When Failure is Not an Option

DARREN REBELEZ

CEO OF CASEY’S GENERAL STORES

Darren Rebelez had been president and chief executive officer of Casey's General Store for nine months when the COVID-19 pandemic put his skills and leadership style to the test.

No one had been through an experience like this before said Rebelez, who came to the Iowa-based company from International House of Pancakes where he was president. Casey’s situation was especially challenging because it is an essential business and deeply embedded in many upper South and Midwest communities.

"Over half of our 2,300 stores are in towns of 5,000 people or less – rural communities, small towns and small cities – where Casey's is the grocery store, the coffee shop, the pizza restaurant," Rebelez said. "So we needed to keep operating our stores and the distribution centers and we had to quickly adjust to keep all our people safe.”

A West Point graduate and Gulf War veteran, the Casey's CEO recognized that in this high stakes mission failure was not an option. Rebelez assembled a task force even before the pandemic shutdown began. "To me it is all about the team and bringing the team along and using the strengths of the team to get things done," he said. Casey's quickly got its stores the right personal protec- tive equipment, and changed processes to keep people safe. Casey's performed very well through the entire pandemic and continued to advance its strategic plan. As a result, the company has experienced a very low rate of infections, severe COVID cases or deaths, Rebelez reported.

Running thousands of convenience stores during a crisis was hardly what

Rebelez envisioned while growing up as the son of police officer in San Diego. What he was doing was acquiring a good work ethic from his family and learning some retail skills from his grandfather, a Mexican immigrant who had a successful barbershop on the ninth floor of a bank building.

With no signs or social media, his grandfather grew his business by word of mouth. "Everybody who was anybody went to him to get their hair cut because he did such a good job," Rebelez said, and even when he retired some customers showed up at his kitchen to have their hair cut.

Rebelez learned there are a lot of ways to build brand loyalty, but rule number one, he said, is that if you must first take care of the customer.

Nudged by his father, he attended the U.S. Military Academy and got a Bachelor of Science. He later earned an MBA from the University of Houston. After West Point, he served as an infantry officer in the US Army, gaining valuable leadership skills that he carried into civilian life.

His first stop after the Army was serving as a store manager at a Kentucky Fried Chicken (KFC), a big step for someone who washed dishes at a San Diego Zoo restaurant as a teenager. At the invitation of a former KFC boss, he joined a convenience story company and worked in the food program. Other career stops included Exxon Mobil and 7-Eleven. Some of his moves were lat- eral, but involved different experiences that helped to grow his overall executive skillset.

"I always encourage people," he said, "don't be afraid of challenging yourself and getting out of your comfort zone a little bit because that is how we all grow.”

For Rebelez, the "big three" elements in achieving success start with "you have to get results – stakeholders expect those results. How results are obtained is very important, he said, and that involves building the right culture and team work. "I want people to feel good about the place they work and the relation- ships they have," he said, "and part of this is building up the people themselves, and helping them to grow their careers and be successful in their own right."

During the early days of the pandemic, Rebelez visited many of the Casey's stores, just to be present with the people, to see how they were feeling, and hear their concerns. He also wanted them to know that they are not alone and that the whole company was there to support them every step of the way. Looking ahead, Rebelez said it is important for Casey’s to make life better for its communities and guests every day. Delivering on this purpose relies on four basic strategies.

"We are reinventing our guests experience, he said, and that includes its merchandising and the use of digital to connect with our guests, Rebelez said.

Second, Casey's is creating capacity to invest in the business through efficiencies.

A third strategy is to grow the store base, he said, with tremendous room to grow beyond the company’s current 16 states.

The fourth and most important of these strategies, Rebelez said, is to in- vest in the company's people and culture to be able to execute on the three other strategies.

For more Latinos to advance to rele- vant positions in the corporate world he advocates exposing more students in high school and college to what is pos- sible. Rebelez likes to tell young people, Latinos in particular, that if they ultimately want to run the company, they need to work at the core of that business and have profit and loss responsibilities. "This is where senior leaders come from," he said.

Rebelez’ personal passions include competing in triathlons as well as collecting and drinking fine wines from California, France and South America. And, heloves the convenience store business. "It is a fun, evovling industry and Casey’s is leading the way," he said