Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On September 14, 2001, Iowa-based Casey’s General Store officially debuted breakfast pizza across all locations. The unofficial breakfast of the Hawkeye state, the pizza joined an all-star lineup to further extend Iowa’s unapologetic love affair with gas station pizza.
In 1959, Kurvin C. (K.C.) Fish convinced his friend Donald Lamberti to purchase the Square Deal Oil Company station in Boone. After remodeling his new business into a convenience store, Lamberti renamed the business after his friend K.C. Lamberti’s “Casey’s General Store” proved successful. He soon opened a second store in Creston.
Another Casey’s location soon followed in the small town of Waukee (population 1,500 at the time), and Lamberti knew he had a successful business enterprise brewing. By the 1970s, Casey’s boasted 118 locations. In 1983, Lamberti took the company public, and the store introduced donuts. But it wasn’t until the following year, when the store in Corning, Iowa, debuted pizza, that Casey’s truly became an iconic Iowa institution.
Branching out from traditional pizzas with the introduction of the fan-favorite taco, Iowans quickly became consumed with picking up a pizza alongside a tank of gas. Different locations rolled out different pizza innovations, with breakfast pizza debuting in select locations long before the full-chain rollout in 2001. Today, Casey’s serves up breakfast pizza at over 2,400 stores spread across sixteen states. #IowaOTD #IowaHistoryDaily #IowaHistoryCalendar
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