Dive Brief:
- Buc-ee’s held a ribbon-cutting for its first Arkansas store on Monday, according to a company press release.
- The travel center off Highway 229 in Benton features a 74,000-square-foot store and 120 fueling positions, according to the announcement.
- This latest expansion comes as Buc-ee’s trademark lawsuits have drawn increased scrutiny to the fast-growing company.
Dive Insight:
Buc-ee’s received site plan approval for its first Arkansas location in April 2024 and broke ground 12 months later. Now that it’s officially open, the store will bring Buc-ee’s proprietary foodservice and copious lines of private-label goods to another new market, continuing the popular retailer’s years-long expansion plan.
While other retailers have opened more stores than Buc-ee’s over the last few years, few — if any — have pushed into as many new markets as the Texas-based chain. At the start of 2019, all of Buc-ee’s locations were in Texas. The retailer now also operates in Alabama, Arizona, Arkansas, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, South Carolina, Tennessee and Virginia.
The company also has stores in the works in several other new states. Stores in Wisconsin, Utah, Idaho, Nebraska, Kansas, Indiana, North Carolina and Louisiana are at various stages of the approval or construction process, and the company recently began pursuing approvals in Iowa.
Buc-ee’s has also grabbed headlines recently for a number of lawsuits the company has filed in defense of its trademarks. The retailer has sued at least four companies this year, settling with one, scheduling a settlement conference for a second and facing counterclaims from a third.
