DeliMart stores closing in Iowa City, opening as Casey’s

IOWA CITY — DeliMart, five locally owned convenience stores in the Iowa City area, permanently closed over the weekend and will be reopening as Casey’s General Stores.

“Thank you for your business for the last 37 years,” reads a sign posted on the door of the DeliMart at Lower Muscatine Road and First Avenue in Iowa City.

Casey’s is buying the five locations.

DeliMart’s employees will be offered a role at Casey’s, Casey’s spokeswoman Katie Petru said in an email Monday.

Brothers John and Frank Moreland opened the first DeliMart in 1985 on Highway 1 in Iowa City.

“To make a long story short, we decided to build a convenience store so he could run it,” John Moreland said of his younger brother.

A few years later, in 1988, the two opened another store on Mormon Trek Boulevard, John Moreland said. In the following years, four more stores, and a car wash, opened in Iowa City and Coralville.

The sixth location was sold, he said, leaving four DeliMarts in Iowa City and one in Coralville.

Frank Moreland bought the stores from his brother in 2005.

“We created the image from scratch,” John Moreland told The Gazette. “We had a lot of ideas from other stores and stuff like that. We just came up with the concept and all that.”

Frank Moreland, the majority owner in the business, died at age 59 in November 2021 from complications of COVID-19, according to his obituary.

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