9 Convenience Chains Iowans Judge Each Other for Choosing

A 2019 Des Moines Register poll asked Iowans to name the best gas station pizza in the state, and 85% of them gave the same answer.

That’s far from a close vote.

Say a different name out loud at a tailgate, and watch people’s eyebrows go up.

These are the convenience chains Iowans judge each other for choosing.

1. Casey’s General Stores

Casey’s General Stores opened its first store in Boone, Iowa, in 1968, and its pizza is the standard every other convenience chain’s pizza gets measured against.

TheTakeout reported that a 2019 poll found 85% of voters named Casey’s pizza the best in the state, a landslide over every other option.

Order pizza from a different chain in front of the wrong crowd, and somebody’s going to ask what happened.

Casey’s Iowa Footprint, By the Numbers

About 550 Casey’s stores serve a state of roughly 3 million people, a density few chains match anywhere in the country.

Casey’s also sponsors RAGBRAI, the Register’s cross-state bicycle ride across Iowa every summer.

2. Kwik Star

Kwik Star is the exact same chain as Kwik Trip, wearing a different name only in Iowa.

The Zietlow family is widely reported to have renamed its Iowa stores Kwik Star in 1993 to dodge confusion with QuikTrip.

QuikTrip’s name was already close enough to cause mix-ups.

It’s the same milk.

Picking Kwik Star over Casey’s is a loyalty test of a different kind: Regulars point to the bakery case and stores that tend to stay cleaner than the competition.

Out-of-staters just see the name and assume it’s a knockoff.

3. QuikTrip

QuikTrip is a convenience chain running more than 1,250 stores across 23 states, out of its headquarters in Tulsa, Oklahoma.

Only five of those stores sit in Iowa, all of them in the Des Moines metro: Ankeny, Des Moines, Grimes, Urbandale, and West Des Moines.

That’s the whole map.

Picking QuikTrip over Casey’s in that stretch of the metro means picking an Oklahoma chain over the pizza that built Iowa’s gas-station identity.

The same Des Moines Register poll that crowned Casey’s pizza gave QuikTrip just 4% of the vote.

Regulars who stop there anyway will tell you it’s the fountain drinks and the open pumps, not the pizza, that keep them coming back.

4. Git ‘n Go

Git ‘n Go, a Des Moines convenience chain, has stayed headquartered there through 50 years in business.

It runs 41 stores in Iowa and six more just across the Illinois line near the Quad Cities.

No out-of-state buyer touched it.

That’s rarer than it sounds in 2025, the year Iowa’s Kum & Go stores got split between a Utah chain and an Omaha chain.

Choosing Git ‘n Go over a chain that just changed hands is a vote for the pump that didn’t.

Drivers who stick with Git ‘n Go aren’t just picking the closer store.

They’re picking the chain still answering to Des Moines instead of a corporate office in another state.

5. Maverik

Maverik finished converting every former Kum & Go store in Iowa to its brand in mid-November 2025.

The Salt Lake City chain brought BonFire, its made-to-order burrito and pizza program, into every converted store.

A direct challenge to Casey’s.

Choosing Maverik’s BonFire counter over a Casey’s pizza box is now a side to take at the pump, not just a matter of what sign is out front.

Many drivers still default to Casey’s out of habit.

Maverik has to win them over one burrito at a time.

Psst! How Iowa convenience-store loyal are you? Run through this checklist and see where you land.

6. Mega Saver

The Mega Saver chain took over 20 stations, formerly Kum & Go, across Iowa in 2025, in towns from Cedar Rapids to Spirit Lake.

The chain built its name selling cell phones and accessories in Nebraska, not pumping gas.

Not exactly reassuring.

That’s not what the sign used to say.

Once the conversions finish, Mega Saver runs 24 Iowa locations, more than QuikTrip’s 19.

Fueling up at a station with no gas-station history feels different than a chain people have pumped at for decades.

The driver at the next pump tends to notice the switch.

7. Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh

Hy-Vee Fast & Fresh ties its convenience-store pumps to the same Fuel Saver + Perks program Iowans already use inside the grocery store.

Shoppers who stack their points before they fill up save cents per gallon that the driver behind them just paid full price for.

That gap adds up.

Picking Hy-Vee’s pumps over a straight gas chain says you’re playing the loyalty game on purpose.

Whether a grocery-store pump counts as a proper gas-station stop is a question people answer differently.

8. Cenex

Cenex stations across rural Iowa are mostly owned by local farm co-ops, including Key Cooperative, which serves 13 towns in central Iowa from Ames to Grinnell.

Member-owners who sign up get 6 cents off every gallon at the pump, a discount nobody outside the co-op receives.

Nobody else gets that rate.

Skipping the local co-op for a name-brand chain in a farm town can read as skipping the community that owns it.

9. Sinclair

Sinclair, a convenience chain, put its green dinosaur outside Cedar Rapids-area stations after Hawkeye Oil Co. rebranded from Citgo to Sinclair in 2024.

Only five of Hawkeye’s ten local stores got the actual statue, since zoning rules blocked the rest.

Kids notice the difference immediately.

Picking the station with the dinosaur over the station without has become a small badge of honor for parents running errands with kids in the back seat.

Employees at the Marion, Iowa, location have dressed their dinosaur for Halloween and loaned a spare dinosaur out for kids’ birthday parties.

Details like that are what Iowans repeat to friends who’ve never seen a Sinclair up close.

Which Sinclair station gets the dinosaur and which doesn’t is exactly the kind of detail that separates a neighbor from somebody just passing through on the interstate.