Winning as a Team

Darren Rebelez recently became the newest retailer inductee into the Convenience Store News Hall of Fame, but even though it is his name on the award, the credit, he says, goes to his exceptional team at Casey’s General Stores Inc. 

“I’m just one person up here representing all the work of 45,000 team members across our 2,900 stores, many of whom are working tonight as we speak to take care of our guests and our communities,” Rebelez said while on stage last month at the 2024 Hall of Fame ceremony. 

Rebelez, a U.S. Army Ranger and Gulf War veteran, began working in the retail and restaurant industries following his time in the military. His first foray into convenience retailing was as a self-described “food guy,” serving a couple of years as a director of foodservice before moving into merchandising and then continuing to rise up the ranks from there. 

During his career, Rebelez held numerous leadership roles within ExxonMobil Corp. and worked as executive vice president and chief operating officer at 7-Eleven Inc. Just prior to Casey’s, he was serving as president of IHOP Restaurants, but missed the convenience industry. 

“The camaraderie that the c-store industry has is unlike a lot of other industries,” he said. 

When he learned that Ankeny, Iowa-based Casey’s was looking to find its next leader from outside the company, Rebelez felt that he just couldn’t pass up the opportunity to return to the industry and join an organization like Casey’s. “What’s required at Casey’s because of the food business really leveraged all of my experiences throughout my entire career, so I couldn’t think of a better fit for me personally,” he recalled. “And I’ve really enjoyed every minute of it.”

In June 2019, Rebelez took the reins as president and CEO of Casey’s, the third-largest convenience retailer in the United States and the fifth-largest U.S. pizza chain. During his tenure thus far, he has attained numerous milestones, including: 

• Accelerating stock prices from $134 per share in 2019 to $409 a share in 2024.
• Completing and integrating several significant acquisitions, including the largest in the company’s history, bringing Casey’s current store count to 2,900.
• Carrying out a brand modernization and refresh, as well as the introduction of the company’s first rewards platform that currently boasts 8 million members.
• Accelerating the retailer’s food business through pizza innovation and new offerings.
• Achieving the company’s highest team member engagement rates yet. 

The new Hall of Famer recently sat down with CSNews to reflect on his career and accomplishments. 

CSN: What does it mean to you to be inducted into the Hall of Fame?

Rebelez: First, it’s very humbling. I’ve seen the people who have been inducted over the years — really, the iconic leaders in our industry over time. I know a number of them. And so, it’s just very humbling to be included in that kind of group. 

But to me, I think it’s just great recognition of the Casey’s team and all the work that the entire team has done to make Casey’s what it is. We’ve performed very well over the last number of years and, you know, that’s a real tribute to the entire team. And so, recognition like this I think is just affirmation that what everybody — all 45,000 of us — have been working really hard on the last several years has come to fruition and it’s always nice to be recognized for that.

CSN: You’ve been in the c-store industry for a while. What attracted you to this business?

Rebelez: What I’ve always liked about this industry is it’s really dynamic. We’re really in three different businesses. We have this food business (for those who are really focused on it), the grocery business and the fuel business. 

And so, I like the diversity of it. I like that there’s always something going on. I also like the fact that there’s a lot of different ways of making money, so if one part of the industry is challenged, the others usually you can lift and shift and make something happen. So, I’ve always enjoyed that aspect of the business. 

CSN: What achievements are you most proud of during your c-store career so far?

Rebelez: I’d have to say what I’m most proud of is seeing the success that a lot of people I’ve had the opportunity to work with over the years have enjoyed. Whether it’s continuing on in the c-store industry or moving on to other adjacent industries, a number of people I’ve worked with have become CEOs themselves, either in the restaurant business or in other parts of retail. Lots of people I’ve worked with have stayed in the industry and have done very well. 

You know, that’s always gratifying for me to see. To work with good people, try to help them in their development on their career journey and be able to see the success they’ve had, that’s probably the thing I’m most proud of.

CSN: That leads perfectly into my next question. How would you describe your leadership style? 

Rebelez: I usually approach leadership from a servant leadership perspective, really focusing on understanding what people’s needs are in order to be successful in their roles and working really hard to provide them with what they need. Sometimes, that’s not always what they want, but it’s always what they need. I’ve found when you hire really talented people, you give them what they need to be successful, point them in a certain direction and then get out of their way and allow them to do what they do, it works pretty well. So, that’s usually the approach I take.

Around here at Casey’s, we’re very team oriented. We’re going to win as a team. We lose as a team. And so, I like to be very inclusive in how we approach things; gather lots of opinions. We’ll debate things to decide on a path forward and then we go [forth] together as a team and work to win at whatever it is we’re going after.

CSN: You assumed the president and CEO role at Casey’s in June 2019. Thinking back, what was the state of the company at that time? What was going well? What needed some improvement? 

Rebelez: Casey’s has been around for a long time, almost 60 years, and has performed really well over a very long period of time, so this was not in any way a company in distress. But it was a company that had maybe fallen a little bit behind the times. The world evolves a little bit faster now and the company wasn’t necessarily keeping pace with some of that evolution. 

At the same time, Casey’s experienced a lot of growth and what I would say is that the growth in terms of stores and people outpaced the company’s infrastructure to be able to effectively support it and keep it growing. So, there was a bit of work to do building up some new capabilities that a company of our size and scale should have and, at the same time, contemporizing things.

One of the things I told the team when I first started was that I thought Casey’s was a great company, but we had some work to do and that my vision was that we would become a bigger, better, more contemporary version of ourselves. I think we’ve been able to stay true to that vision; take all the goodness that this company has built over a long period of time and amplify that. And then, at the same time, bring on some new capabilities that we really needed just to be able to execute at a higher level. 

CSN: Building on that, can you talk a little about how Casey’s has evolved under your leadership and what becoming a more contemporary version of itself looks like?

Rebelez: Yeah, there’s a number of things that we’ve brought in over the last several years. I’d say technology is something that we’ve evolved quite a bit, whether it’s our omnichannel capabilities, our digital rewards program [which] has been very successful, or more infrastructure related [technology] making the store systems more stable, more resilient, more reliable.

We’ve added some capabilities in our stores like, most recently, a digital production planner to make the work our team members in the kitchens do every day simpler to do, more accurate in terms of forecasting and production, and just easier to execute. Removing manual processes. We have an AI-generated automated voice assistant that answers the phones in our stores cause we have millions of calls a year from guests wanting to order pizza, and that’s a big distraction in our kitchens. We call her Ava, and Ava answers 100% of the phone calls that come in. We’ll take your order and we’ll suggest an upsell to you and then if you really want to talk to a person, you have that option as well.

We’ve really leaned more heavily on the data and analytics. We stood up a data analytics team. We have data scientists now and are really elevating our analytical capabilities, so we can test and learn and really understand where big opportunities are. 

And then [in addition to technology], we’ve added a guest insights group that can help us identify where consumer trends are going and how we can develop new products to meet those needs. We’ve invested more heavily in our culinary development team and our capabilities around producing new food and innovative new products in our kitchens, and making those items simpler and more craveable at the same time. We’ve added a procurement function that we didn’t have before. Here we are, buying billions of dollars’ worth of goods and services every year, but we weren’t really taking advantage of that scale. Now, we have procurement professionals that help us to do that. We’ve also added asset protection to help protect our teams and our resources.

So, just a number of capabilities that a company of our scale and size should have. We haven’t been able to do all of it overnight. It’s been an evolution over the last number of years, but I feel like we’re in a much better place today than we were a few years back.

CSN: You mentioned at the beginning of our conversation that this Hall of Fame induction is really a testament to the success of the entire Casey’s team. What kind of company culture have you tried to instill during your time at Casey’s?

Rebelez: You know, like I said, we’ve put a lot of emphasis on teamwork and working together as one team. But really, it comes down to our values. Our Casey’s Cares values: Commitment, Authenticity, Respect, Evolving and Service. We really live those values every day and what I’m really proud about is how we developed those and how the team has embraced it.