Switch to Casey’s stores underway

The Saukville Tri-Par convenience store and the six other area Tri-Pars outlets were all switched over to Casey’s General Stores during the past week.

Even more changes are coming, said Michael Richardson, vice president of marketing for Casey’s, an Ankeny, Iowa-based company.

All seven local stores were closed for a few hours last week as inventory was switched to Casey’s and the chain’s point-of-sale operations were installed.

With the addition of Tri-Par’s stores Casey’s purchased in Cedarburg, Saukville, West Bend, Slinger, Random Lake, Newburg, Hustisford and a few other stores under construction, the firm now owns about 35 stores in Wisconsin with a dozen more in development, Richardson said.

That includes one store under construction in Fredonia at Highway 57 and Martin Drive and another planned in Port Washington at Highway LL and Grand Avenue.

Casey’s has more than 2,000 stores in all, mostly in the Midwest.

“All the signage should be completed this week,” Richardson said, “and then we’ll run them a bit and in the meantime look for what remodels will take place.”

Richardson said some stores may be expanded to add kitchens and other amenities. Some may be torn down and rebuilt, he said. All will be remodeled to some extent.

“We will want to put in the kitchens for pizza, subs and coffee bars. I haven’t seen the interiors of those (Tri-Par) stores,” he said. “In the end, we want to provide for our customers what we provide in other locations.”

Casey’s is the fifth-largest pizza restaurant in the country.

Richardson said every Tri-Par employee who wanted to stay on with Casey’s was offered a job.

Most of the Casey’s Wisconsin stores are in the western part of the state, but Richardson said Casey’s is expanding in eastern Wisconsin because of a new distribution center in Terre Haute, Ind.

“In the past we’ve stayed on the west side of Madison because our distribution center was out of Ankeny near Des Moines. That’s a long haul from Des Moines to the Milwaukee area,” he said.

The new facility in Terre Haute put the east side of Wisconsin within reach, as well as Ohio, Michigan, Tennessee and Kentucky, Richardson said.

“We love (Wisconsin), and there are a lot of locations (in eastern Wisconsin) that are our types of towns. Over half of our towns are under 5,000 people,” he said.