Convenience store definition changing

By: J. David Chapman/January 5, 2017

Our family just returned from a quick New Year’s Eve excursion to the DFW Metroplex.

I have written in the past about the new, urban-inspired development in areas such as Plano (Legacy West), Southlake, Richardson, and Frisco. Anytime we are in North Texas I make a point to visit at least one of these growing suburban developments. The rest of the family can usually be satisfied with the unusually robust shopping opportunities in these developing areas.

This past weekend was no exception and it was brunch at TruFire Kitchen & Bar at the Southlake Town Square. The family agreed to allow me ample time to walk the urban fabric of Southlake Town Square if they could take a tour of a convenience store called Buc-ee’s on the way back to Oklahoma. I agreed and thought there was little a real estate guy from Tulsa, Oklahoma (the home of QuikTrip Corp.) could learn from this visit. After all, if you have ever visited a QuikTrip convenience store, you have experienced the end-all of convenience stores – right? Not so fast.

At 60,000 square feet sitting on 19 acres, the Fort Worth Buc-ee’s convenience store is roughly the size of a Wal-Mart Neighborhood Marketplace and located just across from NASCAR’s Texas Motor Speedway and Interstate 35. It sports 84 gas pumps and a little under a quarter-million gallons of fuel on site.

You’ll likely never wait in line at the bathroom facilities with 73 stalls and it will be clean with a full-time attendant cleaning the bathroom facilities 24/7. They employ 225 employees at the location. It is not uncommon for a passing motorist to stop for fuel – his or her spouse going in to use the bathroom – and come out with several bags of goods after spending hundreds of dollars.

The Oklahoma City metropolitan area has been blessed with the opening and rapid expansion of the OnCue convenience store chain in our area. It has filled a huge void in the market that our brothers in Tulsa have really never felt due to the all-star convenience store brand QuikTrip on nearly every corner. They say that everything is bigger in Texas. When it comes to convenience stores, Buc-ee’s sure seems to confirm that notion.

J. David Chapman is an associate professor of finance and real estate at the University of Central Oklahoma (jchapman7@uco.edu).