If convenience store competition in Northeast Florida were a poker game, the stakes are about to get raised. A big Texan is sitting down at the table.

Buc-ee’s, a Texas chain that is just expanding into Florida, plans a store and gas station on Interstate 95 near World Golf Village in St. Johns County. And the numbers are huge: A 52,600-square-foot store with 120 gas pumps.

You read that right: At 52,600 square feet, that’s a little bigger than a typical Publix or Winn-Dixie and eight or nine times the size of what Gate, Daily’s or Race Trac has been opening lately. The 120 gas pumps are about 100 more than most new stations.

"That’s enormous for a convenience store," said Jeff Lenard, spokesman for the National Association of Convenience Stores, "but it’s not all that big when you look at Buc-ee’s. Some have gone as big as 70,000 square feet."

The pre-application filed with St. Johns County places the store on 13.71 vacant acres at the southwest quadrant of the International Golf Parkway and I-95, about 15 miles south of I-295. A county spokeswoman said that Buc-ee’s will need to file construction plans and have those approved before being issued a building permit.

Co-owner Arch "Beaver" Aplin said Thursday that he hopes to break ground during the first quarter of next year. Construction, he said, would take about a year. Last year, the chain announced that it was expanding outside of Texas for the first time, into Florida and Alabama. At the time, the first store in Florida was expected to be at I-95 and LPGA Boulevard in Daytona Beach, followed by Fort Myers.

But Aplin said the St. Johns store should be first now because the other locations have to work through some environmental issues. It will be the 37th or 38th in the chain, he said.

Many of the chain’s stores are typical convenience store size. But it’s been increasingly moving to the mammoth ones on interstates, which it has insisted are convenience stores and not truck stops, though Aplin conceded that it could be called a travel center.

"We sell all the convenience store items," he said, "Cokes, chips, bottled water and we sell gas."

Its larger stores typically hire about 225 people.

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GasBuddy.com’s Pit Stop Report Card for the third quarter of 2017 ranks gas station convenience stores in six categories: Coffee, cleanliness, restrooms, customer service, outdoor lighting and overall. Buc-ee’s came in first in each one.

Wawa, which opens its first Northeast Florida stores this fall, came in third.

Last year, Bon Appetit magazine called Buc-ee’s the best rest stop in the county, raving about its brisket tacos and Beaver Nuggets, a caramel-coated corn snack.

Much of the store is apparently snacks, from every gummy candy imaginable to jerky to pickled quail eggs. But there’s more than that.

A writer for the Houston Press wrote, "I suspect it’s one of the few places on earth where you can buy pecan pie in a jar, a camo onesie, a glittery decorative vase and windshield wiper fluid all in one convenient location.

"I go to Buc-ee’s for the food, though."

Aplin said that all their food offerings are made on site, from sandwiches to kolaches.

The question, of course, is what makes it a convenience store when it’s that big.

"It’s not as fast an experience as a typical convenience store, where you’re in and out in three minutes," Lenard said. "At Buc-ee’s, it might take you three minutes to walk from your car.

"But the items they offer are in line with a typical convenience store. The difference is that instead of offering a choice of 10 soda fountains, they may have dozens. And the bathrooms … I was in a Buc-ee’s once and lost count at 30-something."

For the record, Buc-ee’s store in New Braunfels, Texas, has 80 fountain dispensers, 83 toilets and 31 cash registers.

It August, it opened a store in Katy, Texas, that features what the company claims is the world’s longest car wash: A 225-foot tunnel featuring not only a conveyor belt but a light show. The company is trying to get it into the Guinness World Records. The cost of that entire project — store, gas station and car wash — was reported at $17 million.

Plans filed for the St. Johns County store do not indicate a car wash.

But they do include the two rows of 120 gas pumps.

"There are a couple of ways to make money selling gas," Lenard said. "One is to make a lot of money per gallon, but that doesn’t happen often. The typical retailer makes less than a nickel a gallon.

"The other way is to sell a lot of gas. And pennies mean something when you’ve got 120 people pumping gas."

Roger Bull: (904) 359-4296