Buc-ee’s, the mega-gas station taking over the Southeast, is a feast for the senses. If Walmart, Wawa, Cracker Barrel, and Bass Pro Shops jointly procreated, it still wouldn’t amount to a Buc-ee’s. It’s a rest stop that people drive hours to visit, just for fun. It’s a gas station with merch drops and famed brisket.
It was founded in Texas in 1982 as a normal convenience store, but in the ensuing decades it’s become anything but. The stores spread first through the Lone Star State and then to Florida, Alabama, South Carolina, and Tennessee, gaining a cult following for their wares ranging from gun cases to picture books, clean, plentiful bathrooms, dozens of gas pumps, garish red-and-yellow branding, and vast footprints. Buc-ees’ Luling, Texas location is the largest convenience store in the world, at 75,593 square feet.
North Carolina is next as the beaver expands his range. Buc-ee’s first attempted to sink its teeth into Efland, an unincorporated community in Orange County, but that plan collapsed under local opposition. The store revamped the idea and, in 2021, announced its next location as Mebane. That, too, has attracted significant opposition from environmental groups concerned about the impact of a mega-station—and its giant underground tanks of gasoline—on the surrounding low-income neighborhoods. Environmental justice advocate Crystal Cavalier-Keck told INDY last year that she feared the long-term impacts of Buc-ee’s on the local community. “When their children get sick with cancer, that’s when it’s too late,” she said.
The Hype Behind the World’s Largest Gas Station
Buc-ee’s, the mega-sized gas station known for its pristine bathrooms, numerous snack options, and cartoon beaver mascot, is expanding across the South. And it’s bringing with it a legion of cultish fans.
January 8, 2026
But the beaver gnaws on: Mebane City Council approved the project in 2024, and the store is slated to open in May 2027. Workers have already begun leveling and grading the 31-acre site at the intersection of I-40 and I-85.
Buc-ee’s elicits a lot of strong feelings, for better or worse. It’s “a bit cult-like, but in a fun way,” as one patron put it to me. What is it about this beacon of late-stage capitalism that gets people so riled up? I took a pilgrimage to the Florence, South Carolina store to find out.
Leave it to Beaver
Originally, I planned to spend an entire 24 hours at Buc-ee’s. This mission felt perfect for a site of such excess. It was also ideal for me, who once challenged myself to spend 12 hours inside a local mall because I was a bored, pre-driver’s license rural teenager, and my best friend and I kept ourselves entertained through absurd feats. But Buc-ee’s quickly derailed my vision for an officially sanctioned press visit: “We are going to politely decline your request,” their press contact said via email. A follow-up inquiry about why elicited no response.
I settled on a more reasonable goal: I’d spend one minute on the premises for every gas pump (120) and one minute for every bathroom stall (54). This worked out to just under three hours. And while it’s a good proxy for what’s coming to N.C., the Mebane location is going to be 20,000 feet bigger than Florence’s.
It was a chilly Wednesday in December, the sun flickering out from behind clouds. The clean, expansive parking lot was bustling. People cycled in and out of the store, sometimes stopping to snap pictures with the bronze beaver statue that stands in front of every Buc-ee’s in the nation.
This wasn’t my first Buc-ee’s rodeo—I’d visited two in Texas as well as the Sevierville, Tennessee location, which was particularly chaotic because it was full of Swifties on their way to the Eras Tour (including myself). But this was my first time intentionally and truly absorbing all that Buc-ee’s has to offer.
My first thought upon crossing the threshold: I could spend a lot more than 3 hours here. Walking in felt like a rollercoaster drop into a brightly lit, colorful, uncanny consumer paradise. You could buy so many products bearing Buc-ee’s eager face: frisbees, blankets, hair bows, coolers, a “gas pump beverage dispenser.” A tea towel reading, “Don’t wait for mañana, try beaver nuggets today.” (The nuggets are another iconic Buc-ee’s product; more on that shortly.) It was almost Christmas, so you could buy a variety of beaver-emblazoned holiday pajamas, sweatshirts, and T-shirts. At the edge of the merchandise section, a giant Buc-ee drove a Buc-ee-branded pickup truck, whose bed was full of hundreds of smaller Buc-ee’s.
For some customers, the merch is the point of the trip. Shannon Lake, who was visiting with her husband, lives in Fayetteville but travels a lot to see her grandkids. Anytime she goes to Tennessee or Florida, she has to stop at Buc-ee’s. She loves the bathrooms, the snack choices, the seasonal throw blankets. She has branded apparel for Christmas, Halloween, and Easter. “I will never stop at another gas station again,” she declared, adding that she and her daughter have previously traveled to South Carolina for the sole purpose of shopping at Buc-ee’s.
Buc-ee’s neophytes too are often impressed by the sheer variety. In the clothing section, I found Anna Hirose, an N.C. State University student who was road-tripping to Savannah. Hirose had an armful of clothing: a onesie for her cousin’s baby, a subtle off-white shirt for her mom, a Bigfoot shirt for her dad. She was impressed that the shirts were crafted from natural fibers and by the intensity of the branding. “They’ve definitely done a lot with the chipmunk,” she said.
“It’s a beaver,” I whispered back.
But Buc-ee’s doesn’t just sell Buc-ee’s-branded stuff—you can buy an impressive if confusing array of other items. Clothing from Grunt Style. Fancy colanders. Geode-emblazoned ox skulls that’ll set you back $400. Cow-hide rugs. “You can get cast iron in there, which you can’t get everywhere,” said Rachel, a woman road-tripping from Virginia to Florida with her best friend who declined to give her last name.
Something To Chew On
The merchandise takes up the front half of the store at the Florence location. The back half is devoted to food, which is also a major draw. Half the travelers I spoke to mentioned Buc-ee’s brisket or its jerky, which takes up an entire wall display. They sell both turkey and beef jerky, flavored with an array of spices: hill country peppered, bohemian garlic, steakhouse, sweet and spicy, ghost pepper.
I don’t eat meat (unless it’s seafood or bugs), so I missed out on this quintessential aspect of the experience. But Buc-ee’s still had a lot to offer. I ate a surprisingly fresh container of cantaloupe, some horseradish-flavored pickle chips that I would honestly love to eat again right now, and several different Buc-ee’s-branded candies: chamoy-flavored peach rings and a bag of “assorted sours” that reminded me of the farmstand sweets of my youth.
Then there are those beaver nuggets, which are not meat but puffed corn tossed in a brown sugar-based concoction. They come in 13 ounce bags that are, of course, emblazoned with everybody’s favorite beaver. Beaver nuggets are popular: you can buy them for an insane markup of $13 on Amazon, compared to under $5 in the store. Many folks I talked to enthused about them, and an employee who saw me browsing jumped in and counseled me to try the original flavor, rather than cinnamon sugar or bold-n-spicy. I didn’t love them. They tasted like extreme kettle corn, and each bite made me feel worse about myself. And yet I couldn’t stop eating them. And I also kind of wish I could eat them right now.
Several of the people I met during my afternoon spoke about executing dangerous traffic maneuvers to make the exit for the store. Greensboro couple Gloria and Zoe Smith were traveling to Florida for a Christmas cruise to the Bahamas when Gloria saw the beacon on I-95. Zoe had never been, so they veered through three lanes of traffic to buy Buc-ee’s Christmas pajamas for karaoke night on the cruise, plus a shot glass and some jerky.
“There’s something for everybody,” Gloria raved.
Another first-timer, Angela Moorehouse, said she was “amazed.” She was already planning a return trip to do her Christmas shopping for jackets, sweaters, and western decor. “There’s anything you want in there,” Moorehouse said, handing me a candied pecan to try.
For all the fun and kitsch, Buc-ee’s does offer something serious to travelers: a sense of safety. Several women I spoke to mentioned the well-lit, crowded parking lots and clean, secure bathrooms as a major plus when traveling alone (unlike the oft-deserted South of the Border several exits north, a large portion of which is now up for sale).
Justin Mack, a cowboy-hat-wearing electrician from Aberdeen, North Carolina who travels all around the Southeast for work, said that Buc-ee’s makes his job a lot faster. It’s a one-stop shop for gas, snacks, a cigar, and bathrooms where his service dog, Petey, won’t eat anything disgusting.
Toward the end of my visit, I started to fall into a daze that made me glad I wasn’t staying for a whole day. I was both wired and drowsy from the snack food, the bright lights, the Christmas music, the intense colors: much like how I felt after my 12 hours in the mall. (I was also glad because despite everything Buc-ee’s offers, it has no customer seating of any kind.) Outside, as a car alarm blared right next to us, I spoke with the first Buc-ee’s naysayer I’d encountered. Mark Rebovich, a New Jerseyan who travels to Savannah several times a year, said he and his wife usually stop at this Buc-ee’s.
“The first time you go, you say, ‘Oh my God, this is fantastic,’” said Rebovich. “The second time, ‘This is good.’ Then it’s ‘OK.’ Then it’s, ‘OK, do we have to stop at Buc-ee’s?’” He can understand why some North Carolinians don’t want the mega-store on their territory. There’s a lot going on.
And yet, as I pointed out, he’d stopped on this trip. “I’m addicted to the banana pudding,” he admitted. Another car alarm joined the ongoing cacophony of the first, and I complained about the noise. I should have expected it, Rebovich told me. “You’re at Buc-ee’s,” he said. “You don’t know what’s gonna happen next.”
Not long after, I said my goodbyes to the truly very clean bathrooms and hopped in my car to head back north. (I drive an electric car, and they also offer on-site charging—but that means I didn’t get to try out the gas pumps.) As I crossed the border and the Buc-ee’s haze lifted from my brain, I started to feel a bit bad about how hard I’d fallen for the store. The North Carolina Environmental Justice Network recently released a study on the harm caused by places like Buc-ee’s: living near a gas station increases the chance of childhood leukemia. Underground gas storage tanks can leak, permanently damaging soil and water.
Huge gas stations also depress local property values. They’re easy to love when you’re just passing through, but can be distressing and dangerous for the people who have to live next door.
These are the kinds of problems I usually bemoan. Knowing that, why did I, and so many others, still find Buc-ee’s delightful? As I pondered this question, I realized I disagreed with Rebovich. Buc-ee’s isn’t beloved because anything could happen there. It’s venerated because once you’ve been to a Buc-ee’s, you know exactly what you’re going to get.
You’ll find wild products, wacky foods, brass beaver statues, and you are guaranteed to find pretty much the same ones, everywhere, across a growing swath of the nation. The store promises whimsy and ecstatic, campy consumerism, but it’s boxed in by strict parameters. In the age of the dying mall (that one from my childhood is slated for demolition this spring), it only makes sense that Buc-ee’s is ascendent: it scratches that same old itch.
As I was reporting this story, I saw a meme featuring a picture of the Buc-ee’s mascot with the caption, “In thousands of years, archaeologists will think we worshipped a brass beaver.” And the thing is, they’d be right.