I’ll say it plainly: I love Buc-ee’s.
I have never pulled into one of those parking lots without feeling that little jolt of excitement in the car. Everyone sits up straighter. Seatbelts come off before I’ve even put the car in park. We stock up on road fudge. We fight over the last bag of Beaver Nuggets. And I will die on the hill that Buc-ee’s has the cleanest bathrooms of any building I have ever walked into, gas station or otherwise.
That is not a small thing when you’ve got four people packed in the car and eight more hours of interstate ahead of you.
So when I heard that Buc-ee’s broke ground this summer on its first North Carolina location, in Mebane at the I-40/I-85 split in Alamance County, my first reaction was exactly the same little jolt I get when we pull into one.
A Buc-ee’s.
Here.
In North Carolina.
The Mebane location is expected to be about 74,000 square feet, with 120 fuel pumps, more than 600 parking spaces and EV charging stations. It’s going up off Trollingwood-Hawfields Road near Exit 152 and is expected to bring around 200 full-time jobs, starting at $18 an hour, with food service positions starting a little higher. Construction is expected to take a year or more, with the company aiming for an opening sometime in late 2027.
It will be the first Buc-ee’s in North Carolina and only the second in either Carolina. For now, the closest one is down in Florence, South Carolina.
And I’ve been thinking about that.
Because loving Buc-ee’s on a road trip through Georgia or South Carolina is one thing. It’s a treat. It’s a landmark. It’s the place where somebody inevitably says, “Oh good, there’s a Buc-ee’s up ahead,” and suddenly everybody in the car is awake again.
But having one here, on my roads, in my state?
That feels different.
And I don’t think Buc-ee’s is arriving in a vacuum.
It’s arriving in a North Carolina where a whole lot of our little roadside places have already disappeared.
I think about Scotchman, genuinely local and genuinely ours, and the little independent stores and gas stations that used to be part of the landscape. I think about the Pantry, once a fixture of small-town North Carolina, and how much I’d love to see something like that make a real comeback instead of watching another national chain take over another interstate exit.
That’s the part that gives me pause.
I’m not naive enough to believe a Buc-ee’s is going to single-handedly wipe every mom-and-pop gas station and diner off the map. Plenty of small businesses have managed to survive alongside Sheetz and Wawa and QuikTrip.
But we also know how this story tends to work.
The biggest parking lot gets the traffic.
The traffic gets the money.
And the money is what keeps little places alive.
Then there’s the barbecue.
Y’all already know where I’m going with this.
Buc-ee’s calls brisket barbecue.
It is not barbecue.
Not in North Carolina. Not by a mile.
Barbecue here isn’t just meat on a bun. It’s whole hog, wood smoke, vinegar and generations of people who have been arguing over the proper way to make it for longer than most of us have been alive. You can drive across this state and find entire communities that will defend their particular sauce like it’s a family heirloom.
Buc-ee’s brisket may be perfectly good brisket.
I’m not even mad at the brisket.
Call it brisket.
Call it smoked beef.
Call it lunch.
Just don’t roll into North Carolina and expect me to pretend Texas brisket is the same thing as Carolina barbecue.
It isn’t.
And I really don’t want us to become so enamored with the shiny new thing that we forget what we already have.
Because that’s the part that matters to me.
I’ll be at Buc-ee’s.
Of course I will.
I’ll probably have road fudge in one hand and a bag of Beaver Nuggets in the other, and I’ll stand there marveling at the sheer ridiculousness of 120 gas pumps because, honestly, that’s fun.
But I also want to keep pulling off the interstate.
I want my kids to know that the best parts of North Carolina aren’t always found at Exit 152.
Sometimes they’re in the little gas station with three pumps and a hand-painted sign.
Sometimes they’re in the general store that’s been there longer than the interstate.
Sometimes they’re in the barbecue joint where the parking lot is full of local pickup trucks and nobody has ever heard of Beaver Nuggets.
Those places matter.
And if we want them to still be here twenty years from now, we have to actually show up for them.
So, yes. I’m rooting for Buc-ee’s.
And I’m a little sad about what its arrival says about us, too.
I don’t think those two feelings cancel each other out.
I’m allowed to want the road fudge and want to protect the roadside places that made North Carolina worth stopping for in the first place.
Both things can be true.
And maybe that’s the conversation we ought to be having.
Have a local gas station, general store, barbecue joint or roadside spot in North Carolina that you love? Tell me about it in the comments. I want to start making a list of the places worth pulling off for — especially the ones we won’t have forever.
