Most Innovative
Buc-ee's and the excitement of creating a hospitable but small part of a giant list
I’m thrilled to have contributed to this year’s Fast Company Most Innovative Companies, building a solid mix of orgs large, small, legacy, startup, tech-enabled and traditional shaking up the restaurant industry. I'm exceptionally proud of how this turned out and grateful to be a part of a huge editorial effort.
Have you heard of Buc-ee’s?
I hadn’t until I spent a month with family in the midwest last summer. The visit was equal parts an escape from San Francisco’s notoriously cold and foggy summer and a chance to let my kids hang with their grandparents and cousins in the sun. While there, we decided to take a road trip south to the Gulf of Mexico for some beach time. That’s how I learned about the chain of supersized gas stations with a plucky figurehead and a serious following.
I don’t remember who brought it up — my sister-in-law, maybe? — but I do remember where I was sitting when everyone else in my in-laws’ living room turned to me, wide-eyed and said, incredulously, “You’ve never heard of Buc-ee’s?”
For the uninitiated, Buc-ee’s is a chain of Texas-based convenience stores built in strategic, interstate-adjacent locations — though calling it a convenience store undersells its grandeur. Its Sevierville, Tennessee outpost, one of 47 locations across the U.S., is the largest convenience store in the world, at close to 75,000 square feet. The rest are similarly massive.
Its mascot is a beaver called Buc-ee, who appears on the logo dressed in a red hat on a yellow background. Buc-ee’s famously serves brisket, its bathrooms have won multiple awards for cleanliness, it has gas pumps and a car wash and a huge parking lot and an extensive gift shop and, as of last year, plans to install a huge network of premium EV-charging stations.
If you know and love Buc-ee’s, I suspect you’re rolling your eyes at me, a West Coast resident who frequently flies to the other coast but less frequently visits what’s in between.
That’s mostly because I have no ties to Texas and only to the midwest through marriage. Regardless, this is a big miss.
Buc-ee’s billboards, featuring this ridiculous smiling beaver, start popping up when you’re still hours away from a location. Texas Monthly has written about them at length. They’re impossible to ignore — who promotes themselves with cheeky and slightly provocative phrases, extolling attributes like award-winning bathrooms from hundreds of miles away? Buc-ee’s does, with messaging that made me laugh when I needed it most: Four hours into an eight-hour drive through Alabama, Tennessee, and Kentucky with two young children in the backseat.
But when you know, you know. During our drive south, then north again, I spotted Buc-ee the beaver everywhere. Bumper stickers, merchandise, branded packaged food (the store’s beaver nuggets, caramel-covered puffed corn, have a cult-like following and are even sold at Walmart). One of my kids begged for hours for a giant stuffed Buc-ee; we (thankfully) settled on a coloring book.
Truthfully, I was embarrassed to have missed this bit of Americana, and I’m happy now to have experienced it.
There wasn’t much else happening on the interstate that hot summer day, though we did have to make the call between routing by a Buc-ee’s and a location of Lambert’s Cafe. That’s the “throwed rolls” restaurant immortalized (to my obviously coastal brain) in Will Guidara’s feel-good tome, Unreasonable Hospitality. Guidara cites it as an example of a restaurant staff willing to do anything to create a better guest experience. It’s clearly not the only roadside attraction in this pursuit.
As I put together this year’s Most Innovative dining list, which includes Buc-ee’s, I thought a lot about modernized examples of hospitality.
Buc-ee’s particular brand of it is fairly straightforward and traditional; I’m confident that good food and clean bathrooms are universally beloved signals of comfort. Other companies on the list represent more modern forms of the practice, connecting diners to restaurants digitally, offering easier ways to order, talk, pay, and more.
Mostly, this year’s list underscores why I love writing about restaurants and the people and technology that make them work. When done right, modern hospitality extends the practice of making people feel welcome and taken care of into all the places we find ourselves — even when it’s 2,000 miles from home.
Also on Expedite:
What else?
Restaurant cancellation fees are in the hot seat. It’s another example of things that work in other verticals not translating well to the restaurant business. We’re used to paying hefty fees to cancel last-minute bookings at hair salons, hotels, even the dentist. But high fees from restaurants are, apparently, causing diners to push back. — New York Times
After a great feature in last week’s New York Times Sunday Business section, Wonder announced it raised $700 million. Or, more specifically, Wonder founder and CEO Marc Lore shared the news in a LinkedIn post, noting that he added $100 million of his own to the round. That puts his contribution to the cause, per the Times’ coverage, at $300 million. —Marc Lore on LinkedIn
Bear Robotics announced a $60 million Series C round of funding led by LG. You might recognize the company’s server robots, named Servi, which have shown up in restaurants from Denny’s to Chili’s. (At Chili’s, the bots were named Rita, as in marga-, but were pulled from service after a short testing period in 2022.) — release
UberCheats, or, how one courier used algorithms to fight the algorithms. I love this story, even if it doesn’t have the happiest ending. — Financial Times
ClassPass does f&b now. Okay! Food and beverage experiences are now bookable on the platform. Per a release, “This exciting addition marks a significant milestone in ClassPass’ mission to encourage people to live inspired lives every day by seamlessly connecting them to soul-nurturing experiences.” What if you just want lunch? — release