Wawa has better food. But I do like Buc-ees. There's more open land on Hatteras for development.
There actually isn't much that can be developed. A decade ago it did have the largest offering of both unrestricted land and land that could be developed. Sold for development for a relatively small sum.
We might get small stores, but the Target was even a test store below their usual profit footprint floor, and they've struggled a bit. Some of that might be backlash from all the foolishness over thinking it could/would become a park or housing for the community (because people really enjoy having opinions about things they misunderstand), but not all of it. The warehouse side of it, with deliveries might float them if they can finish that build out.
Buc-ees leadership felt Vignia was small and not profitable enough on the 95 corridor for a long time, and that's a huge market by comparison by both measures.
What's a shame is that the places that could have done well have largely had problems with their franchisees driving them into the ground - people who thought it would be a hands off investment here, or one they could cut corners on without corporate or the tax man catching on. Burger Kings and McDonalds could do quite well, fairly easily if they were well franchised.
The CFA signs are funny penomenon. They apparently have a huge theft problem. Even when they have signs up saying there are cameras. You can swipe a sign, plop it down next to a closed business or car wash and have it go viral on social media to the tune of a much larger check than you might think. A 16 year old high school junior pulled that stunt and made close to $7k from the one post going viral.
The power of marketing. CFA is a master class in that. Qualitatively - by large scale data - worse chicken as perceived by their own customer base, but huge sales. They even made their chicken qualitatively worse (measured again by their own customers, who blind taste tested) and grew their sales and net revenue massively. The "new" chicken cost less to produce and store and was disliked comparatively to the old and three other chicken company offerings, and they sold even *more* of it by implementing the change and rolling 25% of the saving from that into marketing. Genius level marketing. Genius. Buc-ees is an amateur by comparison, but similar in several ways, and maybe not trailing in the marketing game for long.
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