March 3, 2025 • 30 mins
On this episode of Our American Stories, if you’ve never been to a Buc-ee’s, it’s a good bet that you will soon enough. Beaver Aplin built his massive convenience chain into a Texas empire and his tactics are translating outside the state. Here to tell the story is Eric Benson, the man who wrote the definitive story for Texas Monthly about Buc-ee’s and its founder, Arch “Beaver” Aplin.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:10):
And we continue with our American stories. If you've never
been to a BUCkies, and I pity any of you
who haven't, it's a good bet that you will soon enough.
Beaver Applin built his massive convenience chain into a Texas empire,
and his tactics are translating outside the state. Here to
(00:30):
tell the story is Eric Benson, the man who wrote
the definitive story for Texas Monthly about BUCkies and its founder,
Arch beaver Applin. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
BUCkies is a Texas phenomenon. It is a gas station.
The kind of industry standard has been at a normal
gas station convenience store is twenty four hundred square feet.
The large BUCkies travel centers are getting close to eighty
thousand square feet. You walk into a BUCkies, it feels
(01:08):
a little more like walking into almost a wal Mart
in terms of you walk in, you can't see the
other end. Instead of hot food that's sitting in under
heat lamps that was prepared, who knows when they have
a big kind of.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Island in the middle of the store.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Half of it is a team that's preparing barbecue and
barbecue sandwiches. In the morning, they're preparing breakfast tacos. On
the other side, they're roasting nuts and making these things
called beaver nuggets, which are almost a combination between a
potato chip and a French fry. They have a full
deli area with a very large kitchen. Instead of a
(01:56):
little display of beef jerky, they have walls of their
own house brand of every kind of flavor and stripe
you could imagine. I know Beaver is a fan of
Beaver is the CEO of BUCkies. He turned me onto
the Bohemian garlic beef turkey. So it's this sort of
(02:17):
food emporium. The bathrooms are the size of bathrooms. They're
actually larger in bathrooms at an NFL stadium. People are
cleaning them twenty four hours a day. The gas at
BUCkies is cheap. It's kind of the cheapest gas you'll
find because they want you to stop, and they want
you to come in, and they want you to spend
(02:38):
money in the store. It's a lost leader for them,
as it is I think for most gas stations, but
it really is for them, and people do spend a
lot of money in the stores.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
BUCkies has everything.
Speaker 5 (02:48):
It's a mall, it's a funeral home, it's a football stadium.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
As soon as you walk in, have you have a
smelt love being made?
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Do you know how that smell when you get into it?
And is real passionate?
Speaker 3 (02:59):
And I forgot I can't for gas. And I'm pretty
sure I came to Buckets with my mommy.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
If anybody see or find my mommy in now, please
hit me up on Facebook.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
I'm sure now. And I think that was having church
service at one point. It's that buck who.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Owns Bucky's got to be a conglomery, got to be
a record label.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
So the night probably all own Buck's at this point.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
And the story of how that thing, these giant travel
centers came to exist is the story of a business
that grew very very slowly.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
He's a very interesting business story.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Especially today that I think we're familiar now, especially with
sort of startup culture and Silicon Valley venture capital culture.
Someone coming in with an idea, getting a ton of
money from venture capitalists, raising rounds of funding, rounds of funding,
and which of course they're giving away equity in their
(03:51):
businesses over time, and these things grow very very fast,
very very quickly, become very very big, and sometimes they
really hit and they become Facebook, Meta Google, and sometimes
they flame out. First Bucky started in nineteen eighty two.
For the first twenty years of the store's history, they
(04:15):
were almost entirely in Brazoria County, which is a county
in southeast Texas on the Gulf Coast, which is where
Beaver Applan, the founder of BUCkies, is from.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
I grew up in a family. My dad was an entrepreneur.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
He started out as a school teacher and then ended
up started building houses and doing developments, residential and lack
commercial development.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
So you know, I grew up in.
Speaker 5 (04:39):
A family that was wired that way, and my mom
did the books for the family business, and my dad
ran the business, and I worked in the business, and
my brother worked in the business when we were young,
you know, summer jobs kind of things. We grew up
like that, and so did not grow up in the
communion store business though. Grew up in the construction business.
(04:59):
But did grew up in an entrepreneurial family. So it
was fun and I don't know, it just kind of
made sense for me to pursue my own thing.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
So when I got out of college, I wanted to
build tall buildings.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
I mean, I graduated with a degree from Texas A
and M University, a construction science building construction degree, and
so I wanted to build tall buildings. And my first
job that I got offered was contingent on the company
getting the bid to build the engineering building on the
(05:31):
Texas A and M campus, and I put all my
eggs in that basket. But what I didn't trump template
was they didn't get the bid, and so I found
myself just graduating without a job, which was a bit
stressful for me, if you will. So I worked a
little while in my dad's business, and I just got
this hair brain idea said I'm going to build a
convenience store.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
My grandpa had a small.
Speaker 5 (05:54):
Town general store, if you will, in a little town
in Louisiana, and I remember being a kid going in
that little general store and wishing I could run the
rich or they never would let me, but I always
wished I could. So you know, I found myself with
that a real job that I was wanting to do
without the career I had planned on, and I just
kind of pivoted and decided I was going to build
(06:16):
a communience store.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
So there you go.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
They grew the business.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
It was profitable, Beaver took on a partner, a guy
named Don Wassik, and the two of them became fifty
to fifty owners in the business, which they still are today,
and they got the idea over time that they wanted
to get into they went to build bigger stores, and
so they built what's called a travel center. It's a
(06:40):
big gas station, food restaurant option off of an interstate
highway off and between two big cities, so it's going
to have a ton of traffic going through it. They
built their first travel center in two thousand and three.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
As I look back and think about the process, it was,
it was slow, it was methodical, It was in a
gradual evolution. The first store I built was three thousand
square feet and had two gas pumps.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
At the time, seven.
Speaker 5 (07:11):
Elevens, which was the leader in the industry, was twenty
four hundred feet, So it was a little bigger, a
little nicer, but very much the same business model. And
over the next twenty years, I just kind of always
tried to tweak it, improve it, make it a better experience.
So to me, the way to continue to improve and
(07:33):
evolve is just be the best provider in the market.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Is just run a better business, and.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
Still to this day, my mantra is business is really simple.
At Bucke's, Let's be clean, let's be friendly, let's be
in stock. Subsequent I'm not sure where it came from,
but I had this idea of what y'all see now,
which is this travel center and the products, and that
that was a slow evolution, took me long time. I
(08:00):
designed it, thought about it through the plans and the trash,
designed at Agantam in the trash, and in two thousand
and three, twenty one years after the first BUCkies is
when we open the first travel center.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
And in the last twenty years has been about those
travel centers first popping up over all of the key
roadways of Texas between all of the big cities San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Houston.
And then the story of the last five years is
(08:34):
about that brand that has a ton of grand loyalty.
You've seen the kind of the Beaver move out of
Texas and begin to conquer the southeast of the United States,
and now they've moved into the Midwest.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
And you've been listening to Eric Benson of Texas Monthly
and the BUCkies founder himself, Arch Beaver, Applin tell the
story of how BUCkies can aim to be. And what
a story, What a slow, beautiful growth story, the opposite
of the Silicon Valley go go culture, where you grow faster,
(09:10):
you go home. Most companies get built this way. The
first BUCkies opened in nineteen eighty two and stayed in
Brazoria County in Texas for twenty years, and a slow
evolution that changed, well, change travel in Texas, then the
South and now the Midwest. Our family always gives ourselves
(09:32):
thirty minutes when we go to BUCkies because we can't
find each other when we land. The gas is never
the point. The point is always the store, the experience
when we come back. More of how BUCkies came to
be the story of a great and iconic American brand.
Here on our American stories, and we continue with our
(10:10):
American stories and the story of BUCkies. The travel center
conquered Texas and has been spreading throughout the Southeast and
even the Midwest. Let's pick up with the story here
again is Texas Monthly's Eric.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Benson getting people.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
You know, people who like really have a connection to
BUCkies the way they have to very few other corporations.
I think the only deal for the equivalents that I
think of are things like Apple.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Now, Apple's kind of conquered the world iPhones.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Everyone has to have an iPhone, so it's I think
there's less of a cultish things. Apple has become themselves
kind of to the end degree. Costco, I think, is
a company that has.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
A real kind of brand affinity.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
But BUCkies even has something that those companies don't. I
think there's still a little bit of They're still so
regionally associated with Texas.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
The Texans are proud of it and love it.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
That's one story about how we got to the point
that there are fifteen BUCkies outside of Texas, and I'm
sure in another five years there might be twice that many.
Part of the appeal of BUCkies is that they're overbuilt,
because even on the busiest days, it's pretty comfortable to
be there.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
I've been at BUCkies on July.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Fourth weekend, which I think might be one of their
very busiest weekends, and it's pretty crowded on July fourth,
but it's totally manageable, and on a normal day, you're like,
you're never bumping into shoulders with anyone, You're never I've
never seen a Bucky's parking lot full where you can't
(11:50):
find a spot at all, there's always a spot for you.
There's almost always a gas pump ready there for you.
And I think as a consumer makes you feel a
little special, like you're wanted there, not like you have
to compete to get there. It's interesting because I think
there's businesses that have kind.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Of cult followings.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
A lot of places get that through scarcity. They make
people line up for hours for an experience. Then BUCkies
really goes the other way. You know they have these Yeah,
I mean bass Drop Travel Center, which is I think
a normal size travel center for them, maybe even on
the small side at this point, ninety six gas pumps,
(12:35):
fifty six thousand square feet. And I think there's an
insight there that they had, which is maybe someone will
wait online for a special dinner out, but I don't
think anyone wants to wait. If they're driving from Austin
to Dallas, no one wants to take more time on
their gas stop.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
I think that would be where it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
How special the travel center is, how cheap the gas is,
how much better the brisket sandwich you're going to get
there is than at another gas station. No, he's going
to wait twenty minutes waiting online for a gas pump
to do that. The parking spots and themselves are bigger.
You're never going to go into a BUCkies parking spot
and have to kind of wedge yourself out of the
(13:18):
door because someone parks a little too close to you.
They're parking spots that are designed for big trucks, and
even if you have a big truck, you're gonna be
comfortable opening the door pretty wide and hopping out. And
then there's the Disney World element of BUCkies, which is
the employees there. There are strict dress and personal presentation
(13:43):
codes about how you can be at a BUCkies. You
don't use no visible tattoos, you got to be clean cut.
When you walk in there, everyone is supposed to clearly
say welcome to BUCkies.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
They're very nice on the way out.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Too, and they sell a lot of things that are
it's not to I mean, they sell tons of these
plushy beavers, they sell all these kind of texas are
chatskis and so you can go it's a it's a
it's a big gift shop too, and it's clean and
I think the wrap on gas station convenience stores is
(14:17):
that they often are not clean. And who hasn't been
to a gas station cavenience store bathroom where the door
kind of doesn't close. It's some lot of these metal door,
the lock isn't on there, the toilet is unflushed, and
that's that's. You know, BUCkies offers an experience and a
promise that you're not going to face that that you're
(14:39):
going to get your little you know, your you're a
little bit of gas station Disney World when you stop there.
Speaker 5 (14:46):
Clean restrooms what a basic concept, you know for people
traveling to have a clean not only the restrooms, but
a clean store, a clean environment, a well lited environment,
a safe environment. So yeah, the restaurants, we became a
little bit famous for our restrooms, which is, you know,
to me, just kind of such a basic need, but
(15:07):
we continue to try to maintain sparkling clean restaurant.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
I got the opportunity to spend some time with Beaver Applan,
who's the CEO of Bucky's co CEO founder and the
guy who kind of gave Bucky BUCkies his famous for
its beaver logo and Beaver the CEO is his Beaver
is his nickname, as you might imagined, not his given name,
but it comes from him.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Uh, he's you know, he's Beaver.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
I had a.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
Labrador Retriever named Buck and my nickname was Beaver, so
I named the store BUCkies. I made my logo of Beaver,
and that was my business plans. You know, my mom
named nicknamed me Beaver when I was born. My real
name is Arch. I'm the third. My dad went by Arch.
I still go by Beaver. I guess I'm never going
to outgrow that. So it just kind of made sit
(15:57):
and here we are.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
I wanted to go to a store with him and
sort of see what this place was like through his eyes.
And yeah, we walked in and he, you know, I
think the first thing he said, Wow, you know I
don't want to We can do this as long as
you don't make it seem like I'm bragging. He's a
down home Texas guy. Christianity is definitely part of his life,
and I think he wants to. Maintaining humility is important
(16:23):
to him. Beaver has clear political views if you look
at his donations, but he's not someone who's trying to
and the stores are not trying to ram his kind
of politics and religion down your throat.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
He wants BUCkies to be a space for everyone, and
it does feel that way. One thing that's clear about
that store, there's nothing that's there by accident. There are
these islands, refrigerated islands where they have what they.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Call protein packs and it's a hard boiled.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Egg, some half inch by half inch tubes of cheese,
that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Those have been kind of designed and tested.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Someone didn't just throw that in or buy it from
a third party vendor. They thought there was a customer
interest in it, and they tried to kind of optimize
it and taste test it to be the best that
it could be. And yeah, I think in walking around too,
we interacted with some employees and he was very one.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
A Beaver is not a big person.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
I think he's five seven and he's kind of slight.
He does he does dress beautifully. I think he was
wearing a cup of doora and a sport coat when
he walked in.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
But he's the CEO of this company.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
And the people working there, they got a you know,
what's what's like a pretty good job for working at
a gas station. They pay well at buckets and they
have good benefits, but they you know, these people don't
interact with the sea of the company. There's so many
levels down. And so we went to uh, I think
a woman making nuts. Beaver kind of interacted with her
and asked her what she was doing, and she said
(18:05):
she loved her job. And I think it seemed genuine.
It seemed like a really genuine moment in Beaver said,
I'd love that you love what you're doing, and.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Yeah, I don't think. I don't think she knew who
he was. She didn't, she didn't give that. I didn't
see anything in her eye that said, oh, this is
a setup.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
They you know, they told all the employees Beaver's coming
in today, but act cool. It seemed like a genuine
moment because then we did interact with some employees who
did know who Beaver was, some people who were a
little higher up in the managerial chain who also really
loved it.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
And you've been listening to Eric Benson and Arch Beaver
Applin tell the story of BUCkies and what a story. Indeed,
part of the appeal was just its over builtness. It's
just big, and it always feels like there's plenty of space,
even on the biggest days and then those bathrooms spotless,
and it makes common sense, but making it an important
(18:55):
part of the experience. While BUCkies gets that down, including
how the employ ployees treat people and how the employees
are treated. They're well paid, we learned, and Bucky's founder
has his own views. He's a Christian and his political
views are well known in the area, but he does
not impose those views on his customers. He wants everyone
to feel welcome at BUCkies. When we come back, more
(19:19):
of the story, the rest of the story of BUCkies
an American institution. Here on our American stories and we
continue with our American stories and the story of BUCkies.
(19:43):
Let's pick up where we last left off with Texas
Monthly writer Eric Benson.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Look, I don't think everyone loves working at BUCkies. I
know heinito. If you look online, there are people who
do not like the fact that it's so strict in
of presentation and personal code and standing all the time
and not being on your phone, and it's really I
don't think it's the easiest place to work in the world.
Because they want this experience and they want their employees
(20:11):
to be representatives of the company in a way that
most jobs like that don't care that much. So it's
something that kind of has to click for people. But
I think when it does, people really really get into it.
And Beever really liked that because at the end of
the day, it's what they love, is his vision for it,
whether they know it or not.
Speaker 5 (20:31):
I have been extremely blessed, and the Bucki's family has
been extremely blessed, and so I find myself really enjoying
giving back to the community, whether it's a local community
where we have a store or.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Whether it's statewide.
Speaker 5 (20:47):
I mean the involvement that I've chosen to make in
in volunteer, you know, aspects, it really really does the
heart good.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
I enjoyed.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
You know, you've got to manage your time because we
have a business to run, and you got to manage
the volunteer things that you can do. But what I've
enjoyed it I just finished up at the board of
Association or former students at Texas A and M, so
that was fun.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
And now I have a new project to.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Build today and then we're doing a School of Hospitality,
building a new building, an entire new four year curriculum
on the Texas A and M. Campus, and I've been
asked to lead that charge, and so I'm going to
look forward to that.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
That's my next volunteer.
Speaker 5 (21:29):
Duty is to create and work towards this new school hospitality.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I think that when I was there five years ago,
and I'm sure I should have said more. Now, you know,
it was fourteen dollars an hour. At some point you
got into a four oh one k program. There was
paid vacation. And that's for an entry level job at Bucket's.
That certainly is not the pay structure at an average
front of the mill gas station commedience store. You have
(21:57):
to be a representative of the brand in a way
that you do in a corporate job, but often not
in an entry level service job. I think, much like
you would as a Disney World employee. No, it was
no colored hair, no visible tattoos, you have to wear
nice shoes, you can't look at your cell phone, you
(22:18):
have to be.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Standing the whole time.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
And so there's a kind of brand representation in professionalism
that is drummed into you. And I think if you
can't do it, or you don't want to do it,
you get drummed out of there pretty quickly. But the
reward of it is that it is a place I
think that really values its own culture and promotes from within.
(22:41):
A lot of the people who run Bucky stores come
up through Buckey stores. They can be jobs with real
growth potential. They're not dead end jobs. That's unique. It's
a little bit of a different You're working for a
pretty large corporation and a closely he'll privately run corporation
(23:02):
that really values its own culture.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
It's just one of the things that we take the
most pride in.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
I mean, we're eighty five hundred strong that actually work
for the company.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
I'm not talking about.
Speaker 5 (23:13):
Vendors, manufacturer's producers, and we just take great pride. My
partner done and I take great pride in providing a business,
a career, a livable wage for eighty five hundred people.
I mean, that's you know, sometimes I have to pinch
myself and think about that. So we focused on the store,
the cleanliness, what we provide for the customer, for the experience.
(23:38):
But there's a whole lot to be said for the
pride in ownership for the careers of those eighty five
hundred people that work with us to bring our brand
and our product to the public.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
So if you drive down the highways of Texas, you're
going to know about BUCkies in two ways. Way number
what is you might see you might see bumper stickers
of the Bucky Beaver and you.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Say, oh, what's that.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Way Number two is that if you are driving on
an interstate highway in Texas, you're very likely to see
a billboard of BUCkies. And the billboard will usually be
a short sentence with some light pun about going to
the bathroom, about food, something like that, and it'll then
(24:28):
probably tell you how many miles until the next BUCkies.
And this was a deliberate effort on the part of BUCkies.
They hired a Houston advertising firm that sort of started
this boulder rolling and now I think actually they get
a lot of these. There's almost a contest of employees
(24:49):
where they will submit ideas for the billboards, for the
wording of the billboards, and the best ones will or that,
you know, we'll rise.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Whoever's in charge of that.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
At BUCkies, I would not be spread as at Beaver,
but personally approves them before they go out there.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
They will kind of rise to the top.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
It's the gas station convenience store as destination, almost like
a roadside attraction in the days when there still are some.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Of course there used to be many more. But this
idea of you know, one hundred miles down the.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Road there's there are these caves, you know that you
might want to explore, and you have a little or
you know, there's a snake.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Farm sixty miles down the road.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Just go and you'll as you get, you know, thirty
miles down the road, ten miles down the road and BUCkies.
You're only one hundred miles away from a Buckie's. Don't
stop now, don't stop for gas now. Wait one hundred miles.
One hundred miles, of course is a long way, but
they really start. I think they do start about one
hundred miles away, telling you how long until the next BUCkies.
(25:53):
And when you are on that highway and you see
that the BUCkies logo on a big pole picking up.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
It's like this beacon. I've reached the promised land. I'm
going to get off and go into BUCkies.
Speaker 5 (26:06):
Of course everybody knows about you know, we have one
hundred and twenty few long stations at our big store,
so we've already in a big way taking care of
the automotive, you know, gasoline diesel automobiles, but we're installing
the electric and we think we have a pretty good
environment for the people to walk around and shop because
it does take a little longer to charge the electric vehicles,
(26:28):
and so we're installing them as we go and plan
on being ready to take care of that market.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
So one thing that BUCkies has always had is that
they do not allow eighteen wheelers.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
There are two big reasons.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
One is it's easier to drive around and find gas
pumps and find parking when you're not dodging these you know,
huge tractor trailers and the way that they can turn
and take up a ton of b room, so it
makes getting into and out of BUCkies easier. And the
two is they want most of the traffic to be
(27:03):
car travelers. It's not a commercial truck stop, and a
lot of big travel centers I think cater to commercial
truck stops. And part of the what Bucky's is trying
to do to set itself apart is say we are
not a commercial truck stop.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
This is not a place.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Where guys who have been driving for twelve hours need
to stop for a shower and a hot meal. What
their ideal customer is the family of four or five
stopping on the way to go to the Link for
the weekend, and so anything they can do to get
(27:40):
more of those people in, make it more comfortable for them,
and take away any reason they wouldn't want to stop there.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
I think that's what they're trying to do.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
We're enjoying the expansion, and we're still having We're just
having a good talk, and as long as our fans
appreciate what we bring to them and bring to their
travel experience, we're going to keep doing it.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
I don't think this is a vision that Beaver Applin
had in nineteen eighty two when he opened his first
gas station in Lake Jackson, Texas.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
But it's a story.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
About someone building a business very slowly over a long
period of time and conquering the world over the course
of forty years instead of trying to conquer it over three.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
I just want to thank everybody from the bottom of
my heart for loving Texas, for being a BUCkies fan,
for appreciating what we do and what we bring to
the market.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
And I just can't say enough.
Speaker 5 (28:40):
As my fifth grade teacher told me, Missus Bankston one day,
and I didn't understand it, then understand it now. She said,
her cup runneth over and my cup runneth over. Thank
y'all in God bless Texas had.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
A terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling by
our own Greg Hangler, and special thanks to Eric Benson
of the Texas Monthly. And a special thanks to Archie
beaver Applin not only for giving us BUCkies, but for
telling the story of this well iconic brand that he
built and that was in his head, but that he
took his time building stories like this we simply adore.
(29:19):
Without this entrepreneur, we don't have this institution. People make
a difference in this country, one idea, one person, resilience
and perseverance to make it happen. And the treatment of
those customers and the employees reminiscent of what Truant Kathy
did at Chick fil A, and both Christian men letting
(29:39):
their Christian values and how they treat people with generosity,
abundance and love. A classic American story and the best
case in the world for free enterprise. Treat your people well,
the people treat their customers well, deliver a fabulous service
at a fabulous price. Only the free enterprises can deliver
(30:01):
that the story of Bucky's, the story of the American
dream manifested, and the story of the free enterprise system
at work in all of its glory. Here on our
American stories.
And we continue with our American stories. If you've never
been to a BUCkies, and I pity any of you
who haven't, it's a good bet that you will soon enough.
Beaver Applin built his massive convenience chain into a Texas empire,
and his tactics are translating outside the state. Here to
(00:30):
tell the story is Eric Benson, the man who wrote
the definitive story for Texas Monthly about BUCkies and its founder,
Arch beaver Applin. Let's take a listen.
Speaker 2 (00:48):
BUCkies is a Texas phenomenon. It is a gas station.
The kind of industry standard has been at a normal
gas station convenience store is twenty four hundred square feet.
The large BUCkies travel centers are getting close to eighty
thousand square feet. You walk into a BUCkies, it feels
(01:08):
a little more like walking into almost a wal Mart
in terms of you walk in, you can't see the
other end. Instead of hot food that's sitting in under
heat lamps that was prepared, who knows when they have
a big kind of.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
Island in the middle of the store.
Speaker 2 (01:32):
Half of it is a team that's preparing barbecue and
barbecue sandwiches. In the morning, they're preparing breakfast tacos. On
the other side, they're roasting nuts and making these things
called beaver nuggets, which are almost a combination between a
potato chip and a French fry. They have a full
deli area with a very large kitchen. Instead of a
(01:56):
little display of beef jerky, they have walls of their
own house brand of every kind of flavor and stripe
you could imagine. I know Beaver is a fan of
Beaver is the CEO of BUCkies. He turned me onto
the Bohemian garlic beef turkey. So it's this sort of
(02:17):
food emporium. The bathrooms are the size of bathrooms. They're
actually larger in bathrooms at an NFL stadium. People are
cleaning them twenty four hours a day. The gas at
BUCkies is cheap. It's kind of the cheapest gas you'll
find because they want you to stop, and they want
you to come in, and they want you to spend
(02:38):
money in the store. It's a lost leader for them,
as it is I think for most gas stations, but
it really is for them, and people do spend a
lot of money in the stores.
Speaker 4 (02:46):
BUCkies has everything.
Speaker 5 (02:48):
It's a mall, it's a funeral home, it's a football stadium.
Speaker 2 (02:51):
As soon as you walk in, have you have a
smelt love being made?
Speaker 4 (02:56):
Do you know how that smell when you get into it?
And is real passionate?
Speaker 3 (02:59):
And I forgot I can't for gas. And I'm pretty
sure I came to Buckets with my mommy.
Speaker 2 (03:02):
If anybody see or find my mommy in now, please
hit me up on Facebook.
Speaker 4 (03:06):
I'm sure now. And I think that was having church
service at one point. It's that buck who.
Speaker 2 (03:10):
Owns Bucky's got to be a conglomery, got to be
a record label.
Speaker 3 (03:13):
So the night probably all own Buck's at this point.
Speaker 2 (03:16):
And the story of how that thing, these giant travel
centers came to exist is the story of a business
that grew very very slowly.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
He's a very interesting business story.
Speaker 2 (03:30):
Especially today that I think we're familiar now, especially with
sort of startup culture and Silicon Valley venture capital culture.
Someone coming in with an idea, getting a ton of
money from venture capitalists, raising rounds of funding, rounds of funding,
and which of course they're giving away equity in their
(03:51):
businesses over time, and these things grow very very fast,
very very quickly, become very very big, and sometimes they
really hit and they become Facebook, Meta Google, and sometimes
they flame out. First Bucky started in nineteen eighty two.
For the first twenty years of the store's history, they
(04:15):
were almost entirely in Brazoria County, which is a county
in southeast Texas on the Gulf Coast, which is where
Beaver Applan, the founder of BUCkies, is from.
Speaker 4 (04:26):
I grew up in a family. My dad was an entrepreneur.
Speaker 5 (04:29):
He started out as a school teacher and then ended
up started building houses and doing developments, residential and lack
commercial development.
Speaker 4 (04:37):
So you know, I grew up in.
Speaker 5 (04:39):
A family that was wired that way, and my mom
did the books for the family business, and my dad
ran the business, and I worked in the business, and
my brother worked in the business when we were young,
you know, summer jobs kind of things. We grew up
like that, and so did not grow up in the
communion store business though. Grew up in the construction business.
(04:59):
But did grew up in an entrepreneurial family. So it
was fun and I don't know, it just kind of
made sense for me to pursue my own thing.
Speaker 4 (05:07):
So when I got out of college, I wanted to
build tall buildings.
Speaker 5 (05:10):
I mean, I graduated with a degree from Texas A
and M University, a construction science building construction degree, and
so I wanted to build tall buildings. And my first
job that I got offered was contingent on the company
getting the bid to build the engineering building on the
(05:31):
Texas A and M campus, and I put all my
eggs in that basket. But what I didn't trump template
was they didn't get the bid, and so I found
myself just graduating without a job, which was a bit
stressful for me, if you will. So I worked a
little while in my dad's business, and I just got
this hair brain idea said I'm going to build a
convenience store.
Speaker 4 (05:51):
My grandpa had a small.
Speaker 5 (05:54):
Town general store, if you will, in a little town
in Louisiana, and I remember being a kid going in
that little general store and wishing I could run the
rich or they never would let me, but I always
wished I could. So you know, I found myself with
that a real job that I was wanting to do
without the career I had planned on, and I just
kind of pivoted and decided I was going to build
(06:16):
a communience store.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
So there you go.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
They grew the business.
Speaker 2 (06:20):
It was profitable, Beaver took on a partner, a guy
named Don Wassik, and the two of them became fifty
to fifty owners in the business, which they still are today,
and they got the idea over time that they wanted
to get into they went to build bigger stores, and
so they built what's called a travel center. It's a
(06:40):
big gas station, food restaurant option off of an interstate
highway off and between two big cities, so it's going
to have a ton of traffic going through it. They
built their first travel center in two thousand and three.
Speaker 5 (06:56):
As I look back and think about the process, it was,
it was slow, it was methodical, It was in a
gradual evolution. The first store I built was three thousand
square feet and had two gas pumps.
Speaker 3 (07:10):
At the time, seven.
Speaker 5 (07:11):
Elevens, which was the leader in the industry, was twenty
four hundred feet, So it was a little bigger, a
little nicer, but very much the same business model. And
over the next twenty years, I just kind of always
tried to tweak it, improve it, make it a better experience.
So to me, the way to continue to improve and
(07:33):
evolve is just be the best provider in the market.
Speaker 4 (07:38):
Is just run a better business, and.
Speaker 5 (07:39):
Still to this day, my mantra is business is really simple.
At Bucke's, Let's be clean, let's be friendly, let's be
in stock. Subsequent I'm not sure where it came from,
but I had this idea of what y'all see now,
which is this travel center and the products, and that
that was a slow evolution, took me long time. I
(08:00):
designed it, thought about it through the plans and the trash,
designed at Agantam in the trash, and in two thousand
and three, twenty one years after the first BUCkies is
when we open the first travel center.
Speaker 2 (08:13):
And in the last twenty years has been about those
travel centers first popping up over all of the key
roadways of Texas between all of the big cities San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Houston.
And then the story of the last five years is
(08:34):
about that brand that has a ton of grand loyalty.
You've seen the kind of the Beaver move out of
Texas and begin to conquer the southeast of the United States,
and now they've moved into the Midwest.
Speaker 1 (08:50):
And you've been listening to Eric Benson of Texas Monthly
and the BUCkies founder himself, Arch Beaver, Applin tell the
story of how BUCkies can aim to be. And what
a story, What a slow, beautiful growth story, the opposite
of the Silicon Valley go go culture, where you grow faster,
(09:10):
you go home. Most companies get built this way. The
first BUCkies opened in nineteen eighty two and stayed in
Brazoria County in Texas for twenty years, and a slow
evolution that changed, well, change travel in Texas, then the
South and now the Midwest. Our family always gives ourselves
(09:32):
thirty minutes when we go to BUCkies because we can't
find each other when we land. The gas is never
the point. The point is always the store, the experience
when we come back. More of how BUCkies came to
be the story of a great and iconic American brand.
Here on our American stories, and we continue with our
(10:10):
American stories and the story of BUCkies. The travel center
conquered Texas and has been spreading throughout the Southeast and
even the Midwest. Let's pick up with the story here
again is Texas Monthly's Eric.
Speaker 3 (10:24):
Benson getting people.
Speaker 2 (10:26):
You know, people who like really have a connection to
BUCkies the way they have to very few other corporations.
I think the only deal for the equivalents that I
think of are things like Apple.
Speaker 3 (10:39):
Now, Apple's kind of conquered the world iPhones.
Speaker 2 (10:41):
Everyone has to have an iPhone, so it's I think
there's less of a cultish things. Apple has become themselves
kind of to the end degree. Costco, I think, is
a company that has.
Speaker 3 (10:52):
A real kind of brand affinity.
Speaker 2 (10:54):
But BUCkies even has something that those companies don't. I
think there's still a little bit of They're still so
regionally associated with Texas.
Speaker 3 (11:04):
The Texans are proud of it and love it.
Speaker 2 (11:07):
That's one story about how we got to the point
that there are fifteen BUCkies outside of Texas, and I'm
sure in another five years there might be twice that many.
Part of the appeal of BUCkies is that they're overbuilt,
because even on the busiest days, it's pretty comfortable to
be there.
Speaker 3 (11:26):
I've been at BUCkies on July.
Speaker 2 (11:29):
Fourth weekend, which I think might be one of their
very busiest weekends, and it's pretty crowded on July fourth,
but it's totally manageable, and on a normal day, you're like,
you're never bumping into shoulders with anyone, You're never I've
never seen a Bucky's parking lot full where you can't
(11:50):
find a spot at all, there's always a spot for you.
There's almost always a gas pump ready there for you.
And I think as a consumer makes you feel a
little special, like you're wanted there, not like you have
to compete to get there. It's interesting because I think
there's businesses that have kind.
Speaker 3 (12:10):
Of cult followings.
Speaker 2 (12:12):
A lot of places get that through scarcity. They make
people line up for hours for an experience. Then BUCkies
really goes the other way. You know they have these Yeah,
I mean bass Drop Travel Center, which is I think
a normal size travel center for them, maybe even on
the small side at this point, ninety six gas pumps,
(12:35):
fifty six thousand square feet. And I think there's an
insight there that they had, which is maybe someone will
wait online for a special dinner out, but I don't
think anyone wants to wait. If they're driving from Austin
to Dallas, no one wants to take more time on
their gas stop.
Speaker 3 (12:55):
I think that would be where it doesn't matter.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
How special the travel center is, how cheap the gas is,
how much better the brisket sandwich you're going to get
there is than at another gas station. No, he's going
to wait twenty minutes waiting online for a gas pump
to do that. The parking spots and themselves are bigger.
You're never going to go into a BUCkies parking spot
and have to kind of wedge yourself out of the
(13:18):
door because someone parks a little too close to you.
They're parking spots that are designed for big trucks, and
even if you have a big truck, you're gonna be
comfortable opening the door pretty wide and hopping out. And
then there's the Disney World element of BUCkies, which is
the employees there. There are strict dress and personal presentation
(13:43):
codes about how you can be at a BUCkies. You
don't use no visible tattoos, you got to be clean cut.
When you walk in there, everyone is supposed to clearly
say welcome to BUCkies.
Speaker 3 (13:54):
They're very nice on the way out.
Speaker 2 (13:56):
Too, and they sell a lot of things that are
it's not to I mean, they sell tons of these
plushy beavers, they sell all these kind of texas are
chatskis and so you can go it's a it's a
it's a big gift shop too, and it's clean and
I think the wrap on gas station convenience stores is
(14:17):
that they often are not clean. And who hasn't been
to a gas station cavenience store bathroom where the door
kind of doesn't close. It's some lot of these metal door,
the lock isn't on there, the toilet is unflushed, and
that's that's. You know, BUCkies offers an experience and a
promise that you're not going to face that that you're
(14:39):
going to get your little you know, your you're a
little bit of gas station Disney World when you stop there.
Speaker 5 (14:46):
Clean restrooms what a basic concept, you know for people
traveling to have a clean not only the restrooms, but
a clean store, a clean environment, a well lited environment,
a safe environment. So yeah, the restaurants, we became a
little bit famous for our restrooms, which is, you know,
to me, just kind of such a basic need, but
(15:07):
we continue to try to maintain sparkling clean restaurant.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
I got the opportunity to spend some time with Beaver Applan,
who's the CEO of Bucky's co CEO founder and the
guy who kind of gave Bucky BUCkies his famous for
its beaver logo and Beaver the CEO is his Beaver
is his nickname, as you might imagined, not his given name,
but it comes from him.
Speaker 3 (15:32):
Uh, he's you know, he's Beaver.
Speaker 4 (15:34):
I had a.
Speaker 5 (15:34):
Labrador Retriever named Buck and my nickname was Beaver, so
I named the store BUCkies. I made my logo of Beaver,
and that was my business plans. You know, my mom
named nicknamed me Beaver when I was born. My real
name is Arch. I'm the third. My dad went by Arch.
I still go by Beaver. I guess I'm never going
to outgrow that. So it just kind of made sit
(15:57):
and here we are.
Speaker 2 (16:00):
I wanted to go to a store with him and
sort of see what this place was like through his eyes.
And yeah, we walked in and he, you know, I
think the first thing he said, Wow, you know I
don't want to We can do this as long as
you don't make it seem like I'm bragging. He's a
down home Texas guy. Christianity is definitely part of his life,
and I think he wants to. Maintaining humility is important
(16:23):
to him. Beaver has clear political views if you look
at his donations, but he's not someone who's trying to
and the stores are not trying to ram his kind
of politics and religion down your throat.
Speaker 3 (16:37):
For sure.
Speaker 2 (16:39):
He wants BUCkies to be a space for everyone, and
it does feel that way. One thing that's clear about
that store, there's nothing that's there by accident. There are
these islands, refrigerated islands where they have what they.
Speaker 3 (16:55):
Call protein packs and it's a hard boiled.
Speaker 2 (16:59):
Egg, some half inch by half inch tubes of cheese,
that kind of thing.
Speaker 3 (17:04):
Those have been kind of designed and tested.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Someone didn't just throw that in or buy it from
a third party vendor. They thought there was a customer
interest in it, and they tried to kind of optimize
it and taste test it to be the best that
it could be. And yeah, I think in walking around too,
we interacted with some employees and he was very one.
Speaker 3 (17:28):
A Beaver is not a big person.
Speaker 2 (17:30):
I think he's five seven and he's kind of slight.
He does he does dress beautifully. I think he was
wearing a cup of doora and a sport coat when
he walked in.
Speaker 3 (17:40):
But he's the CEO of this company.
Speaker 2 (17:42):
And the people working there, they got a you know,
what's what's like a pretty good job for working at
a gas station. They pay well at buckets and they
have good benefits, but they you know, these people don't
interact with the sea of the company. There's so many
levels down. And so we went to uh, I think
a woman making nuts. Beaver kind of interacted with her
and asked her what she was doing, and she said
(18:05):
she loved her job. And I think it seemed genuine.
It seemed like a really genuine moment in Beaver said,
I'd love that you love what you're doing, and.
Speaker 3 (18:12):
Yeah, I don't think. I don't think she knew who
he was. She didn't, she didn't give that. I didn't
see anything in her eye that said, oh, this is
a setup.
Speaker 2 (18:19):
They you know, they told all the employees Beaver's coming
in today, but act cool. It seemed like a genuine
moment because then we did interact with some employees who
did know who Beaver was, some people who were a
little higher up in the managerial chain who also really
loved it.
Speaker 1 (18:34):
And you've been listening to Eric Benson and Arch Beaver
Applin tell the story of BUCkies and what a story. Indeed,
part of the appeal was just its over builtness. It's
just big, and it always feels like there's plenty of space,
even on the biggest days and then those bathrooms spotless,
and it makes common sense, but making it an important
(18:55):
part of the experience. While BUCkies gets that down, including
how the employ ployees treat people and how the employees
are treated. They're well paid, we learned, and Bucky's founder
has his own views. He's a Christian and his political
views are well known in the area, but he does
not impose those views on his customers. He wants everyone
to feel welcome at BUCkies. When we come back, more
(19:19):
of the story, the rest of the story of BUCkies
an American institution. Here on our American stories and we
continue with our American stories and the story of BUCkies.
(19:43):
Let's pick up where we last left off with Texas
Monthly writer Eric Benson.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
Look, I don't think everyone loves working at BUCkies. I
know heinito. If you look online, there are people who
do not like the fact that it's so strict in
of presentation and personal code and standing all the time
and not being on your phone, and it's really I
don't think it's the easiest place to work in the world.
Because they want this experience and they want their employees
(20:11):
to be representatives of the company in a way that
most jobs like that don't care that much. So it's
something that kind of has to click for people. But
I think when it does, people really really get into it.
And Beever really liked that because at the end of
the day, it's what they love, is his vision for it,
whether they know it or not.
Speaker 5 (20:31):
I have been extremely blessed, and the Bucki's family has
been extremely blessed, and so I find myself really enjoying
giving back to the community, whether it's a local community
where we have a store or.
Speaker 4 (20:45):
Whether it's statewide.
Speaker 5 (20:47):
I mean the involvement that I've chosen to make in
in volunteer, you know, aspects, it really really does the
heart good.
Speaker 3 (20:58):
I enjoyed.
Speaker 5 (20:58):
You know, you've got to manage your time because we
have a business to run, and you got to manage
the volunteer things that you can do. But what I've
enjoyed it I just finished up at the board of
Association or former students at Texas A and M, so
that was fun.
Speaker 4 (21:13):
And now I have a new project to.
Speaker 5 (21:15):
Build today and then we're doing a School of Hospitality,
building a new building, an entire new four year curriculum
on the Texas A and M. Campus, and I've been
asked to lead that charge, and so I'm going to
look forward to that.
Speaker 4 (21:27):
That's my next volunteer.
Speaker 5 (21:29):
Duty is to create and work towards this new school hospitality.
Speaker 2 (21:36):
I think that when I was there five years ago,
and I'm sure I should have said more. Now, you know,
it was fourteen dollars an hour. At some point you
got into a four oh one k program. There was
paid vacation. And that's for an entry level job at Bucket's.
That certainly is not the pay structure at an average
front of the mill gas station commedience store. You have
(21:57):
to be a representative of the brand in a way
that you do in a corporate job, but often not
in an entry level service job. I think, much like
you would as a Disney World employee. No, it was
no colored hair, no visible tattoos, you have to wear
nice shoes, you can't look at your cell phone, you
(22:18):
have to be.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Standing the whole time.
Speaker 2 (22:21):
And so there's a kind of brand representation in professionalism
that is drummed into you. And I think if you
can't do it, or you don't want to do it,
you get drummed out of there pretty quickly. But the
reward of it is that it is a place I
think that really values its own culture and promotes from within.
(22:41):
A lot of the people who run Bucky stores come
up through Buckey stores. They can be jobs with real
growth potential. They're not dead end jobs. That's unique. It's
a little bit of a different You're working for a
pretty large corporation and a closely he'll privately run corporation
(23:02):
that really values its own culture.
Speaker 4 (23:05):
It's just one of the things that we take the
most pride in.
Speaker 5 (23:07):
I mean, we're eighty five hundred strong that actually work
for the company.
Speaker 4 (23:12):
I'm not talking about.
Speaker 5 (23:13):
Vendors, manufacturer's producers, and we just take great pride. My
partner done and I take great pride in providing a business,
a career, a livable wage for eighty five hundred people.
I mean, that's you know, sometimes I have to pinch
myself and think about that. So we focused on the store,
the cleanliness, what we provide for the customer, for the experience.
(23:38):
But there's a whole lot to be said for the
pride in ownership for the careers of those eighty five
hundred people that work with us to bring our brand
and our product to the public.
Speaker 2 (23:52):
So if you drive down the highways of Texas, you're
going to know about BUCkies in two ways. Way number
what is you might see you might see bumper stickers
of the Bucky Beaver and you.
Speaker 3 (24:05):
Say, oh, what's that.
Speaker 2 (24:07):
Way Number two is that if you are driving on
an interstate highway in Texas, you're very likely to see
a billboard of BUCkies. And the billboard will usually be
a short sentence with some light pun about going to
the bathroom, about food, something like that, and it'll then
(24:28):
probably tell you how many miles until the next BUCkies.
And this was a deliberate effort on the part of BUCkies.
They hired a Houston advertising firm that sort of started
this boulder rolling and now I think actually they get
a lot of these. There's almost a contest of employees
(24:49):
where they will submit ideas for the billboards, for the
wording of the billboards, and the best ones will or that,
you know, we'll rise.
Speaker 3 (24:56):
Whoever's in charge of that.
Speaker 2 (24:58):
At BUCkies, I would not be spread as at Beaver,
but personally approves them before they go out there.
Speaker 3 (25:04):
They will kind of rise to the top.
Speaker 2 (25:06):
It's the gas station convenience store as destination, almost like
a roadside attraction in the days when there still are some.
Speaker 3 (25:15):
Of course there used to be many more. But this
idea of you know, one hundred miles down the.
Speaker 2 (25:20):
Road there's there are these caves, you know that you
might want to explore, and you have a little or
you know, there's a snake.
Speaker 3 (25:27):
Farm sixty miles down the road.
Speaker 2 (25:30):
Just go and you'll as you get, you know, thirty
miles down the road, ten miles down the road and BUCkies.
You're only one hundred miles away from a Buckie's. Don't
stop now, don't stop for gas now. Wait one hundred miles.
One hundred miles, of course is a long way, but
they really start. I think they do start about one
hundred miles away, telling you how long until the next BUCkies.
(25:53):
And when you are on that highway and you see
that the BUCkies logo on a big pole picking up.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
It's like this beacon. I've reached the promised land. I'm
going to get off and go into BUCkies.
Speaker 5 (26:06):
Of course everybody knows about you know, we have one
hundred and twenty few long stations at our big store,
so we've already in a big way taking care of
the automotive, you know, gasoline diesel automobiles, but we're installing
the electric and we think we have a pretty good
environment for the people to walk around and shop because
it does take a little longer to charge the electric vehicles,
(26:28):
and so we're installing them as we go and plan
on being ready to take care of that market.
Speaker 2 (26:35):
So one thing that BUCkies has always had is that
they do not allow eighteen wheelers.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
There are two big reasons.
Speaker 2 (26:42):
One is it's easier to drive around and find gas
pumps and find parking when you're not dodging these you know,
huge tractor trailers and the way that they can turn
and take up a ton of b room, so it
makes getting into and out of BUCkies easier. And the
two is they want most of the traffic to be
(27:03):
car travelers. It's not a commercial truck stop, and a
lot of big travel centers I think cater to commercial
truck stops. And part of the what Bucky's is trying
to do to set itself apart is say we are
not a commercial truck stop.
Speaker 3 (27:19):
This is not a place.
Speaker 2 (27:20):
Where guys who have been driving for twelve hours need
to stop for a shower and a hot meal. What
their ideal customer is the family of four or five
stopping on the way to go to the Link for
the weekend, and so anything they can do to get
(27:40):
more of those people in, make it more comfortable for them,
and take away any reason they wouldn't want to stop there.
Speaker 3 (27:47):
I think that's what they're trying to do.
Speaker 5 (27:49):
We're enjoying the expansion, and we're still having We're just
having a good talk, and as long as our fans
appreciate what we bring to them and bring to their
travel experience, we're going to keep doing it.
Speaker 2 (28:02):
I don't think this is a vision that Beaver Applin
had in nineteen eighty two when he opened his first
gas station in Lake Jackson, Texas.
Speaker 3 (28:10):
But it's a story.
Speaker 2 (28:11):
About someone building a business very slowly over a long
period of time and conquering the world over the course
of forty years instead of trying to conquer it over three.
Speaker 5 (28:26):
I just want to thank everybody from the bottom of
my heart for loving Texas, for being a BUCkies fan,
for appreciating what we do and what we bring to
the market.
Speaker 3 (28:37):
And I just can't say enough.
Speaker 5 (28:40):
As my fifth grade teacher told me, Missus Bankston one day,
and I didn't understand it, then understand it now. She said,
her cup runneth over and my cup runneth over. Thank
y'all in God bless Texas had.
Speaker 1 (28:55):
A terrific job on the production, editing and storytelling by
our own Greg Hangler, and special thanks to Eric Benson
of the Texas Monthly. And a special thanks to Archie
beaver Applin not only for giving us BUCkies, but for
telling the story of this well iconic brand that he
built and that was in his head, but that he
took his time building stories like this we simply adore.
(29:19):
Without this entrepreneur, we don't have this institution. People make
a difference in this country, one idea, one person, resilience
and perseverance to make it happen. And the treatment of
those customers and the employees reminiscent of what Truant Kathy
did at Chick fil A, and both Christian men letting
(29:39):
their Christian values and how they treat people with generosity,
abundance and love. A classic American story and the best
case in the world for free enterprise. Treat your people well,
the people treat their customers well, deliver a fabulous service
at a fabulous price. Only the free enterprises can deliver
(30:01):
that the story of Bucky's, the story of the American
dream manifested, and the story of the free enterprise system
at work in all of its glory. Here on our
American stories.
Host
Lee Habeeb
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