In the world of convenience retail, customer expectations are shifting faster than ever. Today’s guests want freshly made food, digital ordering, loyalty perks, and seamless service whether ordering online or in-store.
Casey’s, the third-largest convenience store chain in the U.S., recently decided the time was right to re-think its approach to IT infrastructure in order to support new digital services and innovations. With nearly 2,900 stores spanning 20 U.S. states, Casey’s was looking to upgrade its technology foundation to support everything from pizza kitchens and fuel pumps to digital menu boards and mobile apps.
Instead of relying on outdated, single-purpose systems that were costly to maintain, Casey’s leadership knew it was time for a wholesale IT transformation. Their goal was straight-forward yet ambitious: to future-proof the entire store network while ensuring reliability, scalability, and cost-efficiency.
Casey’s existing infrastructure had barely changed in two decades. Point-of-sale systems, fuel controllers, and other single-purpose devices were expensive to replace and becoming increasingly hard to manage across thousands of locations.
As consumer preferences shifted toward digital engagement, these rigid systems quickly became bottlenecks. Features like online ordering and loyalty programs demanded more connectivity between apps, in-store kitchens, and payment systems. But bolting on new solutions was neither sustainable or practical for a business of Casey’s size.
Replacing all existing hardware was also unrealistic. Casey’s needed a way to extend the life of its existing POS systems and peripherals while building a bridge to a more modern, cloud-enabled environment. And with their stores operating a 24x7x365 basis, downtime simply wasn’t an option.
Scale Computing Reliant Platform™ Edge Computing as a Service: Purpose-Built for Cloud-to-Edge
To solve these challenges, Casey’s partnered with Intel and selected Scale Computing Reliant Platform as the foundation for its next-generation in-store IT infrastructure. The Reliant Platform delivered a cloud-to-edge architecture built on Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, offering a unique combination of resilience and agility. With support for both virtualization and Docker-based containerization, the Reliant Platform enabled Casey’s to:
- Consolidate workloads and run multiple applications on a single edge server.
- Virtualize legacy POS systems so existing card readers, printers, and scanners could be retained.
- Simplify IT management with centralized orchestration that could roll out updates chain-wide in hours instead of weeks.
- Improve observability with real-time monitoring and alerting across POS, fuel, and kitchen systems.
- Remain cloud-agnostic, ensuring agility to operate across AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, or private environments.
From loyalty apps to self-service kiosks, the Reliant Platform gave IT leaders the freedom to innovate without being constrained by legacy hardware.
Within just 10 months, Casey’s rolled out the Reliant Platform Edge Computing as a Service across more than 2,600 stores. This massive undertaking was completed with minimal disruption and the results were undeniable, delivering cost savings, improved reliability, and faster deployment chain-wide:
- Improved efficiency: Centralized deployment reduced rollout times from weeks to hours.
- Lower costs: Virtualization extended the life of legacy hardware while reducing reliance on costly single-purpose devices.
- Greater reliability: High availability design ensured POS, fuel, and kitchen systems stayed online, even during connectivity disruptions.
- Enhanced customer experience: Guests now enjoy faster service, fewer disruptions, and more consistent digital engagement across all channels.
Casey’s story shows how a modern cloud-to-edge approach can not only transform an organization’s IT operations but also elevate the customer experience. Read the full case study to learn more about how Casey’s modernized their IT infrastructure at scale.