The United States of America is famous for its regional consumer chains: Everywhere in the country seems to have its own Piggly Wiggly or Kroger or WinCo.
Throughout much of the south there's a beaver-themed convenience store chain known as Buc-ee's. The fellow who founded it is named Arch "Beaver" Aplin III, which is a pretty colorful origin story. But the chain isn't just known for its whimsically named founder; it's also known for building multiple locations consisting of tens of thousands of square feet.
Lately the company has been embarking on a truly staggering quest to outdo itself like every few months:
For now, the largest convenience store in the world is the Buc-ee's location in New Braunfels, measuring a little over 66,000 square feet. But Buc-ee's recently revealed that a new store coming to Sevierville, Tennessee, would take that title. However, it wasn't long before Buc-ee's topped itself by announcing the world's largest convenience store would be a Buc-ee's planned for Johnstown, Colorado.
Got that? The company is breaking its own world record like every few months. But—because it's Texas—the chain is going even bigger and badder than all of that:
Later this year, though, Buc-ee's will start building what it now says will be its largest store — and, therefore, the world's largest convenience store — in its home state of Texas. The iconic Lake Jackson-based chain plans to replace its existing store in Luling, nearly 45 miles southeast of Austin, with a more than 75,000-square-foot location. The new Luling store will beat the new Tennessee and Colorado stores by roughly 1,000 square feet.
Yeah, 75,000 square feet is...
I mean, the average Walmart Supercenter is about 180,000 square feet. So this new Buc-ee's will be just under half the size of a Walmart. For a "convenience store," that's really big.
I mean, the current largest store in the lineup is so big that they make "walkaround" videos of it for YouTube:
It's so big that they sell deep-fryers in the front vestibule.
It's a big store and they're only building them bigger and bigger. Experts predict that soon the entire state of Texas will be just one large Buc-ee's!
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