By now, Alabama is familiar with the toothy Texas-born beaver smiling over interstates in various parts of the state.

But a mere seven years ago, Lee Lawson was sitting at his desk when Stan Beard showed up carrying beer jerky and beaver swag, plunked it on his desk and announced, “We are building a gas station larger than a Walmart that would hire 70 to 100-plus people and has 120 gas pumps and will not allow a single truck.”

“We looked at him like he had two heads,” recalled Lawson, president & CEO with the Baldwin County Economic development Alliance about his first meeting with Beard, vice-president of real estate with Buc-ee’s.

“Fast forward (to 2019), and some of us were skeptical how they would operate outside of Texas,” Lawson said. “I think the facility in Loxley has given them confidence to expand in Alabama and outside the state of Alabama. In a lot of ways, we’ve been a proving ground for them.”

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Buc-ee’s, a Texas-based institution that started in 1982, opened its first travel station outside the Lone Star State at Interstate 10 and the Baldwin Beach Express on January 21, 2019. It will open its fourth Alabama travel station off Interstate 85 in Auburn on Monday. Once that happens, Alabama will officially become the No. 2 state for Buc-ee’s travel stations outside of Texas.

Expansions continue and new Buc-ee’s are launching beyond the Deep South, where there are travel stations with the red-and-yellow beaver logo in seven states. Travel stations are under development in Missouri, Colorado, Wisconsin, and Virginia.

Venky Shankar, director of research at the Center for Retailing Studies at the Mays Business School at Texas A&M University, said Buc-ee’s expansion is “rapid, relatively speaking” and growing by “one to two locations per year.”

That’s nothing to sneeze at, Shankar said, when considering the massive footprint of a Buc-ee’s: The travel stations are considered the largest convenience stores in the world, ranging from 50,000 to 75,000 square feet in size; gasoline pumps that sprawl out like a farm field, typically ranging over 120 in numbers; bathrooms that are sparkling clean; and plenty of beef brisket, fudge, jerky and other goodies that has helped create a “cult-like” following for the spunky brand.

“Buc-ee’s is a road trip destination, a roadside attraction, so it benefits from being a unique stop on most interstate routes,” said Greg Lindenberg, editor of Convenience Store Petroleum “CSP” News. “And it’s huge. Its sites require large real estate footprints that, to a great extent, do not exist elsewhere.”

Learning about Buc-ee’s

At the Loxley Buc-ee’s, on a given day, the scene is akin to a busy airport terminal with visitors rushing off to the “world’s cleanest” bathrooms or stopping at an electronic kiosk to place a food order before hopping back into their car to continue their road trip.

“It’s almost as big as Mickey Mouse,” said Tucker Dorsey, a former Baldwin County Commissioner. “It’s crazy.”

But a mere seven years ago, Dorsey and fellow commissioner Chris Elliott were unfamiliar with the world of Beaver Nuggets when they sat down with local developer, Joe Corte, at a roadside eatery in Robertsdale for breakfast.

At the time, the talks were about offering tax incentives to lure the company to Alabama. And the commissioners were skeptical.

“He said, ‘I want to talk to you about a tenant coming to Baldwin County,’” said Dorsey, a Baldwin County Commissioner. “He said, ‘it’s convenience store but it’s like a Walmart.’ I said, ‘Joe, I don’t do incentive money for a convenience store.’ He’s like, ‘you got to see this. It’s not like anything you’ve seen before.’”

Elliott, also a county commissioner at the time, recalled, “I was like, ‘we are not giving you an economic incentive for a gas station.’ They were like, ‘it’s a big gas station.’ I said, ‘oh, it’s a truck stop?’ (They said), ‘no it’s not a truck stop.’ I didn’t know what we were getting. They said it had 120 gas pumps. I thought, ‘that’s huge.’”

Few in Alabama knew much about the allure of Buc-ee’s in 2016 and 2017, unless they had traveled through Texas. The company, which remained solely a Texas institution for over three decades, was eyeing a prime spot at Interstate 10 and the Baldwin Beach Express for its first non-Texas travel station.

The site offered a unique opportunity for Alabama: It’s location would be at an intersection that had only existed since 2014, when the Baldwin Beach Express first opened and offered an alternative route for beach-bound motorists than Alabama State Route 59.

Buc-ee’s executives were trying to convince public officials to remove trees along I-10 leading up to their future location, according to Elliott. They were having difficulty in getting a meeting with state officials, including Alabama Department of Transportation Director John Cooper, and were working with the county commissioners to set something up.

Elliott said he and Dorsey traveled to Houston to learn more about the travel stations, and experience one firsthand.

“We spent an hour in one of the stores, had a barbecue sandwich and I had no idea,” said Elliott, still recalling his shock over encountering the bustling travel station for the first time. “I called Cooper and told him, ‘It has 120 gas pumps and no trucks. It’s not a rest stop.’ He said, ‘I never heard of it.’”

Pick-up truck summit

Dorsey said the county officials were trying to connect Buc-ee’s officials, including owner and cowboy-hat-wearing Arch “Beaver” Aplin III, with Cooper and others at ALDOT.

Back in Alabama, the Buc-ee’s executives including Aplin met with Cooper, Elliott, and former ALDOT Southeast Region Engineer Vince Calametti to discuss the future of the site.

The meeting did not take place inside a stuffy office or a government building, but it occurred outdoors over the hood of a pick-up truck near the travel station’s future home at the Beach Express.

“It wasn’t a fancy meeting or at a conference table, it was over the hood of a pickup truck, and we were talking about the plans on how to enter and exit an interstate,” said Elliott.

Buc-ee’s, according to an ALDOT spokesman, wanted to cut trees on the opposite side of the interstate to increase visibility to the future travel station. Cooper then told them they could instead install signage to help with visibility.

“We had this good ole South Alabama meeting, a deal and a handshake to accommodate their interest to make sure they had the visibility they needed,” said Elliott, now a state Senator representing much of Baldwin County.

Buc-ee’s declined to comment for this story.

“There was a concern about westbound traffic not knowing where they are,” Elliott said, adding that the addition of a billboard helped with visibility and was a “much better solution than cutting down a bunch of trees.”

The Loxley Buc-ee’s, four years after their opening, has had few problems with visibility. Though statistics are unavailable on how much revenues individual travel stations bring in, Shankar said it’s likely substantial.

“It could be $100 million to $200 million in economic impact collectively in locations they are in,” he said. “Each Buc-ee’s may employ 200, 300 people. That, in itself, is a good employment generator.”

Annexation and incentives

The allure of that revenue boon was among the reasons why Loxley, shortly after Buc-ee’s opened in 2019, voted to annex the business.

And the incentives for Buc-ee’s followed, even if they did not come from the county commissioners.

Loxley, which was angling on aggressive growth, voted to annex Buc-ee’s. As part of the arrangement, the city council offered the company 37.5% of their sales tax proceeds, and 25% of fuel tax proceeds during each fiscal quarter for 20 years. A fiscal quarter refers to the three-month periods beginning in October, January, April, and July.

Incentives for a Buc-ee’s is nothing new, and agreements are often offered to the company in the cities where they locate. Auburn, for instance, offered sales and fuel tax breaks as part an agreement voted on in 2021 to land a Buc-ee’s. The city, two years ago, estimated the Auburn Buc-ee’s will bring in an estimated $2 million annually in property, sales, use and fuel taxes.

In Loxley, the agreement was arranged by the late Mayor Billy Middleton, who met with Aplin to discuss annexation. Officials argued, at the time, the agreement represented “a good opportunity” for a growing community.

Loxley’s population was already accelerating by the time Buc-ee’s arrive. It was just over 1,600 in 2010, and rose a whopping 127% to 3,710 in the 2020 census. By this year, the population was estimated by the U.S. Census at close to 5,000.

The growth has been so impactful that the Town of Loxley officially became the City of Loxley last year.

“They like being part of a municipality and participating in one,” said Shawn Alves, an attorney who represents the City of Loxley.

As part of the incentive deal, Loxley – which has seen its population and budget grow in recent years – got $25,000 each year from Buc-ee’s for “community development.”

The money goes directly to the city’s General Fund where it is used to support a number of city-wide projects, according to Jonathan Smith, the city’s director of community development. Examples of projects that money has funded includes a comprehensive plan and zoning ordinance rewrite, hiring additional staff, software purchases, design work for the Loxley City Center complex, and the addition of a horticulturist who is overseeing a city-wide beautification project.

Alves, who helped oversee the agreement between Loxley and Buc-ee’s, said he remembers his earliest meetings with Beard that were similar to others in Baldwin County.

“He said, ‘these gas stations are the Disney World of gas stations,’” Alves said. “And he’s right. It’s like going to Disney World. Stan was a straightshooter.”

Said Alves, “I’ll travel (to other parts of the country) and stop off at a fast-food restaurant and see people wearing a Buc-ee’s T-shirt and it’s amazing to me, that people buy a T-shirt from a convenience store. That shows you the brand they have. You don’t see people wearing a Shell Station shirt, or an Exxon shirt. It’s a great business idea.”