An economist and a business reporter walk into a Buc-ee’s…
An economist and a business reporter walk into a Buc-ee’s…
It says a lot about the enormity of the Buc-ee’s gas station in Katy, Texas, off Interstate 10 that when you park in front of what Guinness World Records deemed the world’s longest car wash, it doesn’t particularly stand out.
So many aspects of the beaver-themed chain of supermarket-size convenience stores embody excess.
“It was overwhelming,” said University of Houston economist Dietrich Vollrath, recalling his first time walking into a Buc-ee’s. “The scale of the whole experience is insane.”
The Texas giant, known for its logo — a small, red-capped, buck-toothed beaver staring up into the abyss — has become an interstate phenomenon as locations pop up in the South. With well over 100 million travelers hitting the road this holiday season, many drivers will be holding off their pit stops for this spacious, clean gas station that has become a destination in its own right.
The Buc-ee’s in Katy stretches the length of a football field and features about 120 gas pumps.
Vollrath and I walk through sliding doors past checkout counters on either side of us. We’re hit with bright lights, warm air and the smell of roasted pecans.
The store boasts a barbecue station and made-to-order food, wide aisles, tchotchkes, camping gear, home goods and children’s toy sections, hundreds of prepackaged snack and drink options and racks of seasonal merchandise sporting the bucktoothed logo.
We stare, gobsmacked at the sheer volume of beaver-branded stuff at just one Christmas display: socks, snow globes, flannel pants and more.
“There’s a whole tree full of little, tiny stuffed Buc-ee’s ornaments and Buc-ee’s Christmas insulated cups that go with your set of other Buc-ee’s insulated cups that you presumably have from other holidays,” Vollrath says. His daughter likes to collect Buc-ee’s T-shirts, which are constantly being redesigned so every time you walk into the gas station, there’s new merch to buy.
But it wasn’t altars of plush beavers or T-shirts that got Vollrath’s family coming back again and again.
“The bathrooms are nice and huge and clean, and the food is actually good,” he says.
This economist is partial to the breakfast tacos and the turkey and brisket sandwiches — which are warm, wrapped in tin foil and laid out in front of dudes in cowboy hats who you can watch chopping up cooked meats.
“We stopped every time after that. I don’t think we stopped at another gas station,” he says, “I can’t tell you the last time we actually got gas here.”
He guesses he spent $1,000 a year on Buc-ee’s when his family was traveling a lot for sports. He brings up the convenience chain to his econ students when he talks about innovation.
“God bless them,” he says. “They turned a gas station into a place people go on purpose.”
He says it makes a lot of sense that Texas would spawn such a truck stop (which, notably, does not actually allow 18-wheelers at its locations).
“It’s like, we’re gonna do it, but we’re gonna do it 10 times bigger than you thought it was possible to do it,” Vollrath says.
In Texas, Buc-ee’s caters to intercity travelers, with locations that are concentrated on highways outside some of the fastest-growing metros in the United States: Houston, Dallas, San Antonio and Austin.
“There’s a million people on the road all the time. If you can capture a little piece of that, it makes sense,” he says.
While some may prefer a quaint diner or a less crowded stop, albeit a less clean one, Buc-ee’s embodies a sanitary corporate vibe that evokes another rodent-themed enterprise: Disney theme parks.
Like Disney, Buc-ee’s is scrubbed, efficient and friendly. The store lights are big and bright, cameras are everywhere and shelves are well-stocked and organized.
“You never see a mess at Disney. You never have trouble at Disney,” Vollrath says. “These guys kind of operate on that same principle.”
Buc-ee’s is maintained by hustling, red-shirted staff guided by a strict corporate culture — no tattoos, no cellphones, no showing up late.
One former Buc-ee’s employee, Linda King, said employees follow a list of 10 commandments, and if you break three of them, they give you the boot.
“Cross a corporate line and they’ll eat you for lunch, but other than that, they’re really neat people to work for,” she said.
That’s where pay comes into play. Starting wages at the Katy location were advertised at $18 an hour, roughly $5 more than the average for cashiers in Texas.
“Econ has a whole theory about efficiency wages,” Vollrath says. “You get what you pay for, essentially. I’m going to pay you a lot, and then it becomes easier for [workers] to live up to those commandments or those standards.”
Buc-ee’s has outgrown Texas and expanded to Alabama, Georgia, Florida, Kentucky, South Carolina, Tennessee and Missouri. It’s planning a store in Colorado.
But for those of us from here — Buc-ee’s is still a Texas thing.
Stories You Might Like
There’s a lot happening in the world. Through it all, Marketplace is here for you.
You rely on Marketplace to break down the world’s events and tell you how it affects you in a fact-based, approachable way. We rely on your financial support to keep making that possible.
Your donation today powers the independent journalism that you rely on. For just $5/month, you can help sustain Marketplace so we can keep reporting on the things that matter to you.
