in annual sales.
In January 2006, Casey's purchased Lincoln, Nebraska-based Gas 'N Shop and in August, they purchased the 33-store HandiMart chain, based in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, in a $63 million deal.
As of February 2008, Casey's had 1,463 stores in nine states, of which 1,449 are company-owned and 14 are franchised stores.
For information about the company, visit their Web site at www.caseys.com. The Roachdale store can be reached at 522-3660.