Arkansas has been counting down to its first Buc-ee’s for months, and the wait is almost over. The massive new Benton travel center is scheduled to open at 6 a.m. on Monday, August 17.
The opening will give Arkansas its first taste of the full-size Buc-ee’s experience: an enormous convenience store, more fuel pumps than most drivers have ever seen in one place and enough food, clothing and home décor to turn a quick stop into an afternoon excursion.
Here is everything travelers need to know before opening day.
When and where is the new Buc-ee’s opening?
Arkansas’s first Buc-ee’s is located at 1400 Highway 229 in Benton, near Interstate 30’s Exit 114.
The doors are scheduled to open at 6 a.m. CDT on August 17. Buc-ee’s and local officials will then hold a public ribbon-cutting ceremony at 10 a.m. Benton Mayor Tom Farmer, Ward 2 City Council members Ann Spencer-Cole and Evelyn Reed, and Bill Eldridge and members of the city’s Advertising and Promotion Commission are all expected to attend.
The event is expected to attract a large crowd. Anyone planning to visit during the first few days should prepare for significant traffic around Highway 229 and the interstate interchange.
Buc-ee’s openings regularly draw customers from hours away, and this one is especially significant because Arkansas residents previously had to leave the state to visit the chain. Benton will become the company’s 58th store and will make Arkansas the 14th state on the Buc-ee’s map.
A full-size travel center, built to the company’s current standard
Buc-ee’s lists the Benton travel center at 74,000 square feet, the same footprint as its other recent builds. The City of Benton has described the store as offering approximately 75,000 square feet of retail space. Either way, it is a full-size Buc-ee’s rather than one of the chain’s smaller legacy stores—but it is the company’s standard modern prototype, not an outlier.
Outside, drivers will find 120 fueling positions, and the city says the site will include 25 electric-vehicle chargers. That should give the store enough capacity to serve a substantial share of the traffic moving between Little Rock, Hot Springs and other destinations along Interstate 30.
Inside, customers can expect the food and merchandise that have made Buc-ee’s famous. That includes Texas barbecue, kolaches, Beaver Nuggets, jerky, fudge, fresh pastries, roasted nuts, clothing, seasonal merchandise and an unusually large selection of gifts and home décor.
And, of course, the company will bring the clean restrooms that helped turn Buc-ee’s from a Texas convenience-store chain into a national road-trip attraction.
Hundreds of jobs are coming to Benton
Buc-ee’s says the new travel center will create more than 200 jobs, and local officials have put the figure closer to 250.
The company advertises starting pay well above minimum wage, along with full benefits, a 6% 401(k) match and three weeks of paid vacation.
Local officials expect the travel center to become a major economic and tourism draw. At the store’s groundbreaking, Gov. Sarah Huckabee Sanders said the Benton Buc-ee’s is expected to draw roughly 5 million visitors a year, with about half of them traveling from outside Arkansas.
Some of those visitors will simply stop for fuel and food. Others may combine their visit with trips to Little Rock, Hot Springs or nearby businesses, giving the development a potential impact well beyond Buc-ee’s property.
Arkansas is about to join a growing club
Buc-ee’s spent decades operating primarily in Texas—37 of its stores are still there—but its expansion has accelerated rapidly. The company now has travel centers across much of the South and has pushed into Midwestern and Western markets including Missouri, Ohio, Colorado and Arizona.
Arkansas will join that expanding footprint just five days after another Buc-ee’s opens in San Marcos, Texas, on August 12. That store is the same 74,000 square feet as Benton’s but carries 128 fueling positions, a chain record.
For Benton, however, the August 17 opening is more than another store launch. It gives Arkansas a major new interstate destination—and gives local Buc-ee’s fans a reason to stop driving across state lines for Beaver Nuggets.
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