Casey's General Stores is steadily erasing the CEFCO brand from the American convenience-store map after acquiring the chain roughly two years ago, and the early sales numbers suggest the takeover is paying off.
Darren Rebelez, president and CEO of Casey's, told investors on a recent fiscal-year 2027 earnings call that the company had remodeled 24 former CEFCO locations by the end of the first quarter and converted 74 total locations to the Casey's name. The company is targeting 50 full conversions by the end of its fiscal year 2026, which wrapped in April, and describes itself as more than a third of the way through the broader conversion effort.
Casey's acquired CEFCO and its parent company, Fikes Wholesale, approximately two years ago. Since then, the chain has been physically remodeling CEFCO stores and layering Casey's prepared-foods and beverage programs onto the existing operations, a process that amounts to a full brand replacement. For customers who grew up stopping at CEFCO locations across Texas and beyond, the familiar signage is disappearing one storefront at a time.
The CEO did not hold back about how the deal is performing. Rebelez said CEFCO's existing prepared-foods business was "probably the best that we've ever acquired," and that the results after remodeling have exceeded expectations.
He pointed to a roughly 30 percent lift in prepared-foods and dispensed-beverage sales at remodeled stores compared with the same period before the conversion. That number matters because prepared food carries higher margins than fuel or packaged snacks, it is the profit engine that separates chains like Casey's from bare-bones gas stations.
Rebelez framed the results on the earnings call:
"When we can come in and take a store already doing well in prepared foods and layer our program on top of it and see the types of lifts that we're seeing, it's really encouraging."
He added that the company is "extremely excited" about the performance, citing the 30 percent average lift at converted stores as the key metric driving confidence in the rollout's pace.
Casey's ambitions extend well beyond absorbing CEFCO. The company announced plans to open 400 new locations over the next three years, a figure that includes CEFCO conversions. By the end of 2029, Casey's projects it will have opened 900 total new locations in roughly six years, a growth clip that would reshape the competitive landscape in the regions where it operates.
Rebelez singled out Texas as a prime growth market. He acknowledged that the state's four largest cities, Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, and Houston, sit outside Casey's current stronghold. But everywhere else?
"Outside of the big four cities of Dallas, Austin, San Antonio, Houston, the rest of that entire state is Casey's country."
He told investors the opportunity still has "a long, long runway for growth."
Casey's push comes as its chief national rival, 7-Eleven, is pursuing its own rebrand with larger-format stores. The convenience-store sector is consolidating, and regional chains that once carved out loyal followings, CEFCO among them, are being absorbed by operators with deeper pockets and broader distribution networks.
Some questions remain unanswered. Casey's has not publicly disclosed the total number of CEFCO locations it acquired, making it difficult to gauge how many conversions are still ahead. The company's reported figures also leave room for confusion: 24 locations were described as "remodeled" by the end of the first quarter, while 74 were described as "converted" over the same period, a gap that suggests the two terms may measure different stages of the process, though the company has not clarified the distinction.
What is clear is that CEFCO as a standalone brand is on borrowed time. Casey's is not preserving a regional identity or running a dual-brand strategy. It is replacing signs, kitchens, and menus, and the sales data, at least by management's account, says the swap is working.
In a free market, the strong absorb the weak and the customer gets a better pizza counter. Whether CEFCO loyalists agree is another question, but Casey's isn't asking.