In Stephanie Stuckey’s new book Unstuck: Rebirth of an American Icon, she tells the compelling story of resurrecting her family’s venerable roadside business, Stuckey’s. “You’ve never even run a lemonade stand. What makes you think you can run the family business?” her father asked her in 2019, when she proposed the idea of reviving Stuckey’s.
Stuckey earned her undergraduate and law degrees from the University of Georgia. She worked as a trial lawyer, a state representative in Georgia, and Atlanta’s Director of Sustainability. Stuckey writes, “So instead of going back to my comfortable bubble of like-minded greenies, I ventured into the corporate world trading my Birkenstocks for heels…”
The story begins with her grandfather, Williamson “Sylvester” Stuckey Sr., selling pecans out of a handmade wood shack on the side of the road in 1929. He convinced his wife, Ethel, to make pecan candy to sell and as time passed Stuckey’s became a chain of stores. Stuckey’s sold souvenirs like Mexican jumping beans, rubber alligators, dunking bird toys, pet rocks and other odd trinkets. Weary travelers could also order a grilled cheese and a milkshake.
At their peak, Stuckey’s ran 368 stores in forty states. From 1946-1965, four thousand highway billboards promoted Stuckey’s across America. The iconic Stuckey’s stores, billboards and pecan log rolls attracted folks driving all over the country for decades. Stuckey’s existed years before McDonalds, Love’s or Buc-ee’s.
Things started to slip in 1977 when her grandfather died. Stuckey reveals that by the 1990s, “decades of mismanagement by outside owners and heirs who ran through their trust funds, all that remained of my grandfather’s empire was a handful of stores and family members with his name but not his business.”
One of the obscure facts this writer enjoyed from Unstuck was that the legendary bluesman “Mississippi” Fred McDowell pumped gas at the Stuckey’s off I-55 at Exit 30 in Como, Mississippi, for years. Another story details how bootleggers burned down the Stuckey’s in Folkston, Georgia, during World War II. The bootleggers stole sugar to make liquor and set the place ablaze to cover up the crime.
This soulful journey brings the reader into 2024. So to speak, Stuckey’s is back on the map. Now, 65 licensed locations exist across the country. The brand is alive and well with the new Stuckey’s headquarters located in Wrens, Georgia. On the final page she writes:
“Stuckey’s has been patiently waiting for years, like my grandfather’s papers, to be rediscovered. We all have the power to reinvent ourselves; we control the narrative of our lives. Our story proves that it is never too late to change the ending. Ours, in fact, is just beginning again.”
Thankfully, Stephanie Stuckey still carries on the family tradition one road stop at a time. Her grandfather would be proud. Add Unstuck to your reading list.