Casey’s Proves Once Again That Consumers Buy Meals, Not Channels

 

For more than two decades, I have consistently stated that consumers do not think in retail channels—they think in meals, mini-meals, snacks, solutions, convenience, value, and occasions. Long before most industry analysts recognized Casey's General Stores as a serious foodservice competitor, the Grocerant Guru® was identifying, quantifying, and qualifying the company's remarkable success in fresh prepared foods and, specifically, pizza.

Today, the rest of the food industry is finally catching up.

Casey's, the Iowa-based retailer founded in 1968, now operates nearly 2,900 locations across 19 states and proudly claims its position as the fifth-largest pizza chain in America. That claim is no longer surprising. What is surprising is how long it took much of the legacy food industry press to recognize what was happening right in front of them.

For years, traditional industry media segmented foodservice into neat little boxes: convenience stores, quick-service restaurants, grocery service delis, club stores, supermarkets, and fast-food outlets. Unfortunately, consumers never received that memo.

Consumers don't wake up and say, "I'm going to buy lunch from a convenience store today." They ask, "What's for lunch?" They seek value, convenience, portability, quality, taste, and speed. The channel is irrelevant.

The ongoing discussion about "channel blurring" is itself evidence that too many analysts remain trapped in outdated retail thinking. Channel blurring exists only in the mind's eye of retail Neanderthals and channel-protecting demagogues who continue to view food retailing through a 1980s lens. Consumers don't blur channels because consumers never recognized those boundaries in the first place.

What Casey's understood decades ago is what many restaurant operators are only now beginning to grasp: foodservice drives traffic, loyalty, frequency, and profitability. Pizza wasn't an add-on category for Casey's—it became a destination category.

The company's pizza journey began in 1984 and accelerated through continuous innovation, including breakfast pizza, taco pizza, thin-crust offerings, and gluten-free options. More importantly, Casey's understood that consumers wanted food where they already were, not where industry executives thought they should go.

That strategy is paying dividends. Casey's generated approximately $1.5 billion in pizza sales in 2024, growing more than 10% year-over-year. While many traditional pizza chains find themselves locked in relentless discounting battles, Casey's has leveraged its broader business model to create a competitive advantage.

Its large pizzas often undercut national competitors by several dollars. Its highly successful slice program captures immediate-consumption occasions that many national pizza chains largely ignore. In fact, individual slices reportedly account for about half of pizza sales, creating incremental traffic opportunities throughout the day.

Even more significant is Casey's dominance in smaller communities. Roughly 71% of stores are located in towns with fewer than 20,000 residents. In many of these markets, Casey's serves as the local restaurant, grocery supplement, fuel station, and community gathering place all at once.

That is not channel blurring.

That is consumer relevance.

Meanwhile, traditional pizza operators continue to face mounting pressure from every direction. Third-party delivery has erased historical convenience advantages. Consumers now have unprecedented access to restaurant meals, grocery prepared foods, warehouse club food courts, convenience-store foodservice, meal kits, and delivery-only concepts.

The competitive set is no longer pizza chain versus pizza chain.

The competitive set is every food option available to satisfy a meal occasion.

Recent research showing that convenience stores increasingly capture visits that might otherwise have gone to quick-service restaurants only reinforces what the Grocerant Guru® has documented for years: consumers cross-shop food solutions, not retail channels.

Casey's success story is not really about pizza.

It is about understanding that today's consumer purchases meals and mini-meals based on value, convenience, quality, portability, and trust. The retailer that best fulfills those needs wins the transaction regardless of whether the sign outside says convenience store, supermarket, restaurant, club store, or fuel center.

As the Grocerant Guru® has said repeatedly, the future belongs to operators that focus on meal solutions rather than channel definitions.

Casey's simply figured that out before most of the industry as did our Grocerant Guru®.

Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideas look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how our Grocerant Guru® can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participation, differentiation and individualization?  Email us at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit: us on our social media sites by clicking one of the following links: Facebook,  LinkedIn, or Twitter