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The beaver is coming. Buc-ee’s, the convenience store chain with the bucktoothed mascot and a devoted following, has plans to open in Oak Creek in early 2027.
While describing Buc-ee’s as a convenience store is technically correct, that’s also like describing a whale shark as a fish. The average American convenience store is 3,460 square feet. The largest Buc-ee’s is 75,593. It’s the largest convenience store in the world, a title it swiped last year from a different Buc-ee’s, which had, in turn, usurped yet another Buc-ee’s. No prize for guessing where the chain is from.
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Arch Aplin III opened the first Buc-ee’s in Lake Jackson, Texas, in 1982, and for almost four decades it existed exclusively in the Lone Star State.
In 2019, Buc-ee’s began expanding across the South. The Oak Creek outpost, currently awaiting final approval, will be the company’s first in Wisconsin and its deepest foray north. A billboard near Kenosha’s Mars Cheese Castle has alerted southbound motorists on I-94 that the next Buc-ee’s was just 469 miles away (in Richmond, Kentucky).
The chain originally intended to put its Wisconsin bridgehead in DeForest, near Madison, but the project has stalled amid debate over funding for a $15 million infrastructure upgrade to accommodate the increased traffic the store would generate.
So what can Wisconsinites expect? Hype, to put it mildly. “People love it. It’s a cult,” says Dan Parsons, the longtime president of the Better Business Bureau of Greater Houston & South Texas.
The appeal? Foremost for many, it’s the spectacle of it all. The Oak Creek store will reportedly have 120 gas pumps (plus EV charging stations) and will fall just a couple of thousand square feet short of the world record. And the chain likes to brag that it has the world’s cleanest restrooms.
While the claim rests on a 2012 award from a business services company that recognized a single location, it’s true that Buc-ee’s restrooms are fastidiously maintained and, naturally, big.
Mainly, though, what Buc-ee’s devotees love is all the stuff they sell. There are T-shirts, travel mugs, beach towels, bobbleheads, pet toys, Christmas ornaments and practically a Walmart’s-worth of other stuff, almost all of it bearing the beaver with the aw-shucks grin.
And the food. Each Buc-ee’s sells barbecue – brisket, sausage, turkey and pulled pork – that’s made in-house. Store bakeries make kolaches, cinnamon rolls and fudge. They have a jerky counter and endless varieties of packaged snacks.
Should Kwik Trip, our revered homegrown convenience chain, be worried? Parsons thinks so: “Your local stores are going to be very unhappy.”
But Buc-ee’s size also means it’s not a quick trip. Getting off the interstate, maneuvering into the Buc-ee’s compound, making your way to one of dozens of gas pumps, and wandering the store aisles might be an adventure, but it’s probably not something most folks will want to do every day.
As Oak Creek resident Amber Juarez puts it, “Buc-ee’s will be close. But Kwik Trip is literally around the corner. Kwik Trip will be where I go most of the time, while Buc-ee’s will be a once-in-a-while thing.”
51
Total locations
100 million+
Annual visitors
75,593
Square feet in the world’s-largest Luling, Texas, store
255
Length, in feet, of the world’s longest car wash, in Katy, Texas
12-14
Hours the in-house brisket is smoked
