Every town >700 people seems to have a Casey's but Kwik Stars are mostly in towns of 3000 or more or along interstates. So there are a lot more Casey's around. Casey's revenues and profits keep going up so they must know what they're doing. The industry might be becoming over-built. We went to Maine a few years ago and they don't have convenience stores there like we have here. One nice thing about coming home.
Their profits are going up, because they build them and then never do a thing to them again.
And they dont manage them to maintain consistency and quality across all.
They just sit back and collect the profits in locations with limited competition, the only ones they ever update and maintain are ones where there is direct competition in very close proximity. And even then their prices are much higher and their inventory variety much lower.
One of the places I lived, in the past, Caseys came in and bought a local store. Overnight they cut the amount of products on the shelves and increased the price of everything... a lot. I would guess they cut the products offered in more than half and at least doubled most prices. (Then the manager had the nerve to badmouth the other local convenience store having lower prices, "because there stuff is swill")
Our local one closes randomly, mid afternoon, mornings, who knows. Reasons from anything lack of workers, pumps not working, systems down, etc. The people that work there look like they just got done smoking meth in the trailer park, and its told they have hard time hiring, and keeping help, and those they do get are unreliable. Then you see them posting job openings paying several dollars less than their area competition, so you can see why. I believe our local Caseys pays $3 starting less than the Kwik Star down the road a few miles. Yet prices on products are higher on average at Caseys than Kwik Star, so that extra profit is going somewhere, sure not on upkeep and upgrades.