He spoke at a conference near my work a couple of weeks ago. He started off small with a focus on being nice and having clean restrooms (the huge facilities vision didn’t come until much later). And decided to focus solely on roadtrippers, cutting out truckers who are the biggest market in that space. Equity investors didn’t agree with that vision because it differed so much from all of the other major players, so he had to bootstrap it. Eventually he got big enough they came calling but by then he wasn’t interested in it. He felt taking them on would contradict the companies core values and put the focus on cutting costs and efficiencies, rather than providing the best experience. He also said not having to pay out to investors has allowed him to invest more in the people hence, Buccee’s employees being some of the highest paid in any industry.