Darren Rebelez believes that chicken wings will be a big deal for his convenience-store chain and it’s difficult to argue with him.
Rebelez has experience with such things. He is a former restaurant chain executive, having led IHOP for more than four years. And he is now the CEO of Casey’s General Stores, which sells more pizza in the U.S. than all but four restaurant chains.
Casey’s now has sauced chicken wings in about a third of its locations, with plans to roll them out to the rest of the system within the next 24 months. Early returns are positive.
“Our goal is to make this as significant a contributor as our pizza business, which is a big deal,” Rebelez said at a media briefing on Thursday. “That’s not going to happen overnight. But we believe that platform can stand on its own.”
Convenience stores have been increasingly focused on prepared food in recent years, as brands have looked to build their in-store business and offset declines in sales of items like tobacco.
Nearly two-thirds of consumers buy prepared food and beverages at convenience stores at least once a month, according to data from Restaurant Business sister company Technomic.
A 2024 survey by the data firm found that 90% of customers who bought prepared food from a convenience store said they received good value for the money. And 74% said that the quality of the items they’ve purchased have improved over the past two years.
Much like the restaurant business, convenience store chains have largely struggled amid weakness among low-income consumers. Yet brands that have well-established prepared food businesses have been better able to weather those challenges.
Casey's prepared food traffic was up 13% even as quick-service pizza chains lost business. | Photo courtesy of Casey's.
Casey’s is a case in point. Same-store sales inside its stores rose 5.5% in the quarter ended April 30, the company’s fiscal fourth quarter. By contrast, the number of gallons of gas sold by existing locations rose just 1.5%.
Foodservice, the company said, was a crucial part of that. Casey’s has increased its food business by 16% over the past three years, led by the chain’s pizza business. Brad Haga, SVP of prepared food and dispensed beverages at the chain, said during the company’s Investor Day presentation this week that 40% of the chain’s stores increased pizza sales by 10% or more last fiscal year.
Rebelez said that its prepared food traffic last year grew 13%, while fast-food traffic declined 1%.
Casey’s performance contrasts with the performance of the pizza sector in particular. Fast-food pizza sales fell last year, according to Technomic. Two of the four largest pizza chains saw sales decline in 2025: Pizza Hut declined by 8.2%. Papa Johns by 1%.
“When we think about the food business, we’re really not comparing ourselves to convenience stores,” he said. “We’re comparing ourselves to the restaurant space. That’s who we benchmark against. That’s who we compete against. And that’s how we measure ourselves.”
Casey's developed fries to go with its chicken wings. | Photo by Jonathan Maze.
Chicken wing chains like Wingstop should take note of those comments. Casey’s has taken some share from Pizza Hut in the Midwest, for instance. And the convenience-store chain is clearly working to compete with existing wing chains.
The company then spent a couple of years working on a better chicken wing that could be expanded chain wide and compete more directly with “best-in-class” chicken-wing concepts. Rebelez acknowledged that the company’s earlier chicken wings “were not great, if I’m being honest. We cooked them in a pizza oven and we tried to add it to pizza.”
Haga, at Investor Day, said that the company examined 30 different types of sauces and more than 10 types of wings and worked with suppliers to make it work.
The company also realized it needed fries to go with them. “Guests told us they wanted to have fries with their wings,” Rebelez said. “We try not to fight what the guest is telling us.”
The company also developed a buttermilk ranch sauce to go with the wings.
We ordered wings and fries from a local Casey’s and they proved flavorful while the fries remained crispy more than 10 minutes after we picked them up. We bought 20 chicken wings and two orders of fries and paid less than $28, a price $5 cheaper than a comparable order from Wingstop.
Rebelez considers pricing to be a crucial advantage. “Food-away-from-home CPI increased 14% over the last three years,” he said. “We only took 5% price over that period of time.”
So far, the wings appear to be doing their job. Order frequency among customers who only get wings has grown by 30% since the initial test. And customers who add wings to their pizza have 50% larger orders than those who just order pies. “We will take that all day,” Haga said, according to a transcript on the financial services site AlphaSense.
“Our food is really the big differentiator for us,” Rebelez said. “And we really put a lot of effort into making the quality as high as possible for that, whether that’s our pizza, making our dough from scratch using high-quality ingredients, to our wings, which we spent a couple of years developing the platform to make sure we do it right.”