Buc-ee’s is a chain of convenience stores and gas stations, with more than 30 locations across seven states of the USA. The company was established in Texas in 1982, and keeps growing, having very ambitious extension plans.
Meaning and history
The first Buc-ee’s location was opened in Texas in 1982. For the first decade, the business was going slowly by confidently, and only in 2001 the owners of the brand, Arch Aplin and Don Wasek, decided to open a travel agency. Exploring the new field of activity took some time, but everything went through with great success, thus the founders of Buc-ee’s decided to conquer other states. This started in 2018, with the location in Alabama coming first. In the following years, the brand also opened spots in Georgia, Kentucky, South Carolina, Florida, and Tennessee.
The name of the chain, Buc-ee’s, was given to it by its founder, Arch Aplin, whose childhood nickname was the “Beaver”. So he combined his nickname with the name of his dog, Buck, and borrowed a visual compound from Bucky the Beaver, a mascot of a toothpaste brand, popular in those times.
What is Buc-ee’s?
Buc-ee’s is the name of an American chain of gas stations and outlets, which was established in Texas in 1982, and by today has grown into a large company with 34 locations in seven states. All the outlets of the chain boast large sizes, which allows them to offer a wide variety of products to the customers.
In terms of visual identity, Buc-ee’s has never changed its original concept, created for the brand at the beginning of the 1980s, and made up by the company’s founder, Arch “Beaver” Aplin.
1982 – Today
The Buc-ee’s logo, designed in 1982, is composed of a bright cartoonish emblem and a stylized outlined lettering, arched under it. The emblem depicts a funny brown beaver in a red baseball cap, drawn on a solid yellow roundel in a thin black outline. The beaver looks up and seems to be very excited about what it sees. As for the lettering, it is executed in a fancy serif font with thick rounded lines and sharp miniature serifs on their ends.
Font and color
The custom designer lettering from the primary logo of the Buc-ee’s brand is set in a fancy and smooth typeface with heavy characters, decorated by small sharp serifs. There is some resemblance of the font, used in this insignia, with such typefaces, as Super Delicious BTN Shadow, or Dynamo Pro Bold Shadow, but with significant modifications of the contours.
As for the color palette of the Buc-ee’s visual identity, it is based on bright combination of red, yellow and brown, which stands for strength, energy and progressiveness of the company , with white and black elements pointing at its professionalism and quality of goods and services offered.