Cows, corn stalks and gorgeous Shenandoah Valley views surround the new travel center Taj Mahal called Buc-ee’s, a dozen miles south of Harrisonburg.
But store management expects the viewshed to change in relatively short order. About 200 nearby acres are available for development, company spokesman Josh Smith said. Town-sized commercial developments have sprung up in such locations as Florence, South Carolina, and Terrell, Texas.
“Once we establish our footprint, then we really start to see the transitional growth of an economic development board, people wanting to be there, wanting to capture the traffic and generate an exit destination for this highway and for [Rockingham] county,” said Smith, Buc-ee’s Southeast region operations director. “If you came back in five years from now, it would blow your mind.”
Should a Buc-ee’sburg arise off Interstate 81 exit 240 to Mount Crawford, a sort of tourism will have sparked it. The development, part of a 55-location chain of stores and travel centers based in Texas, is designed to bring in gawkers, shoppers and eaters by the thousands every day.
With 120 fueling stations — for gas-powered engines, diesels and EVs — and dozens of restroom stalls, pit stops can be quick. But the 74,000-square-foot building, one of the company’s 36 travel centers, is a grazing haven with near nonstop people-watching opportunities.
This Buc-ee’s, which opened June 30, is like the others in the chain, open 24/7 and featuring a mercantile-style department store area and open kitchens where chopped or sliced barbecue brisket and honey-glazed pecans deliver alluring scents for grab-and-go customers. Every few minutes, customers can hear workers in the barbecue section chanting about the product. “Fresh brisket on the board!” they shout in rhythmic unison. 
Travelers are already building Buc-ee’s stops into their vacation itineraries. Lifelong friends Megan Thompson, Heidi Pavlikowski and Shawn Sidelinger, all 33, met up for hiking, winery visits, a stop at Skyline Caverns and other sightseeing in the Shenandoah Valley.
The three, who went to high school together in northwestern Pennsylvania and reunite every couple of years, set aside Monday for Buc-ee’s.
“This is about 50 minutes from where we’re staying, and we decided to have a day where, like, this was the event, this was the destination, so, yeah, we came here on purpose,” said Thompson, of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania.
Pavlikowski, who lives in Lenoir, North Carolina, has made a handful of Buc-ee’s stops and gave her friends tips to enjoy it, too. 
“So I told them, like, to prepare yourself, because it can be really overstimulating and overwhelming,” Pavlikowski said. “I said it’s kind of like a Cracker Barrel meets like a gas station meets like the made-to-order side of Sheetz.”
On Monday, Pavlikowski held a red shopping basket that included Buc-ee’s Overbite chocolate bars (the name an homage to the chain’s beaver mascot). “Their chocolate is good, and I’m kind of a chocolate snob,” she said.
Sidelinger, of Easton, Maryland, stashed a store-branded shot glass, some chocolate treats and a bag of beef jerky in Pavlikowski’s basket, too.
They stayed until after lunchtime, dining on brisket sandwiches and brisket burritos. “They were amazing,” said Thompson, who picked up a beaver-logo hooded jumpsuit for her daughter. The three friends got beaver T-shirts to commemorate the trip, she said. 
Hitting businesses beyond the beaver
Meanwhile, hundreds of people were making their way in and out of the convenience behemoth. The spillover has been good for neighboring businesses, including a 7-Eleven visible across Friedens Church Road from the northern end of the massive Buc-ee’s parking lot.
A steady stream of customers visited the 7-Eleven early Monday afternoon, as store manager Vanessa Mutherspaw rang them up and did cleanups around the store in between. Mutherspaw, who has worked there for four years, said that her store carries a lot of items that Buc-ee’s doesn’t stock, including hot dogs, taquitos, Pepsi products and some of the planet’s best convenience store pizza.
“They get all their memorabilia and their shirts with the beaver and everything else on it and then they find their way over here for their, you know, regular snacks and drinks and what have you,” Mutherspaw said.
Others have come in because Buc-ee’s was simply too packed, she said.
“It has been a little bit more than we’re used to,” she said. “We see kind of rushes like this more on holidays and stuff like that, and now it’s just kind of all the time.”
The crowd was still comparatively light as Sophia Boyd, 17, of Harrisonburg, bought a snack and a beverage. She said she had been to the new Buc-ee’s. Once.
“I did not like it,” Boyd said. “I almost cried. It was too many people. I don’t do well in crowds.”
Back on Friedens Church Road and across the bridge that passes over the interstate, another convenience giant, Sheetz, opened its own travel center in April to far less statewide fanfare. Sheetz, after all, has about 100 Virginia locations.
Store employee Natasha Greaver, 38, said Buc-ee’s presence hasn’t hurt her business so far.
“They’re getting more of the tourists,” she said. “We’re getting more of the locals.”
The presence of tractor-trailers also sets the two apart. This Sheetz is geared for them, with a separate group of diesel pumps set up at the store’s northwest end. Big rigs are not allowed at Buc-ee’s.
“We’re a family travel center, so our primary focus is to cater to the auto travelers going up and down the highway, full of kids,” said Smith, the Atlanta-based operations director. “We want to get everybody in here safely. And if you have a parking lot that’s conducive for 18-wheel traffic, it’s not for the pedestrian traffic.
“It’s just we want to keep that safe parking lot, and Mom and Dad to feel secure with their kids.”
Speaking of safe passage, the northbound exit has a far right lane dedicated to Buc-ee’s ingress. The parking lot is ringed with large, painted I-81 logos and arrows pointing the way back to the interstate.
Buc-ee’s and Sheetz are competing for fuel sales, which, for now, is great for all comers. Each store had regular unleaded for $2.59 a gallon on Monday. 
House-made vs. shipped-in ’cue
Yet another business, Overlook Produce, Bakery & Deli, stands roughly between the convenience behemoths. Sided with wood and standing next to the barn-like produce shed, the customer waiting area fronts the food prep area. It is smallish and overly warm for the season, but employees smile through the mugginess while you wait for your order. To eat, it’s best to take your food to the car.
The Overlook might not be able to compete with the sheer volume of pork and beef sandwiches coming from Buc-ee’s, but it would win any two-way competition for best flavor.
Overlook’s made-to-order pulled pork barbecue sandwich comes with slaw on the side or on the sandwich, a feature that Buc-ee’s doesn’t offer. The stacked-high pork and other meats are smoked on site over a white oak and hickory mix.
The Buc-ee’s chain sources all its smoked meat from a single, company-owned building in Utah that Smith said is the size of a travel center store.
The Overlook buns aren’t mushy, like those wrapped in foil and stacked under heat lamps down the road. The store has two sauces, one vinegar-based and the other tomato-based. Buc-ee’s, on the other hand, calls its pork Carolina-style, but doesn’t say which Carolina. You have to unwrap it to discover the South Carolina-style mustard sauce — which isn’t altogether bad but could give an uptight ’cue snob a rash of conniptions.
Buc-ee’s pulled pork goes for $7.48. The Overlook’s is about $1.50 more.
No brisket or tacos at the Overlook, which offers a wider variety of sandwiches, including a smoked beef with horseradish, onions, pickles and lettuce.
The 4-year-old business, surrounded by gardens and run in conjunction with a large produce market next door, has not suffered since Buc-ee’s opened, said deli manager Kyla Castleton.
“We were a little bit worried about our local clientele just being a little wary to come over this way with all the traffic,” Castleton, 26, said. “But so far, we haven’t seen a dip at all. I mean, this is our busy season anyways, so it’s hard to tell. But if anything, we’ve seen a boom.” 
Nuggets of future progress
The boom continues at Buc-ee’s, six weeks in. It employs 300, many of them full-time employees with a full benefits package, paid vacation and wages that start at about $20 an hour. The company does not publicize its sales figures, Smith said.
“It’s just busy,” he said. “I mean, the traffic flow here is exceptional.”
Buc-ee’s has identified “multiple sites” in Virginia for future stores and has more solid plans for two locations that it will announce soon. Neither is in Southwest Virginia, Smith said.
“Nothing as of right this second,” he said, “but that doesn’t mean that it’s not going to happen.” 
