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| Today's post highlights Forrest County, MS, retail. |
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| Broken Chain: A business which, at some point in its history, had multiple, similarly-functioning, physical locations where a customer could purchase goods and/or services, and which presently has a significantly diminished presence and/or value as a brand compared to the same brand in its heyday. - Zap Actionsdower |
If 2023 was the "year of the car" in my book (not only did I get a new vehicle, so did at least 5-10 other people I know), then 2024 must be the "year of the wedding." Having only been to a grand total of three weddings prior to 2024, I've doubled that total in this year alone. Back in April I blogged about a pit stop I made at the #WaffleHouseinOxfordMS after a friend's wedding in Water Valley, and the following month I shared the story of my retail-related side adventures while on another friend's bachelor trip in Dallas, TX, published the weekend of the ceremony. The third wedding I went to this year took place in June, just outside of Hattiesburg, where my friend and his bride went to college together at the University of Southern Mississippi. Having yet to explore Hattiesburg in great depth, I toyed with the idea of staying the whole weekend to explore, and he encouraged me by giving me several recommendations ranging from the hotel (Hotel Indigo, really nice place) to an absolutely absurd antique shop-slash-museum that was totally up my alley (and is the bonus feature of today's post!). All but one of my closest friends were at the wedding, too, and it was a great weekend all around. The ceremony was perfect and I enjoyed everywhere I went, including the very first place I stopped on the drive in, a roadside icon: Stuckey's.
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| USM campus |
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| Nighttime view from my hotel window |
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| Midtown Hattiesburg mural |
At its peak in the 1960s, Stuckey's boasted 368 locations in over 30 states. Stuckey's had become quite the empire, but the growth of the business was perhaps a tad unsustainable. The business model was entirely franchise-based; there were no company-owned stores. That said, W.S. Stuckey singlehandedly oversaw the entire franchise operation, including supplying 100% of merchandise to all locations. As this simply became too much to handle, Stuckey in 1964 sold the company to PET Evaporated Milk. According to the Stuckey's timeline, "W.S. Stuckey, Sr. died in 1977, the same year that Illinois Central Industries bought Pet Milk Co. They began to close hundreds of Stuckey’s stores across the country," triggering the chain's decline. The Saturday Evening Post continues:
“By the early 2000s, my family’s legacy had become a bunch of shuttered stores on the roadside,” [Stephanie Stuckey] says. Even worse, more than a few had been turned into porn shops and strip clubs.“I thought, ‘That’s not my grandfather’s legacy. That’s not how our story ends.’”Stephanie’s father, W.S. Stuckey Jr., had managed to pull some investors together to buy the store from its corporate owners in 1984, but the brand remained a minor holding in a much larger portfolio.Despite her name, Stephanie Stuckey was an unlikely savior for the company. A former attorney, she represented Dekalb County in the Georgia State Legislature from 1998 to 2013. Deciding not to seek re-election, she became Director of Sustainability for the City of Atlanta, then the city’s Chief Resilience Officer.Then, one day in 2019, she got a phone call: Would she be interested in buying a failing company that happened to bear her family name?“I was not the first choice for this,” she says with a laugh. “Other family members passed on it before they got around to me.”After a bit of soul-searching, Stuckey did what the rest of her family would not: She invested her life savings to buy the company.“I knew it was a losing proposition,” she says. “But I saw something that was not on the balance sheet, and that was the value of the brand. Besides, I had a cause that was higher than profit: family and legacy.”The first thing she did was take a road trip.
The story picks up with an article published just last week on World Footprints. Author Kathleen Walls interviewed Stephanie Stuckey, who said one of the stops on her road trip was one of the remaining original Stuckey's locations in Marion, Arkansas, along I-55 about 20 minutes from downtown Memphis. Writes Walls:
Two of the four gas pumps were broken. The roof displayed traces of the original teal trademark color peeling through the darker blue paint. Stuckey’s logo on the rooftop was barely hanging on. The spectacle brought tears to her eyes. What gave her the strength to even get out of the car and enter the dilapidated building was her tacky dashboard Jesus she had picked up as a souvenir when she began the road trip. She snapped a picture with the Jesus in the foreground of the building and posted it on Instagram with the caption, “My ‘Come to Jesus’ moment in the parking lot of a rundown Stuckey’s.”Stephanie summoned enough courage to enter the store and was surprised at what she saw. It was surprisingly clean, well-stocked, and busy inside. She asked one man why he stopped there, and his answer gave her hope. He said, “I love Stuckey’s. I remember when they were the place to stop. Yeah, maybe this store is a fixer-upper, but so am I. And so is this country.”Stephanie returned to her car with a new realization. Her new-to-her company didn’t own any of the stores. The franchise option no longer existed. Their agreement just lets them stock Stuckey products. Some stores had seen better days. But the Stuckey’s brand was what people remembered and valued and that was what she had bought.
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| Marion, AR, Stuckey's, pictured in 2019 |
Today, the Marion Stuckey's is permanently closed, having been struck and damaged by a tornado. But the Stuckey's brand, on the other hand, has experienced quite the turnaround under the leadership of Stephanie Stuckey. After her epiphany in Marion, Stephanie joined forces with a third-generation pecan farmer, acquired a candy manufacturing plant, and formed partnerships with multiple retailers to sell Stuckey's-branded products, including Hobby Lobby, Food Lion, Ace Hardware, and even Travel Centers of America and Wawa -- "two chains that owe their very existence to W.S. Stuckey," the Post notes. Stephanie Stuckey also jokes, "I suppose I might end up being the brand ambassador for the rest of my life. Like Colonel Sanders. They’ll roll me out in a wheelchair: ‘Here she is! The Stuckey lady!’"
Of course, in addition to those chains listed above, the brand also supplies products for its 13 remaining original sloped-roof Stuckey's stores... including the one in Hattiesburg, MS. Located off I-59 and serving up the house specialty of freshly made fudge, the Hattiesburg Stuckey's has been operated by siblings Russ and Candy Whiteside for about 30 years (pictured below with Stephanie Stuckey in 2022). In a 2021 Facebook post, Stephanie referenced the Hattiesburg store as one of "several wonderful stores that I’m really proud of." You can search up the remaining original locations on Stuckey's store locator with the filter "original Stuckey's store"; that 2021 Facebook post also includes a then-current location listing of both the standalone "traditional" stores and other locations featuring the Stuckey's Express store-within-a-store concept.
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| Courtesy LinkedIn |
Out in front of the Hattiesburg Stuckey's is a giant billboard bearing the chain's famous logo and displaying the gas prices. I was very excited to visit this store, even if photographing the original sloped-roof building was going to prove difficult given the large gas canopy obstructing it.
Here's a somewhat better view of the side of the sloped-roof building, at least, as well as a view of the tall roadside sign for the Stuckey's. The blank sign next to it is for the former Waffle House next door, now a local coffee shop.
The store's entrance is smack in the center, with the registers and kitchen on the left, and the aisles and fridges on the right. Aesthetically, it looks pretty much like any other standard convenience store; the drop ceiling, I can only assume, covers up the original, beautiful exposed wood. But on the shelves, we find plenty of products reminding us we're in a Stuckey's, including the famous pecan log rolls!
A display of numerous T-shirt designs and colorways was in the back right corner of the store, and priced very cheaply, too. I hate that this picture turned out so blurry; I think I was excited to start flipping through these to figure out which one to buy! I ended up going with the dark blue stamp-logo design you see second from the right, and pulling it out of my drawer to wear this week is actually what inspired me to write this post today.
More Stuckey's-branded tchotchkes and sweets could be found throughout the rest of the interior. I always remember stopping at the Stuckey's off of I-20 in Eastaboga, AL, on road trips to visit family in South Carolina growing up. That location had a red roof instead of blue -- "part of a co-branding campaign in the 80’s with Dairy Queen" according to Stephanie Stuckey, and indeed, the Dairy Queen was a big part of why we stopped, given we didn't have any back home at the time. That store had the exposed wooden ceiling like I linked to above, and I remember it had tons and tons of trinkets and T-shirts too, including an M&M's racing team shirt and hat I bought one time (presumably because of Eastaboga's proximity to Talladega). The store is now a Sunoco, which incidentally has returned the roof color to its original blue. Lots of fond memories of that place.
Back outside, here's another view of the side of the building, as well as one from around back, attempting to capture more of the sloped roof architecture. I've actually been in touch with Stephanie Stuckey before, who found my flickr page and told me she is "fascinated by old retail and repurposed retail sites." She posts lots of fun Americana finds from her road trips on her Instagram @stuckeystop, and it's pretty awesome to know that someone like her enjoys this sort of thing as much as you and I do!
One more shot of the gas canopy out front -- notice how the gas here is branded as Stuckey's, just like the store -- as well as the opposite-side view of the electronic price billboard along the highway. I definitely enjoyed my visit here and am so glad to see everything Stephanie Stuckey is doing to revive the brand! This year she authored a book, Unstuck: Rebirth of an American Icon, described as the "inspiring firsthand account of Stephanie Stuckey's rise to CEO upon suddenly acquiring her family's beloved yet struggling brand." I'm definitely going to purchase that and give it a read; maybe y'all will be interested in it as well.
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In addition to the Stuckey's, everywhere I went and explored in Hattiesburg was lots of fun. I visited all of the retail along Hwy 98, including Turtle Creek Mall, Ollie's, Big Lots, Michaels, Target, Ross, Books-a-Million, HomeGoods, TJMaxx. I checked out some neat local places such as T-Bones Records & Cafe and Mississippi Made & More. I stopped by a Rite Aid-turned-Goodwill, drove around the USM campus, and even continued my tradition of walking around in public in full suit and tie after the wedding by shopping at Sam's Club that night. I didn't make it to the Winn-Dixie in town on this visit, but I did go by there and get pictures back in 2022, which is probably a good thing considering that chain's time in Mississippi may not last too much longer. Even all the food I ate was amazing, from the cheeseburger po-boy at Art of Roux to the blue plate at The Midtowner, cookies from Insomnia and breakfast at Topher's, and the catering at the wedding. What a great weekend.
Probably the biggest non-wedding highlight of the trip, though, would have to be the place my friend recommended to me, The Lucky Rabbit. Occupying two adjacent buildings in downtown Hattiesburg, it's half-antique store, half-museum, 100% amazing. It has no air conditioning, so I was a wee bit uncomfortable by the time I left (also probably owing to the fact that I spent multiple hours inside), but it was entirely worth it. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking, although I will also add that I avoided looking up photos of the place beforehand so that I could be more surprised upon seeing it in-person. To that end, if any of y'all ever find yourself in or near Hattiesburg on a Saturday or Sunday, I strongly encourage you to check this place out (and maybe leave it a mystery if you do)!
Exterior of the properties.
Shipley! Geoffrey! Dairy Queen!
Lots and lots of McDonald's memorabilia.
Two former Mississippi-based entities, one of them remembered a bit more favorably than the other. We learned about WorldCom a lot in my college accounting classes.
I've been focusing mostly on the memorabilia, but like I said, this is still also an antique store with stuff for sale. One section had some neat glassware. I didn't buy the McRae's mug, but I did buy both of the Oxford Mall grand opening glasses, thinking those were a neat score.
More of the McDonald's items.
There is a second level to the store, too. I thought the views from up here were some of the best.
Tucked away upstairs was a small little theater area! These are some shots from that room.
Probably my favorite pic of the entire place!
Two last shots from ground level.
Building one is an old hardware store...
...while building two is decorated to look like an old grocery store. An outdoor patio, filled with more memorabilia, bridges the two.
Here I thought building one was cool -- I love grocery stores, so I was just as surprised by building two! Fun socks are always a good way to get my attention as well...
Old Fred's and Kroger signage in the same picture is great, but I think I like the second one even more -- no idea where those old registers, lane lights, or green "checkout" sign came from, but I dig it all. Also neat to see the Crispy M&M's balloon.
I absolutely loved the tiered tube TV display in the middle of the store, too -- always thought it would be neat to see something like that in person, and this one did not disappoint. Nearby was this little nook under the stairs with the Burger King sign.
Like the other building, this one had an upstairs as well as more space at the back of the first floor, but I didn't photograph those areas (and admittedly, the memorabilia was more concentrated at the front of this building). Here are a couple more shots from the front, including a vintage Filet-o-Fish ride.
A close-up shot of the Geoffrey costume (next to the Kroger sign!), as well as another Jitney Jungle sign (fitting for this building).
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My friend's wedding, Stuckey's, The Lucky Rabbit -- my entire weekend in Hattiesburg was an awesome experience! Again, I strongly encourage y'all to visit both of these places if you ever find yourself in the area. I also hope you'll get the chance to check out the results of Stuckey's revival closer to you, and now I'm wondering if Stephanie Stuckey has ever been to The Lucky Rabbit when she has stopped in Hattiesburg. My friend's recommendation was spot-on, and it definitely seems like the type of place she -- and y'all -- would like as well, so I hope you enjoyed this post!
I hope to be back next month with more. Until then and as always, thanks for reading, and have fun exploring the retail world wherever you are!
Retail Retell
