Buc-ee’s is expanding in Florida. What’s the big deal? We took a road trip to find out
Buc-ee’s looks like it’s opening a fourth Florida location, this one in St. Lucie County. Miami-Dade and Broward don’t have a Buc-ee’s yet, so the Fort Pierce site would be the closest to South Florida, after Daytona Beach, St. Augustine and Ocala.
To find out what the big deal about the gas station superstore, we hit the road.
Here’s our report for travelers:
Like the first moments of dawn, a beaver breaks on the horizon heading south on Interstate 95. As it draws closer and rises in the sky you can see the buck teeth, the up-turned brim of a cap, a cartoon face encircled by a warm yellow sun.
This is Buc-ee’s, the world’s largest convenience store, a Texas-born phenomenon with a cultlike following.
In addition to the Florida expansion, North Carolina will soon get its first Buc-ee’s, with plans in place for a 72,000square-foot convenience store in Mebane with 120 gas pumps, nearly 700 parking spaces and dozens of toilets.
Like the gas station itself, landing the state’s first Buc-ee’s was no small feat, a saga years in the making that once included a different site in a different county, a public hearing well into the early morning hours and ultimately, finally, the blessing to bring the beaver to town.
So we took a drive to Florence, S.C., the closest to the new North Carolina location, to sample the barbecue, peruse the merch, taste the fudge and flush a toilet or two.
There’s always been love in the convenience store space. The Big Gulps and Slurpees of 7-Eleven are part of pop culture, and fans revere Wawa for its sandwich artistry.
But Buc-ee’s is in a different category. It isn’t a piece of pop culture; it’s a subculture rocketing into the mainstream. There’s no reason to know this, but there’s a giant Buc-ee’s logo on the roof of the building, visible only by plane, drone or satellite.
MORE: What kind of food can you expect at Buc-ee’s in Florida? We hit the road to get a taste
THE WORLD’S LARGEST CONVENIENCE STORE
Buc-ee’s was founded as a conventional convenience store in 1982 by Arch “Beaver” Alpin III.
Today, there are 62 locations, mostly in Texas, but stretching from Colorado to Kentucky to Daytona Beach. Buc-ee’s didn’t venture outside of its home state until 2019, but it seems to be picking up steam. Last year it opened the world-recordholder for the largest convenience store, a 74,000-square-foot rest stop in Sevierville, Tennessee, the gateway to Dollywood.
Standing beside a bronze statue of a beaver, Florence general manager Donald Bradshaw said his Buc-ee’s is curiously different from the ones he knew growing up in Texas.
“It’s a lot busier,” Bradshaw, who has worked for Buc-ee’s for 17 years, said. “I say that because I guess we’re new and the people have loved it and come out to see it. People haven’t experienced something like this. I grew up with it, so I guess you could say I’m spoiled.”
AMUSEMENT PARK MEETS GAS STATION
It can be hard to talk about Buc-ee’s and try to connect the incongruous this and that with bits and pieces of things that already exist.
“Buc-ee’s is hard to
explain, to say the least,” Bradshaw said. “What I would say is it’s like the Disney World of convenience stores. We have a cult following from what I’ve heard, and I can believe that based on how much it’s grown since I’ve started.”
It goes beyond Disney World. Buc-ee’s is like a Cracker Barrel mixed with a Walmart, with the snacks of Trader Joe’s, the merch of a Hard Rock Cafe, the food and trinkets of a state fair — all at a gas station.
There are moments at
Buc-ee’s when a certain suspension of disbelief is needed. Your eyes will see things that don’t necessarily make sense, at least not at a gas station or a convenience store or inter-galactic refueling hub or whatever this beaverland is. People will run from their cars to that bronze beaver statue, crowd around it maybe for the first time, maybe the fiftieth, and take a selfie or beg strangers to snap a photo.
The beaver’s hands shine brighter than the rest of its body, Bradshaw
notes, remaining gleaming from constant touches all day and night.
Buc-ee’s is a pilgrimage, it’s a stop along the way, it’s an in-between that’s become a destination.
The sheer size of Bucee’s, both literally and by the force of its hype, seems to have created a gravitational pull, steering cars off the interstate and into its embrace.
Maybe it’s the newness of Buc-ee’s within the Carolinas, but many travelers we met said they were stopping in for the first time, urged by a crazed friend or curiosity stoked by social media.
Rebekah Rassel and Rebecca Nosbusch took a selfie together before they stepped through the doors.
“We’re Buc-ee’s virgins, I guess,” Rassel said. “I’m a little overwhelmed and excited. We don’t want to get run over.”
BUC-EE’S BATHROOMS, SO YOU CAN ‘POTTY LIKE A ROCK STAR’
The first Buc-ee’s billboard you see once you cross into South Carolina says “Potty like a Rock Star.”
Notorious far and wide, gas station bathrooms are usually good arguments for holding it. But Bucee’s believes its bathrooms are the thing they do best, staffing a team of employees just for these thrones away from home.
The Buc-ee’s bathroom is closer to a Roman bathhouse than a roadside rest stop, with floor to ceiling tiles in two kinds of beige, walls between every urinal and rooms (not stalls) for every toilet.
Though the toilets are plentiful, bathroom lines can get long in the summer months and holidays. But waits are never at a standstill.
Beyond the business, Buc-ee’s has turned its bathroom hallways into art galleries, with scenes like charging horses with windswept manes, stoic cows and vibrantly painted buffalo against a black background. At the entrance to the bathroom is a steer skull encrusted with rhinestones, glittering orange among the beige.
“The bathrooms are really nice, which is a huge plus with kids,” said Tara Brocks of Swansboro. “As a mom, it was really nice to go in there and see a nice clean bathroom.”
This was the second stop at the Florence Bucee’s for the Brocks family, who were in the home stretch of a trip to Florida. They had already put on their newly purchased Buc-ee’s Valentine’s Day shirts, a rosy red tee with a beaver wearing heartshaped glasses and the line, “Buc-ee’s will never break my heart.”
“I’ve always wanted matching shirts and they had them in our sizes, so I said we’re doing it,” Brocks said. “It definitely lived up to the hype.”
EATING AT BUC-EE’S
Within the amusement park side of things, Buc