(Radio Iowa) – The Ankeny-based Casey’s convenience store chain, Wednesday, reported a strong first quarter in a report to investors. President and CEO, Darren Rebelez, says total revenue was up across the board as the pandemic recovery continues. “Sales volumes and margins improved dramatically as guest traffic began to rebound, driving an all-time high gross profit dollar quarter for the company,” he says. Casey’s gross profit was nearly $724 million dollars in the first quarter — a record and an increase of more than $100 million from the prior year.

Rebelez says the increased traffic help increase sales. “Grab-and-go items such as pizza slices, packaged beverages, and snacks are up significantly throughout the quarter as guest traffic improved. Same-store grocery in general merchandise sales were up seven percent, and the average margin was 33 percent, compared to 32-point-two percent for the same period a year ago,” Rebelez says. Sales of their pizza slices were up close to 29% in the quarter. Fuel gallons sold were up 9% with the fuel margin of 35.1 cents per gallon. 

Breakfast sales were a key area where the company saw a bounce back. “With respect to the breakfast business, we are not all the way back to where we expect to be. I think we’re going to learn a lot here in the next several weeks post-Labor Day with school fully back in session, people going back to work or not depending on the Delta variant,” Rebelez.

He says supply chain issues and inflation continue to a problem. “We’ve experienced our own challenges with a supply chain because manufacturers are struggling to produce products. But the fact that we control the supply chain has given us a lot of flexibility,” Rebelez says. I’ll give you n example, we’ve had some suppliers that can’t get the product to us because of driver shortages. We have our own fleet of drivers and trucks — so we can send a tractor to a manufacturer, pick up a trailer and get it back to our distribution centers to distribute product.”

He says the supply chain problems don’t appear to be getting better. “It’s a new challenge every day that we hear from certain suppliers,” according to Rebelez. “And it’s and on their end. It’s anywhere from labor shortages to driver shortages. And sometimes in some cases, it’s raw material shortages that have occurred. So it’s across the board.” The company completed the acquisition of the Buchanan Energy and Circle K stores in the quarter.