What is a Buc-ee’s?

The Buc-ee’s origin story is about as hometown Texas as it gets.

Arch “Beaver” Aplin III grew up visiting his grandparents in Harrisonburg, Texas, where they owned a small mercantile known for farm fresh produce and cured meats from animals his grandpa raised. In 1982, when Aplin was 23 years old, he bought a plot of land for $52,800 at a four-way intersection a few towns over in Lake Jackson. He built a small mercantile of his own and called it Buc-ee’s. The interior was adorned with brass ceiling fans and extra elbow room — 3,000 square feet compared with the industry standard of 2,400.

These days, the industry standard for travel stops and gas stations is 3,000 square feet, while the average Buc-ee’s is upward of 50,000.

Last summer, Buc-ee’s opened a 74,707 square foot store in Sevierville, Tennessee, which stripped the “world’s largest convenience store” title from the Buc-ee’s in New Braunfels. When the Johnstown location opens, it will be tied for first — but only for six months, when the company’s Luling, Texas, location finishes a remodel that will nudge the store over the 75,000-square-foot mark. This means by summer, Buc-ee’s will have the first-, second-, third- and fourth-largest convenience stores in the world. But who’s counting? Buc-ee’s is.

Despite the massive footprint of its stores and oversized cultural presence, Buc-ee’s doesn’t even crack the top 100 in terms of number of stores in the U.S. The nation’s leader, 7-Eleven, has more than 12,000 stores. The Western-themed Maverick has about 400 stores nationally, the merch-heavy Kum & Go also nears 400, and Love’s Travel Stops, which shares a color scheme and emphasis on clean bathrooms with Buc-ee’s, operates more than 600 stores. Buc-ee’s, on the other hand, has 47 stores — soon to be 48.

So, what is Buc-ee’s? “We’re a family travel center that’s gonna have something inside of our store for every person in your vehicle,” Smith, the director of operations, said in an interview with The Sun, then added: “It’s overwhelming.” And he meant it in a good way.

The most commonly cited features of the massive convenience store are the beef jerky wall, the beaver nuggets (a brown sugar coated corn puff) and the remarkably clean bathrooms. But the energetic center of every Buc-ee’s is the Texas Round Up, a circular deli counter where the fresh brisket hits the board and the sandwiches are dished out. This is Randy Pauly’s domain.


Buc-ee’s turns a necessity into an adventure

Buc-ee’s turns what would be a quick trip anywhere else into mid-road trip adventure, said Jeff Lenard, spokesperson for the National Association of Convenience Stores (NACS).

Buc-ee’s provides those necessities — food, fuel, restrooms — in such overwhelming quantities that a trip might extend a drive by 30 minutes to an hour, Lenard said. Its biggest store in Sevierville, Tennessee, is also the world’s largest convenience store at 74,707 square feet — almost 30 times the size of the industry average of 2,500 square feet, per NACS. It advertises its pristine bathrooms for hundreds of miles along interstates and delivers, too — Buc-ee’s bathrooms have won awards for their otherworldly cleanliness. And its food selection is more comparable to a Trader Joe’s than a vending machine, with a bakery, an entire wall of bagged jerky of varying flavors and a brisket station manned by employees in straw hats who holler every time a new hot slab of beef is ready for chopping.

“That’s the great innovation of Buc-ee’s,” said Eric Benson, a journalist and Texas transplant who wrote about Buc-ee’s path to “world domination” for Texas Monthly in 2019. “It took this thing people have to do, which is stop on these 200-mile car trips between cities, and make it into just a little bit of an experience.”

The evolution of Buc-ee’s into a Texas-sized gas station superstore with a cult following started off slowly, Benson wrote. Arch “Beaver” Aplin opened the first Buc-ee’s in 1982, in the small town of Lake Jackson, Texas. That first store was only 3,000 square feet and offered a few gas pumps and a modest selection of snacks, though it was built with brass ceiling fans and cedar wall accents for a slightly more upscale feel on the inside, wrote Benson. It wasn’t until 2012, when Aplin opened a 56,000-square-foot Buc-ee’s in Bastrop, a small city 30-plus miles outside of Austin, that the chain became known for its massive highway stops.

And in the 11 years since, as it’s expanded beyond the largest state in the lower 48, Buc-ee’s has become a must-stop, one-stop-shop for road trippers who want to do their business and grab a meal with the promise of quality.

“Buc-ee’s is a place where you get to see a real cross-section of society,” Benson told CNN. “Everyone drives. And everyone who’s driving has to stop somewhere to fill up their gas, go to the bathroom and get something to eat. Buc-ee’s is kind of the best place to do it.”

Don’t underestimate the power of a clean bathroom

Convenience stores across the country may tout their toilets’ cleanliness on billboards. But most of them don’t have dozens of stalls like Buc-ee’s does, nor do they advertise their facilities as “world famous.”

But the bathrooms at Buc-ee’s are the real deal, fans say. The Reeses told CNN that from the outside, it’s easy to assume based on the line of dozens of cars waiting for their chance to explore Buc-ee’s, one might expect the wait for a bathroom stall to be interminable. But one would be wrong, they said — “there are almost more stalls than gas pumps!”

Bathrooms are the “most important” component of the convenience store experience to nail if a business wants repeat customers, Lenard said. They’re often a customer’s first stop, and if the restroom is filthy, that customer is more likely to run back to the comfort of their car than wander the store for a few minutes afterwards. But if they’re pristine, like Buc-ee’s claims its bathrooms are, then that impressed patron’s curiosity is piqued, and they might spend more time perusing.

“They are so clean you could eat a sliced brisket sandwich off of them,” the Reeses told CNN, though they wouldn’t exactly recommend noshing on brisket in the bathroom.

At the biggest Buc-ee’s stores, there are countless aisles for customers to get lost in. There’s seasonal merchandise that dresses the Buc-ee’s beaver in a Santa costume or throws his gaping maw on a tie-dye T-shirt, along with far more expensive fare — Lenard said he’s spotted a gas grill worth more than $1,400 on sale at Buc-ee’s.

“It starts with the bathroom,” Lenard said. “Stellar bathrooms can sell an awful lot of product.”


Why is Buc-ee's so popular? Let's start with the restrooms.

After buying gasoline, 1 out of 5 people use restrooms, Lenard says. For travelers, that means "the bathroom is literally the front door," he says.

"You start there, at the restroom," Lenard says. "Your perception of the store is tied to what the bathroom looks like. If it's good, you're going to shop. If it's not, you're going to leave."

Buc-ee's restrooms are clean – and large. The store on I-35 in New Braunfels, Texas, has 33 urinals and 50 full-door toilet stalls, according to the Washington Post. Employees clean restrooms constantly.

"It's a big deal to them," Villareal says. "It's what they built their name on, having clean restrooms."

In 2012 the New Braunfels store won the "America's Best Restroom Award," from Cintas, a cleaning supplies company. Buc-ee's has "some of the most spotless loos in the Lone Star State," Cintas said.

Buc-ee's are big – but how big are they?

There are 47 Buc-ee’s locations across the U.S., 34 in Texas and 13 in other states. All of them are open 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Previously the largest travel center, in Sevierville, Tennessee, is 74,707 square feet, about 23% larger than a football field. It has 350 employees.

Spread over 75,000 square feet, the new store in Luling Texas has dethroned the Buc-ee's store in Sevierville, Tennessee as the largest ever Buc-ee's outlet. By comparison, the average size of a Walmart Supercenter is 179,000 square feet.

Buc-ee's are busy places. "There's always a ton of people there, but everybody seems to be getting where they're going," Villareal says. "You don't have to wait too long for something. It speaks volumes to the efficiency of the place."

Buc-ee's is expected to add more locations, including those listed below. Buc-ee's has not confirmed all these locations, which have been reported by local news sources.

Buc-ee's tends to favor sites in less-populated areas on well-traveled interstates, Lenard says.

"But even if Buc-ee's announces today they're coming to a town near you, it'll be several years before it becomes reality," he says. "There's a large amount of work that goes into the buildings, highway ramps and infrastructure."

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