How Casey’s Transformed 2,600 Stores with a Modern Cloud-to-Edge Approach
From a single store in small-town Iowa in 1968, Casey’s has grown into the third-largest convenience store chain in the U.S., with nearly 2,900 locations across 20 states. Best known for its reputation as both a trusted fuel provider and a destination for freshly prepared pizza, sandwiches, and bakery items, Casey’s is redefining what convenience retail means in today’s market.
As consumer preferences evolve, the company has embraced digital initiatives such as online ordering and loyalty programs to enhance the guest experience. To support this transformation, Casey’s partnered with Intel and selected Scale Computing’s Reliant Platform™ Edge Computing as a Service as the foundation for its next-generation in-store IT environment.
The Challenge: Complex Operations Hamstrung by Single-Purpose Infrastructure
Like many convenience retailers, Casey’s had to adapt quickly as consumer expectations shifted beyond fuel and packaged snacks to include freshly made food and digital engagement. With operations spanning nearly 3,000 locations, the company faced the dual challenge of supporting complex foodservice operations while maintaining its traditional retail and fueling services. The operational demands were increasing, but the underlying IT infrastructure was largely outdated, with systems that had changed little in two decades.
This legacy environment relied heavily on single-purpose hardware, such as point-of-sale systems and fuel controllers, that were expensive to maintain and difficult to scale. As new services such as digital menu boards, mobile ordering, and online loyalty programs emerged, these systems proved inflexible and unable to keep up with the pace of innovation. The complexity was further amplified by the rise of online ordering, a trend pioneered by quick-serve restaurants and increasingly expected in the convenience retail space. Customers wanted seamless ordering experiences that connected mobile apps, in-store kitchens, and POS systems. Casey’s leadership recognized that meeting these expectations was not simply a matter of incremental upgrades; it required a wholesale shift to a modern IT foundation.
At the same time, the company needed to preserve the value of its existing investments. Replacing every POS device and peripheral across thousands of stores would have been prohibitively costly and disruptive. A solution was needed that could extend the useful life of this hardware while creating a flexible architecture for future innovation. Casey’s leadership also understood that downtime was not an option. With 24x7 operations, interruptions in POS, fuel systems, or kitchen technologies directly impacted both revenue and guest satisfaction. The company needed a resilient, reliable platform that could provide always-on availability while simplifying management for its distributed IT team.
The Solution: A Containerized Edge Solution Built for the Needs of Tomorrow
Casey’s partnered with Intel and selected the Reliant Platform to modernize its in-store IT across more than 2,600 locations. The platform provided a cloud-to-edge architecture built on Intel® Xeon® Scalable processors, designed to handle the unique requirements of convenience retail. With support for both Type 1 virtualization and Docker-based containerization, the Reliant Platform enabled Casey’s to consolidate workloads, run multiple applications on a single server, and virtualize legacy systems while introducing new digital capabilities.
A key advantage was the ability to extend the life of existing POS systems and peripheral devices. By virtualizing POS applications on the Reliant Platform, Casey’s could retain card readers, printers, and scanners rather than replacing them. This approach reduced capital costs, minimized disruption, and created a bridge between the old environment and modern cloud-native services.
The Reliant Platform also provided powerful centralized orchestration and configuration management, enabling Casey’s IT team to deploy updates, patches, and new applications chain-wide in hours instead of weeks. This shift not only improved operational consistency but also allowed Casey’s to deliver new services faster, whether updating digital menu boards, rolling out self-service kiosks, or enabling new loyalty features.
Equally important was the platform’s real-time monitoring and alerting capabilities. By collecting and analyzing operational data across POS, fuel, and kitchen systems, the Reliant Platform gave Casey’s visibility into store performance and the ability to more proactively detect and resolve potential issues. This observability helped reduce downtime, ensure compliance, and improve the guest experience.
The platform’s cloud-agnostic design further ensured their operational agility since Casey’s was not locked into a single provider and could run its central management stack on AWS, Google Cloud, Azure, or a private environment. Combined with an open-source foundation that leverages Debian Linux, Docker, and Puppet, the Reliant Platform provides both reliability and cost efficiency while ensuring long-term adaptability. As CIO Sanjeev Satturu explained, “The technology strategy for our stores is integral to Casey’s growth by providing flexibility to add new technology that will enhance the experience for our guests and ensure uptime and resiliency for our team members who serve them. Moving to edge computing as our tech foundation allows us to grow and evolve our in-store IT systems at scale.”
The Results: Agility, Reliability, and a Future-Ready IT Environment
The deployment of the Reliant Platform delivered transformative results for Casey’s. Within just 10 months, the platform was rolled out across 2,600+ stores, establishing a unified IT foundation that could support both legacy and next-generation applications.
Operational efficiency improved immediately. By consolidating workloads onto a single edge platform, Casey’s reduced reliance on single-purpose appliances and simplified its technology environment. Support costs fell, deployment speed accelerated, and the IT team gained the ability to manage systems centrally rather than through costly and time-consuming store-by-store interventions.
Resiliency also improved. The platform’s high availability design ensured that critical operations like POS, fuel management, and kitchen systems remained online, even during connectivity disruptions. Real-time monitoring and alerting enabled the IT team to respond quickly to issues, reducing downtime from hours or days to minutes and protecting both revenue and customer satisfaction.
For guests, the impact was tangible. Digital services such as online ordering, loyalty programs, and digital menu boards could now be delivered seamlessly across the store network. Customers experienced fewer disruptions, faster service, and more consistent engagement regardless of location.
For Casey’s, the Reliant Platform also created a foundation for long-term innovation. The ability to run containerized applications alongside virtualized legacy systems meant that new digital initiatives could be piloted and scaled quickly. From IoT-enabled energy management to advanced analytics, the company gained the flexibility to experiment and grow without being constrained by its infrastructure.
Ultimately, the Reliant Platform provided exactly what Casey’s needed: a future-ready IT architecture that balanced cost savings with innovation. By embracing a modern cloud-to-edge approach built on Intel architecture, Casey’s not only modernized its operations but also secured the agility and resilience required to compete in the evolving convenience retail sector.