The origin story of Buc-ee’s sounds like it came right out of the movies. You can see the butcher chop up meat for the brisket and you can smell the candied pecans still warm from the oven. Cranberry pecan chicken salad croissants. And, yes, much of this merch contained the smiling face of the Buc-ee’s beaver.Īnd if you want a hot meal? Well, there are dining options that, rather than being a single restaurant or two like you’d see in any other big travel stop, you have essentially a food court. There was an entire display for Friends merchandise when I went, and another for cowboy-style belts. Among the many things you can buy are T-shirts, sweatpants, caps, underwear, exercise clothes, shoes, pajamas, candles, toys, wall decor, cutting boards, cast-iron pans, cookbooks, soaps, and magnets. The fact that Buc-ee’s has shopping carts is not an accident. There’s even an entire wall dedicated to varieties of jerky. The selection of food is bigger than many small grocery stores, including everything from nuts, protein bars, chips, and other gas station snacks to dehydrated fruit and an entire carnival’s worth of candy. You could buy your entire wardrobe at the store, as well as all your kitchenware – including a $1,000 smoker.
The store was as packed as Times Square when I went, and yet there was nary a line for a gas pump nor a bathroom stall.īuc-ee’s has an almost Costco-esque variety of merchandise. This particular Buc-ee’s had 120 gas pumps and nearly as many urinals in the men’s room. If this holds true, then Buc-ee’s is extremely Texan. But I was awfully curious about what could be so great about a gas station that it felt the need to announce itself 60 miles away.Įverything is bigger in Texas, goes the conventional wisdom. Despite being a marketer myself, I’m not immune to this rule. It takes multiple impressions to get someone to take action after seeing an ad for your store. Top two reasons to stop at Buc-ee’s: #1 & #2. So I didn’t think much of it.īut then I saw another. I am living, after all, in the hometown of “ See Rock City” whose advertisements stretch from Texas to North Carolina, Ohio to Georgia. I’m no stranger to seeing billboards for places far away. Weird marketing move, I thought, but only briefly. It was advertising Buc-ee’s, a gas station about an hour away. “If you know you know.” So said the billboard in yellow block capitals on a stark black background as I was passing through my hometown of Chattanooga, Tennessee.
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