Buc-ee

In 1982, Arch Aplin and Don Wasek opened a small gas station in Texas. Dirty bathrooms, stale coffee, slim fuel margins. The entire convenience store industry accepted that fuel was the product and the store was an afterthought. Aplin looked at the numbers and saw something nobody else questioned about gas station economics and how they really worked. Fuel margins ran three to five cents per gallon. A station selling a million gallons monthly earned $50,000 on gas, but a single bag of beef jerky sold for $8 at 80% margin. One beef jerky purchase generated more profit than 30 gallons of fuel. The snack counter subsidized the pumps, not the reverse. Economics were backwards. Aplin built the largest gas stations on earth, 50,000 square feet of retail, 120 fuel pumps, brisket counters, fudge shops, walls of private label snacks.