North Carolina is getting its first, long-awaited Buc-ee’s, but the wait is getting longer.
The state’s first Buc-ee’s is planned for Mebane, off Interstates 40/85 in Alamance County. The company had planned to open the store in May 2027, but that date has been pushed back to the end of 2027, according to a Buc-ee’s spokesperson cited by The News & Observer.
The project is still moving.
Land grading started in November at the 32-acre site on the western edge of Mebane. The building pad and stormwater ponds have taken shape, along with the planned location of 60 pump stations, or 120 gas pumps.
This will be a massive travel center.
The Mebane Buc-ee’s is expected to include a 74,000-square-foot store, 120 pumps, a multi-million-dollar investment in the tens of millions, and more than 200 jobs. State transportation crews are also working on road upgrades around I-40/85 to handle the expected traffic boom, with Buc-ee’s agreeing to contribute between $6 million and $11 million toward NCDOT-mandated improvements to Trollingwood-Hawfields Road.
For North Carolina drivers, that means brisket sandwiches, Beaver Nuggets, jerky, fudge, road-trip snacks, clean bathrooms, and the kind of oversized store that makes a gas stop feel like an attraction.
The location is especially important because Mebane sits between the Triad and the Triangle. That gives Buc-ee’s access to drivers from Greensboro, Burlington, Durham, Chapel Hill, Raleigh, and anyone moving along one of the state’s busiest highway corridors.
The bigger twist: Mebane may not be the only North Carolina Buc-ee’s for long.
Buc-ee’s real estate and development director Stan Beard told a Triad Business Journal growth summit in March that North Carolina is “not a one-and-done” for the chain and that the company plans to build more travel centers in the state, though no specific future cities have been announced.
So the latest North Carolina update is simple: Mebane is still coming, the timeline has slipped to late 2027, and the state may eventually get more than one Buc-ee’s.
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