Texas’ Real Estate Pros Sell Brand Loyalty

Consumer allegiance to certain Texas brands verges on patriotism, and a few members of The Real Deal’s Texas Top 100 have found out how to turn brand loyalty into real estate success.

In the retail sector, gas station empire Buc-ee’s and beloved grocery chain H-E-B have gathered exceptionally committed followings of brisket-loving devotees, a resource that each company can rely on for development deals. On the entertainment side, Jerry Jones has turned the Dallas Cowboys into a year-round mixed-use destination, and Taylor Sheridan’s modern Westerns are materializing into a record-setting development.

Tapping into a cultural phenomenon can be an uncertain business. Dairy Queen’s “Texas Stop Sign” slogan never really caught on, and Schlotzky’s is now back to being a deli after trying out a few years as an “Austin Eatery.”

But these TRD Top 100 wildcatters prove that striking a natural reserve of Texas spirit can yield a genuine Spindletop. Here’s how four of the state’s top industry operators are building real estate empires on cowboys, beef and general Texicana.

Buc-ee’s

Wide-open spaces are central to the Buc-ee’s brand. With commodious bathrooms, walls of merch and a more or less constant stream of brisket, the beloved convenience store chain promises bottomless Friendly State hospitality.

Accordingly, every Buc-ee’s needs a good-sized plot of land — its stores average 60 preferably with not much else around it. Ever since the chain outgrew the Gulf Coast towns where it began, founder Arch “Beaver” Aplin III has focused exclusively on exurban locations, clustering along the highways that form the Texas Triangle but avoiding the inner loops of San Antonio, Dallas/Fort Worth and Houston.

Due to Buc-ee’s reliable customer pull, small-town governments generally compete to help the company increase its footprint — its stores average 60,000 square feet — hoping to increase tax revenue and boost local average wages. (Buc-ee’s pays its employees well; entry-level positions often start at about $18 per hour, and store managers make six figures.) City councils around the South have courted Buc-ee’s with infrastructure assistance, property tax reductions and even free land, and the company has made these economic incentives a key part of its scouting process.

H-E-B

Founded in Kerrville by CEO Charles Butt’s grandmother, H-E-B has one of the most loyal consumer bases of any grocery retailer in the country. Now headquartered in San Antonio, the chain has been carrying out a steady northward campaign for the past several years.

H-E-B crafted some of the industry’s earliest grocery-anchored shopping centers. In addition, developers often select H-E-B to anchor residential and multifamily projects, counting on the store’s cult appeal to boost demand for nearby living.

The northernmost H-E-B store is in Melissa, one of several Collin County boomtowns. Playing into the Texas hype, the company bought the land in 2022 across from a newly opened Buc-ee’s and plans to add a Whataburger to the retail development.

The Dallas Cowboys

The Hail Mary. Thanksgiving Day games. The iconic Tom Landry. America’s Team exudes a sense of myth that longtime team owner Jerry Jones spins into material value.

Despite a long championship drought, fan loyalty and general appeal have made the Cowboys the most valuable sports team in the world, with a total worth of $13 billion, according to Forbes. Like Aplin, Jones capitalizes on the image of his business, and he’s found local governments eager to accommodate his projects and join the Cowboys myth. Frisco offered Jones a $115 million incentives package to build The Star, a 91-acre mixed-use campus that includes the Cowboys organization headquarters as well as retail and hospitality space. While the Cowboys compete at a different stadium in Arlington, the football field at the Star hosts concerts, high school games and Cowboys practice camps, attracting tourists year-round with the chance to meet the players.

The team’s game stadium got a generous government incentive as well. In 2004, the City of Arlington granted the Cowboys a $325 million incentives package financed by tax increases to build the team’s venue, now named AT&T Stadium.

Cowboys iconography permeates most of Jones’ high-profile projects. His company, Blue Star Land, developed Frisco’s first gated, master-planned community, Starwood. Blue Star also developed the Star Trail master-planned community in Prosper and Star Creek in Allen.

Yellowstone

Screenwriter Taylor Sheridan isn’t primarily a developer, but his growing portfolio of Westerns has led to notable new development in his native Tarrant County and buoyed interest in the film industry around Texas.

Best known for “Yellowstone,” Sheridan also created “Landman,” a modern series in a Texas setting that includes a cameo by fellow Top 100 member Jerry Jones. Sheridan’s got more than mere sizzle; Hillwood Development Chairman Ross Perot announced a partnership with him last year to develop the state’s biggest production studio at AllianceTexas north of Fort Worth. Sheridan is also leading a retail renovation in the Fort Worth Stockyards, a historic livestock market that’s now a mixed-use tourist destination.

The Texas Legislature took Sheridan’s popular shows as a proof of concept for the Texas Moving Image Industry Incentive Program. Sheridan joined fellow Texas natives Matthew McConaughey, Woody Harrelson and Dennis Quaid in persuading the Texas Legislature to expand the program in 2025 from $45 million to $200 million, attracting other producers to Texas as a result. Aside from these commercial enterprises, Sheridan struck perhaps the most significant land deal of 2022 when he purchased the historic 6666 Ranch, a 150-year-old operation covering an area larger than New York City. The Four Sixes has also been a filming site for “Yellowstone” and its prequel “1883,” and a spinoff series named “6666” is reportedly in the works.