At the average c-store, customers drive up in automobiles. They fuel up, grab something to eat and drive off.
At the Atchafalaya Basin Landing and Turtles Bar & Grill, it’s a little different. It’s a floating store and restaurant in the Henderson Swamp in Louisiana. There’s fuel, but it’s boats that motor in to fill up. Customers walk into the c-store for snacks and beverages, then they can walk next door to dine in the restaurant, but sometimes, when they look down, alligators might be peering up at them.
The business itself has been open for 26 years, but there wasn’t always a bar and landing. It was once just a store and a boat launch.
“My dad, Tucker Friedman, owned a convenience store, but he always wanted to build a floating store, restaurant and bar,” said Christine Friedman, general manager of the store, which is owned by her father. “He had a vision. We have his sketches from 10 years before it was built in March of 2024. It’s a 6,000-square-foot floating island. A floating store and restaurant had never been done in our state. Permitting was a nightmare. They had to create new codes for it.”
Christine’s brother Nick, who is now the operations manager, and her father built it all with the help of staff and friends. “Each piece of wood in here was planed by my dad.”
“It sits on plastic dock floats. They had to be installed according to weight. There are different size floats for different weights. Everything was delivered like a puzzle. My dad, Nick and our employees put it together by section and they would float it out and then put another section together,” she said.
Continue reading about Atchafalaya Basin Landing in “Keeping Things Afloat—Literally,” from the November 2025 issue of NACS Magazine.