(Radio Iowa) – The Ankeny-based Casey’s convenience store chain continues pushing toward its goal of adding 150 stores this fiscal year. Senior Vice President of business development, Brian Johnson, talked about it in an investor update on the third quarter. “In the third quarter we closed on a transaction to enter our 17th state in Texas and through the end of the quarter we have built or acquired over 125 stores,” he says.

Casey’s President and CEO, Darren Rebelez, says they like to have a mix of building new stores along with merging or acquiring existing stores. He says acquiring stores is more attractive now as the cost of construction has gone up, so installing or upgrading the kitchen in an existing store is less than the cost to replace the whole store.

“I think we’ve learned how to get our prepared foods into these acquisitions more quickly. Historically this has taken us a long time to do and to the extent that some of these stores that we acquire have some level of kitchen space available our team has gotten really effective at getting equipment in early and getting the food into the stores quicker,” Rebelez says. He says that allows them to gain the advantage from the prepared food sales much quicker than in the past. Rebelez says the acquisitions recently have mostly been competitors with under 100 stores.

“We’re also having discussions on larger potential deals but we just haven’t gotten anything over the finish line yet,” he says. Rebelez says even with the acquisitions, they will still end up building in the neighborhood of 50 new stores this year. Casey’s now has more than 26-hundred stores in 17 states.