Buc-ee's Florence SC: Open Since 2022

If you've ever told someone outside South Carolina that you're from Florence, there's a decent chance they didn't know where that was. Then you mentioned the beaver.

Buc-ee's opened its Florence location on May 16, 2022, at Exit 170 off I-95, and it did something almost nothing else in this city's history has done: it made "Florence, SC" a place people already know before they've ever been here. Governor Henry McMaster showed up for the ribbon cutting. So did House Speaker Murrell Smith. It wasn't treated like a gas station opening. It was treated like an event.

Four years later, it still is one — just a quieter, more permanent kind. Here's what's actually true about it, what changed because of it, and what we still don't know.

May 2022

Opened

53,000

Square Feet

120

Fueling Positions

It's not new. It's just misunderstood by search engines.

If you've searched "Buc-ee's Florence SC" recently and landed on an article talking about construction still underway and an opening date in the future, you found an old, stale page still circulating online. Buc-ee's Florence has been open — gas pumping and all — for more than four years. The store is 53,000 square feet with 120 fueling positions, sitting on the northeast corner of I-95 and North Williston Road.

It made Florence a stop on other people's road trip, not just a place people live.

The Florence location gets a specific kind of visitor: North Carolina residents crossing state lines for it, because as of now, North Carolina still doesn't have a Buc-ee's of its own. That's about to change. The company broke ground on a Mebane, NC location in June 2026, expected to open in 2027. Until then, drivers heading up or down I-95 keep making Florence the stop, not the pass-through.

That's the part locals feel even if they never set foot in the store themselves. It's why out-of-towners now recognize the name of the city. For a lot of visitors, "Florence" is the exit with the giant beaver head before it's anything else.

Where it is: the northeast corner of I-95 and North Williston Road, Exit 170.

The jobs number depends on which year you ask.

When the store opened in 2022, the company's own announcement promised 175 permanent, full-time jobs, starting above minimum wage with full benefits, a 6 percent 401(k) match, and three weeks of paid vacation. By 2025, in an interview about a different location, founder Arch "Beaver" Aplin said the Florence store had received 6,000 applications for 300 jobs. We couldn't confirm whether that reflects the store's staffing growing since 2022 or a different way of counting the same roles.

Both numbers are real, and we're not going to pretend we know which one is current. If Buc-ee's confirms a current headcount for the Florence location, we'll update this.

It's a beaver, and yes, that's the whole marketing plan.

Founder Arch Aplin picked the name Buc-ee's by combining his own childhood nickname, "Beaver," with the name of his dog, Buck. That's it. That's the origin story behind the mascot now printed on merchandise all over Florence County. The chain, founded in Lake Jackson, Texas, in 1982, built its reputation nationally on a specific, oddly durable combination: extremely clean restrooms, cheap gas, and a wall of beef jerky and fudge that turns a bathroom break into a 20-minute shopping trip.

What we still don't know

We don't have a current, confirmed employee count for the Florence store today, in 2026. We also don't have Buc-ee's own traffic or visitor numbers for the Florence location specifically, so any claim about "millions of visitors" a year is a guess dressed up as a fact, and we're not going to make it. If those numbers become available, we'll fold them in.

Sources

Buc-ee's company opening announcement (May 2022, via Shelby Report and QSR Magazine); WSOCTV and WCNC opening-day coverage; News and Press groundbreaking coverage; Spectrum News 1 (June 2026) on North Carolina cross-border traffic and the Mebane, NC groundbreaking; The T&D / The State (2025) on employer hiring figures.

Florence, SC's Most Famous Landmark Isn't Downtown. It's an Exit Sign.

It's not new. It's just misunderstood by search engines.

It made Florence a stop on other people's road trip, not just a place people live.

The jobs number depends on which year you ask.

It's a beaver, and yes, that's the whole marketing plan.

What we still don't know

If you've worked at Buc-ee's Florence, or you were there for the 2022 opening, we'd like to hear what it was actually like.