Casey's began in 1968 with the first stores located in small Iowa towns. The small town emphasis continued and, as of March 1, 2008, nearly 60% of stores are located in towns with populations under 5,000; 75% are located in towns under 10,000.

Casey's operates its own distribution center and transportation system delivering approximately 70% of the gasoline and 90% of the in-store products.

In 2008, Casey's introduces a new store design, the O-style, to provide opportunities for sales growth in high profit areas and to enhance the customer's overall shopping experience. These design changes focus on four areas: Prepared Foods (adding made-to-order submarine sandwiches), Fountain & Coffee Center (increasing accessibility to product choices), Cold Vault (expanding beer category display), and Sales Counter (reducing bottlenecks and increasing employee visibility). The enhancement of the customer's overall shopping experience includes convenient checkout, improved restrooms, and easy access to expanded prepared food items, coffee, fountain, and reach-in cooler products. The O-style store provides a design for remodeling various existing styles of stores with the same enhancements.

In the fiscal year ending April 30, 2007, Casey's sales exceeded $4.0 billion including nearly 1.2 billion gallons of gasoline. Gasoline represented 72% of sales and 22% of gross profit. Grocery and merchandise represented 21% of sales and 49% of gross profit, and prepared food and fountain accounted for 7% of sales and 29% of gross profit.