LAKE JACKSON, Texas – At Buc-ee's convenience stores in Texas, it’s all about a clean bathroom. As one Buc-ee's billboard proclaims, "Your Throne Awaits. Fabulous Restrooms—32 miles." The convenience retailer has a profile appearing in the September 5, 2017, issue of Forbes magazine.

The quiet success of Buc-ee's, a privately held company that Forbes estimates had revenue last year of $275 million, is based on several smart decisions. Owners Arch Aplin III and Don Wasek have targeted an affluent market segment: They don't discount, and they don't allow commercial trucks at their gas pumps. Like many successful regional c-stores, Buc-ee’s has nurtured the cultlike following that has grown around their brand, and they've fattened their margins with lots of private-label merchandise, according ot the news source.

While most Buc-ee's locations are the size of a typical convenience store (about 3,000 square feet), its 12 "travel centers" are quite large, Forbes reports. The latest is now under construction off a new highway interchange in Katy, half an hour west of Houston, and it will have more than 100 gas pumps and 52,000 square feet of retail space. It will employ more than 200 people and feature what may be the largest car wash in the world. "The Guinness Book of World Records people are checking on that," Aplin says.

Forbes reports: “The main attraction, however, will be the toilets. The nearly finished restrooms in Katy, like those in Buc-ee's other travel centers, were designed by Aplin himself. The men's and women's rooms will have spacious entryways decorated with Texas-themed maps and memorabilia. They will have high ceilings and bright lighting, finished with sandstone-colored tiling. The men's room will have 30 urinals and 12 toilets, the women's room 28 toilets. Each stall will have walls, not thin dividers, and a surprisingly heavy metal door. And they will be patrolled 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, by uniformed employees whose only job is to keep them pristine.”

The first Buc-ee's opened in 1982. Aplin, 58, known universally as Beaver—a nickname bestowed by his mother—was fresh out of Texas A&M and working at his father's construction company. When Beaver opened a standard-issue, 3,000-square-foot convenience store in his hometown of Lake Jackson, he says he didn't have anything particular in mind. But three years later, he teamed up with Wasek, who had his own convenience store in nearby Brazoria. Today they each own 50% of Buc-ee's Ltd., and they have clearly defined roles.

For more on Buc-ee’s rise to prominence, see their upcoming Forbes magazine profile.