Casey's Retail Company (doing business as Casey's) is a chain of convenience stores in the Midwestern and Southern United States. The company is headquartered in Ankeny, Iowa, a suburb of Des Moines. As of April 30, 2019, Casey's had 2,146 stores in 16 states. Following 7-Eleven's purchase of Speedway, Casey's is the 3rd largest convenience store chain in the United States (after 7-Eleven and Circle K) and the largest that is wholly American-owned. It is one of two Iowa-based Fortune 500 companies. History In 1959, Donald Lamberti leased a service station in Des Moines, Iowa, from his father. After successfully remodeling the station into a convenience store and operating it for nine years, his gasoline supplier and friend, Kurvin C. (K.C.) Fish, suggested that he purchase the Square Deal Oil Company, a service station available for sale in Boone, Iowa. Lamberti followed Fish's advice and purchased the station, which he renamed "Casey's" after Fish and as with his leased store converted the station into a convenience store. The logo on the Boone store was used by the chain until 2020. The Boone store (located in a town of only 12,500) did well, so Lamberti decided to see if he could duplicate his success. He built another store in Creston, Iowa (population 7,000), and that store did well also. Lamberti became more ambitious and decided to open a store from scratch in the even smaller town of Waukee, Iowa (population 1,500 at the time). The Waukee store proved to be the most successful of the three, so Lamberti decided to purchase and open more stores, concentrating on towns of less than 5,000 population (a variation on the tactic used in the early success of Wal-Mart). 1970s–1990s By the late 1970s (when Casey's opened its first warehouse) the chain had 118 stores, including the original store operated by Lamberti's parents which entered the Casey's fold in 1977. In 1982, Casey's opened its first Distribution Center in Urbandale, Iowa. Casey's became a publicly traded company in October 1983, with an initial public offering of 700,000 shares. Around this time Casey's began to sell doughnuts in its stores; in December 1984 it introduced pizza into its stores (which is one of its signature items today). Their pizza options include taco pizza. In 1990, Casey's moved to its current facility in Ankeny, Iowa. Casey's 1,000th store opened in Altoona, Iowa, in 1996, the same year