Casey’s is stealing pizza share from Pizza Hut, report says

Casey’s is becoming a larger threat to Pizza Hut in the places where customers make fast, low-friction food decisions: the gas stop, the late-night run, the easy carryout trip. The convenience-store chain says it now operates nearly 3,000 stores in 19 states, with about two-thirds in towns of 20,000 people or fewer, and it has built pizza into a core part of its food business since 1984.

That matters for Pizza Hut workers because the competition is no longer just the chain across town. Casey’s says it has about 47,000 team members, roughly 10.5 million Casey’s Rewards members and about 766 million guest transactions a year as of April 30, 2026. Its basket is broader than Pizza Hut’s: fuel, snacks, beverages and pizza can all be sold in one stop, which gives Casey’s an edge on quick dinner missions and impulse orders.

The scale is showing up in the numbers. Restaurant Business reported on June 10, 2026 that Casey’s has grown its footprint by nearly 50% over the past 10 years and reached roughly 2,900 locations in 19 states. Technomic data cited in that coverage showed Casey’s sales rose 10.5% in 2024 to $1.5 billion. Casey’s also says it was founded in 1968 in Boone, Iowa, and has kept pushing pizza with breakfast pizza, introduced in 2001, and thin crust, added in 2023.

For Pizza Hut managers, that means the fight is increasingly about convenience, speed and value at the store level. A customer who picks up pizza while buying gas may never think of it as a chain switch, but those occasions add up. For kitchen crews, the pressure is on freshness and ticket speed. For delivery drivers, a growing slice of pizza demand may be getting diverted before an order ever hits the make line.

The competitive backdrop is already shifting inside Pizza Hut. On June 16, 2026, Yum! Brands said it had agreed to sell Pizza Hut for $2.7 billion after a strategic review that began in November 2025. Yum said Pizza Hut Ex-China will go to LongRange Capital and Pizza Hut China to Yum China Holdings. The company also said Pizza Hut will close 250 underperforming U.S. units under its Hut Forward strategy, after U.S. store sales fell 3% in the fourth quarter of 2025.

That pressure is not unique to Pizza Hut. Technomic data cited by Restaurant Business showed that 15% of convenience-store visits in the third quarter of 2025 were lost quick-service occasions, meaning shoppers considered a fast-food meal and chose a c-store instead. Casey’s fuel margins widened to 41 cents per gallon in March, giving the chain another buffer as it keeps selling pizza alongside the rest of the stop.