2025 Category Excellence in Planogram: Casey's General Stores Inc. & The J.M. Smucker Co.
Heading into the fall of 2023, the packaged bakery category at Casey's was growing in sales, but at a significantly slower rate than the competition. There was also opportunity to improve assortment to capture new and regular guests. Little Debbie was added as a new brand earlier in the year, but that new placement did not include a reflow of the planogram. Additionally, Krispy Kreme had just discontinued its entire product line in the middle of the year, so small changes were needed to fill that space.
To drive category and brand growth in 2024, Casey's enlisted the help of J.M. Smucker to jointly rebuild the planogram. After multiple discussions and ideation sessions, the retailer and supplier decided there needed to be two main aspects for the planogram reflow:
1. Brand block: As opposed to segment block, the brand block continues to be the most impactful way to flow the packaged bakery category.
2. Price tiers: Brands that were similarly priced would be placed adjacent to each other, leading to less tradedown from the higher-priced brands to the value brands.
Although it was the lead vendor, J.M. Smucker and Casey's worked collaboratively and diligently identifying the top items across all brands within packaged bakery that would perform best while also maximizing the space. This would ensure less shelves had multiple brands on them to prevent items from bleeding into the space of another brand, causing confusion for shoppers.
As a result, in the 26 weeks following the September 2023 planogram update, the packaged bakery category at Casey's, including most major brands, grew in dollars per store per week, units per store per week and trips. All major brands in the category had double-digit buyer growth, with some brands like Hostess seeing more than 30% buyer increases.
Click here for the full winners' list for the 2025 Convenience Store News Category Excellence Awards.