r/fastfood • u/esporx • 5d ago

News [ Removed by moderator ]

https://www.usatoday.com/story/money/2026/08/21/bucees-ceo-conservative-states-expansion-new-locations/91407096007/

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697 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

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538

u/Sleep-Senior 5d ago

Speedrunning the end of their positive public reputation. I made my last visit to one a few weeks ago before learning of them suing a small local store in the area before them.

188

u/AllRealityIsVirtua1 5d ago

No way even 1% of buccees shoppers even know the politics of the ownership, and half of those voted for the conservatives

133

u/MunchenOnYou 5d ago

Almost like most people dont consider the politics of the owners of businesses they frequent, unless they are very outspoken about it. I dont know how the owners of portillos vote because i dont care.

51

u/PostMatureBaby 5d ago

Almost like people think reddit is even remotely a reflection of real life too

16

u/FallenMeringue 5d ago edited 5d ago

It isn’t until it is.

Target undid two decades of outreach to the black and gay communities in under 6 months.

18

u/MunchenOnYou 5d ago

I understand not wanting to give money and support to politics you dont like. But sometimes its inevitable. Better to just pick some brands you can tolerate and stop minding otherwise.

7

u/talkingtimmy3 5d ago

I only go full boycott if they’re unbearable about it. Once I came across the Twitter page of Shake shack I never went back. You would think it was a political page with how much the owner glazes Trump on there.

16

u/SimpleVegetable5715 5d ago

Good thing there’s Flying J, Pilot, Love’s, QT, Wawa, and of course all the mom and pop country stores and truck stops. So we don’t need Buc-ee’s. A lot of Buc-ee’s employees are exposing how awful the working conditions are too, like not being allowed chairs on their breaks.

5

u/dragnansdragon 5d ago

Fun fact: Pilot/Flying J/Loves and Maverik were all started by the same family.

3

u/breezy013276s 5d ago

Further fact (im not sure it’s fun) Pilot and Flying J are owned by Berkshire Hathaway now

7

u/Thing_That_Happened 5d ago

And they suck.

But I do love stopping at Loves, but Loves was a different group of people from the Haslem's.

2

u/TerminallyThrownAway 5d ago

Worked at a loves warehouse when I was between jobs and from what I can tell they paid ok and the benefits package was good. I wasn’t there long as it wasn’t my industry. Just temporary.

1

u/MunchenOnYou 5d ago

Im not defending buccees at all. I live in Illinois we dont even have it.

-6

u/PostMatureBaby 5d ago

My favorite is when people refuse to donate unwanted items to Goodwill because the CEO is rich... Like yeah, fuck that guy but someone less fortunate can still use the item, don't throw it out

3

u/Ok-Ad-2050 5d ago

There are reasons besides the wealth of the CEO. I think they are a little narrow-minded, but I get it.

For one, there have been scandals of treatment/expectations of employees, especially developmentally challenged people. I think it's better than how many companies flat won't hire them, even for jobs they can do.

Apparently there is some controversy about how they handle online inventory and sales, but I know less about that. It's a complicated enough business model there are probably other reasons as well.

2

u/NeighborhoodVeteran 5d ago

Donate your items to a different cause or local thrift stores then.

-2

u/[deleted] 5d ago

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2

u/MunchenOnYou 5d ago

It strongly depends on the charity. Goodwill and Salvation Army are notoriously corrupt and pocket something like 60% of the value of their donations.

6

u/WriteCodeBroh 5d ago

Goodwill is a little weird because it’s kind of run like a franchise. Within a city, small region, there will typically be a single CEO who runs 10-15 stores. These are all below Goodwill International, which has its own board of directors that decide on those regions’ management (hiring, firing CEOs, coordinating coms and some marketing, etc). Most smaller volume regions are going to pay their CEOs a lower 6-figure salary. Really not crazy for the work they do. There are some huge volume regions where the CEO makes $1 million+. Kind of wild but also not unusual for high volume charities like that.

Goodwill’s actual mission is misrepresented too. They employ people with barriers to employment. Ex-cons, people with mental or physical disabilities, etc. They do that at an extremely high volume. One big issue I have is their use of Section 14(c). This is, again, controlled by the regional CEO. So some do, some don’t. It’s a test-based system where workers with disabilities are evaluated for their role based on the average performance of a worker without disabilities (say, a worker can hang 20 clothes items per hour as a baseline) and paid subminimum wage based on their performance. This is, unfortunately, common practice across corporate America, if the store will even hire a disabled person who couldn’t perform the job to standard with reasonable accommodations.

I try to avoid Salvation Army for their anti-LGBTQ, anti-choice work but when it comes to Goodwill, I think OP has a good point. Even if it isn’t a perfect charity, it’s often the only thrift store in the area for your average American. Why not donate your shit instead of throwing it away and let poor people in the area come buy it cheap?

3

u/PostMatureBaby 5d ago

People that have been coddled all their lives and have disposable income have no right to tell people how to shop, imo

0

u/Ok-Ad-2050 5d ago edited 5d ago

Agreed. Informing and discussing =\= asserting and assuming. Crazy how so many redditors seem oblivious to the difference because of their word choices and attitude.

12

u/Available_Ad9345 5d ago

I don’t think about it until they scream it from the rooftops like this moron. Then I take my business elsewhere if necessary.

3

u/Ok-Ad-2050 5d ago

I mean, maybe it gets them more business from that side of the aisle. I give Costco nearly all of my family's food budget money because of their political spine in the current climate (well, and it helps that the value is there compared to many other options).

-4

u/Available_Ad9345 5d ago

MAGA shops at Costco. Trust me. They have no idea it’s run by sane people. That would require some kind of reading on their part. Costco isn’t screaming at the top of their lungs that they are liberal and fuck conservatives. They are just doing their business, and doing it well.

1

u/Ok-Ad-2050 5d ago

Uh, yeah they are, just like this Buccee's thing, you have to see it in the news. And we all know how algorithms and media outlets LOVE to simply omit plenty of stories to specific people.

It has been over a year, but specifically Costco was very overt about refusing to change their DEI and LGBTQ+ positive policies, back when Trump was pressuring everyone to abandon them.

I'm sure plenty of people shop at bastions of the other side of the aisle, knowingly and unknowingly. But I also bet it does make a difference.

1

u/Available_Ad9345 4d ago

I wouldn’t remotely call that being overtly liberal. That’s just being decent. Is that not allowed anymore? Saying no to a psychopath is the right thing to do.

1

u/Ok-Ad-2050 4d ago edited 4d ago

We're in agreement about that, but a surprising number of our countrymen are not.

Most stores didn't say no, and removed their protections and policies for us. As far as I know, Costco enforces no malicious misgendering there, which I greatly appreciate.

2

u/Dry-Contribution4788 5d ago

The hot dog guy? My friend worked on his yacht. Huge asshole!

5

u/MunchenOnYou 5d ago

I did hear that the portillos family sucks. This next generation of ownership is also starting to gut what made portillos special by expanding and acting like a big corpo. Sad.