Right off Interstate 10, which leads to Los Angeles from Arizona, a market and roadside attraction is tucked into a pasture. Inside the warehouse-sized business, rows of spicy jam and hot sauce line the shelves, each container adorned with cartoon donkeys.
On a recent weekday morning, this store — called Ass Kickin’ Gift shop — was quiet. Across the street, there are signs of another market — one with a familiar smiling beaver.
Ass Kickin’ products was founded in downtown Glendale in 1986 by the owner, Jeff Jacobs, manufacturing a few barbeque and hot sauces. He met his wife, Linda, who took on the business with him.
“We started off selling to independent grocery stores, and then the gift shops,” Linda Jacobs said. “We just went out on the road, peddling our hot sauces to gift shops.”
The couple relocated to a dirt road in Goodyear in 2001, when the city’s population was only about 22,000. Today, their storefront sells over 200 products like spicy nuts, prickly pear lotion and customized hot sauce.
In the 25 years since, Goodyear has grown to a commercial hub with over 100,000 residents, Amazon warehouses and multiple data centers. Ass Kickin’ Gift Shop has benefitted from this growth as their customer base expanded, but their products stayed unique to the area.
“We're mainly a specialty food manufacturer, so our products can be found in gift shops and tourist areas and airports and specialty retailers, but they can't go to the local grocery store to find it,” Linda Jacobs said.
Customer loyalty
Some Goodyear residents are regulars. Mary Karpe has been shopping at Ass Kickin’ for a decade, saying that she’ll stick to it because it’s a hometown company.
It’s also attracted some regulars from out of town, like John Shanks, who has been a customer of Ass Kickin’ for 30 years and is partial to the Jalapeno Cheddar peanuts. Twice a month, he drives over an hour from Congress, Arizona, to buy gifts for family and friends.
Regulars might not be the only customers in town, as a new chapter for Ass Kickin’ is on the horizon.
In 2024, the Texas-based gas station chain Buc-ee’s announced they would be expanding to Arizona — right across the street from Ass Kickin’ Gift Shop.
As Buc-ee’s opening was just days away, Linda Jacobs expected her business to change gears.
“We're all kind of skeptical (about) how this is going to impact traffic, but they're very popular,” Jacobs said. “People will travel from all over just to go see this destination. It's going to bring a lot of revenue to the city of Goodyear.”
Whether or not Buc-ee’s will increase revenue for Ass Kickin’ is yet to be seen.
The shop distributes their products around the country. They import their products to gift shops, tourist areas and airports around the country and sell online under the company name Southwest Specialty Food.
In comparison, Buc-ee’s doesn’t distribute their items on their website.
“It's a completely different business model,” Jacobs said. “We make something completely different than what they do. … We're all about Ass Kickin’ and Spontaneous Combustion and Hot Sauce from Hell, so those are our brands that we hope people continue to support and find.”
A new chapter
No matter how Buc-ee’s affects Ass Kickin’, both businesses are in an economic hotspot.
Linda Jacobs said the location is important to sustaining her business.
“Being on a major freeway like this is very appealing. Again, I-10 is the main freeway from California into Phoenix, there’s people on it all the time, from all over,” Linda Jacobs said. “Their exposure is phenomenal.”
This article first appeared on Cronkite News and is republished here under a Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
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Buc-ee’s is a gas station and convenience store — but for many people, it’s more than that — as evidenced by the lines of fans who camped out just to be among the first to get in on Monday’s opening day. -
Shortly after midnight on Monday, traffic barricades were moved and the cars poured into the parking lots, with people rushing out once parked toward the doors to get in line. -
The long-awaited opening is expected to bring big crowds and lots of traffic to the location just south of Interstate 10 and Bullard Avenue. -
Goodyear police identified 77-year-old Penny Orloff as the victim of a fatal collision earlier this month. She was an actor, dancer, singer and author, with a career that spanned more than 50 years. -
Spirit Airlines is ceasing all its operations, leaving behind over 40 leased planes at a maintenance facility in Goodyear. Aersale, the company that owns the facility, said what’s next for the aircraft is unclear.
