The Oral History of Wawa

I remember before it was a store it was a dairy. We lived in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania, which is not too far from Wawa, Pennsylvania. And so as a kid, we used to go for rides — I'll call it in the country — and we would go by Wawa.

Wawa was known for certified clean milk before pasteurization. Pediatricians and the hospitals would recommend Wawa milk to the mothers of newborns.

Grahame decided, gosh, maybe if we open our own stores, then they’re going to be captive customers for the dairy.

All of a sudden, 1964, they opened the store in Folsom. Once Wawa opened it was like, “Wow, what's this? This is something special. What are they selling besides milk?”

The first sale was to a lady who brought to the counter a gallon of ice cream for 99 cents. In my excitement and in awe of this moment, I rang up $99 on the cash register. At the time, neither our first customer nor I thought it was funny.

I was coming home from college that day, and I got off the bus and I stopped in to see what it looked like. I’d say I was one of the first 100 going into that store. It wasn't really spectacular.

15 parking places. Less than 3,000 square feet. A door that would slide open. No air conditioning.

I think they had bread and snacks. Maybe like chips and pretzels.

If you forgot your Scott tissue, you could run down to Wawa and get it. If you forgot your Campbell’s Soup, you could go get it.

They were going to open three stores. That was the initial proposal.

And then it just started growing. And I became a Wawa fan as many people did. I would say many people went more than once a day to Wawa, and they still do. It’s kind of like a cult.

It's not enough to just sell products. What is the experience that goes along with that product? And Wawa certainly has that experience.

They were able to take the parts and pieces of what was working in other businesses and combine it to create this entity that really suited the needs of the people … It’s not like ‘McDonald’s Plus’ or ‘Better Than 7-Eleven.’ It’s just its own experience. You know, the Wawa Experience.

The question is, where do you go next? How do you test that the brand is something that can be grown and expanded elsewhere? And I think Grahame Wood probably had a great deal of comfort that South Jersey was the place because they knew South Jersey and loved South Jersey.

We were going home in a way when we went to South Jersey.

I walked past where they were building the Main Road Wawa — one of the first in New Jersey — every day. Nobody ever heard the word Wawa. We didn’t know what it was.

We did not have in the 1960s a kind of 24-hour culture where you could get something at any time. And even getting something conveniently was difficult.

Women are starting to enter the job force in greater numbers at this point. And so yeah, that convenience piece starts to become more important.

Everybody was absolutely outraged at the prices we had. We had not experienced what we call a convenience store in those days. Somebody was chewing me out for prices and the lady behind, someone older whose kids I had babysat for, said, “I need to get celery, and there’s no place on Sunday you can get celery except here. So you pay for the convenience.”

There were blue laws that prohibited big box retailers from being open on Sunday. So Wawa had an edge. And that was to be there when others were closed.

Grahame Wood got away with murder. Nobody in town worked part time like that unless you were a kid at the gas station or a paperboy. They worked it out so that everybody worked part time, and they didn't have to pay any benefits. I think Grahame Wood grabbed an opportunity when he could. It was an opportunity to make a fortune.

They're looking at this landscape that's changing in the post-war era and adapting their business so they can survive. They were really able to take all of these shifts that they were seeing and create a retail outlet that spoke to a lot of those changing needs.

It was mobbed in the morning going to work or in the evening coming home from work. Everybody was in the Wawa. I had people just lined up at the counter. They made money hand over fist those first years.

We want to be part of their daily existence, so you've got to have a lot of stores. We cluster stores. It makes us more convenient. You know, we're everywhere. You can find a Wawa no matter where you're going. If you're going to work. Coming home from work. Taking the kids to school. If you're running errands. If you're out for the day. You’re going to pass a Wawa store.

We're on every corner, and we're in every neighborhood in South Jersey. Kids just grow up with it. And it's just who they are.

The cluster strategy also discourages competitors. Who wants to come in and build new convenience stores when there are already 400 Wawa stores in a given geographic market?

You cannot begin to understand South Jersey culture without understanding Wawa.

Going back and hanging out with your friends and family, even if it’s just going to get something at a local Wawa — it means a lot to me.

The first thing I do when I come home to see my parents is I stop at Wawa, and my dad and I get coffee. It's like our tradition.

Wawa was featured heavily on “Mare of Easttown,” and I was like, “Well, well, well, look at her go.” It was like seeing an old friend hit the big time.

They just took the same model, same footprint, and they just replicated it in every market.

It’s following the same trajectory of other kinds of mass produced consumerism, the most famous, of course, being McDonald’s.

If a company tries to make customers feel good by creating regional identity and loyalty, that's great, but that is all in the service of expanding their base. Making even more loyal customers. Making more money.

We have a profit motive, but for us brand loyalty is about a much deeper and more personal connection … how we’ve made people feel and what we’ve done to make the world a better place.

Back in the early days, we sold dairy. We sold produce. We sold ice cream. But we did not sell coffee. Store managers would brew their own coffee, and they would bring in their own coffee pot. Customers would come in, and they'd smell the aroma. “Wow, that's great. Can you pour me a cup?”

The regional manager came in and said, “What are you doing?” The store manager said, “I’m selling coffee.” He said, “What do you think this is? A Dunkin Donuts?”

The corporate office was probably a little bit slower to respond to it. So store managers began to do it in the mid-1970s. And before you know it, people realized there's a business opportunity that we need to tap. It was a bottom-up business opportunity, not top-down.

Wawa started popping up in Central Jersey, and it’s where I became addicted to their coffee. If I had a one word association with Wawa, it’s coffee. I just had a cup a little while ago for breakfast.

People say, “What’s so great about Wawa?” I say the coffee. And they say, “What’s great about the coffee?’”Just go try the coffee.

You can have speedy service, but if your coffee doesn’t taste good, you’re not going to have great success.

They're not trying to brand themselves as being a super high end solution. They've got someone who is looking at coffee as essentially a medicinal habit, but wants some enjoyment out of it in the process.

You get them in the morning, and you win the day. Coffee can do that.

We had managers on their own, enterprising store managers, begin to make sandwiches in the mid-to-late ‘70s. And that’s what led to the hoagie business.

That sandwich counter was a big key. No matter where the Wawa is, the subs are called hoagies. I congratulate them on that, on sticking to their belief that, you know, dammit, they're hoagies in Philly and in South Jersey, and we're gonna call them hoagies wherever. It’s part of the brand.

You know what’s crazy? I got a Wawa addiction. Honestly. Wawa sandwiches. I literally eat one every day for some reason.

I don't think everybody thinks so much of the sandwiches.

Sounds like a QuickChek customer.

We had been in the fuel business in the early ‘80s, and we probably had a couple of dozen fuel stores. But they were co-branded with the major petroleum companies. They were not big sites. And customers didn't like it because the parking lots were too crowded, and it just didn't seem to work.

They tried to expand up in New England for a while. That didn't work well.

We weren’t successful in Connecticut or Staten Island. We lacked quality sites, so moving or enlarging our stores would have been difficult. Frankly, we made a few tactical mistakes, such as giving away Philadelphia Eagles football calendars in a market that was geographically and emotionally wedded to the New York Giants and New England Patriots.

In the late 1990s, we introduced the Wawa Boli, a handheld stromboli.

We came across this fellow in North Delaware who was producing strombolis. And they were delicious. They were absolutely delicious. So they sold extremely well in a limited number of stores.

Four varieties — pizza steak, Italian, spinach and cheese, and pepperoni — are advertised at $2.99 retail.

We had a good recipe.

But as we expanded it, he couldn't keep up with them. We set up an assembly line production facility in a centralized commissary over in South Jersey and distributed these ‘bolis in every store. And we couldn't sell them because no matter what we did, we just couldn't duplicate the taste and the texture of the original stromboli. After two years of trying, and not making any money, losing money, we pulled the plug on stromboli. I always joke with people: There's probably a warehouse somewhere still filled with Wawa Bolis.

To this day, we talk about the Dark Days. I would say for the first 25 years of our history, we lived off convenience. We were about an alternative to grocery stores and supermarkets. And then we got into the late ‘80s, and that business began to suffer.

I felt like I was actually losing my mind.

Customer count went down, and sales went down. It was somewhat of a frightening time.

My despair was such that I considered ending it all with a flare by being run over by a train.

Our business back then was really in free fall. In 1989, for example, customer traffic decreased 2.3%. In 1990, customer traffic decreased another 3.1%. Then in the first part of 1991, customer traffic was down 5% more.

We looked at McDonald's, and they were expanding. We looked at the quick service restaurants. They were expanding. And we said, “We can do that.” So we launched a whole series of products. You know, like the Sizzli breakfast sandwich, salads, bakery products, hot foods like soups.

The biggest shift they made was really changing from a convenience store to a food service store. And when they made that transition into the food side, that really redefined it.

We see a lot of businesses that didn't survive during the 20th century because they were just stuck in one mode of doing business. And it seems like Wawa was able to really adapt to what they see as the changing consumer landscape.

Today’s Wawa is almost like a mini food department store. They’ve got everything that you can imagine.

We’ve gotten to be a grab-and-go society. And Wawa has recognized that grab-and-go opportunity to build its business.

My kids are wild about the hash browns.

I’ll get their Shorti hoagie once a week.

The Wawa pretzels, they're much softer. They taste like they're relatively fresh. They’re nothing like those salty globs of rock you find in New York City.

I think Wawa does a terrific job with their soups.

What are they, two pretzels for $2? You know, they’re a good deal.

Sizzlis, I’ll get them as well.

Oh! Side note: Wawa has the best pickles.

You never eat Wawa pretzels cold. You gotta pop them in the oven for a minute or two, get them heated up. A little spicy mustard. Good to go.

Guys, how was that pizza we got from Wawa?

IT WAS GOOD!

Fuel was a monumental change in the direction of Wawa. That was one of the single biggest influences in the trajectory of the organization.

I think it did kind of launch us on this bigger cult audience. The people who knew their local Wawa knew their local Wawa. But now the traveler knew us. So it really grew our demographic of shopper.

Now they don’t build a Wawa without the gas pumps. I think 70% of the time when I fill up with gas it’s at Wawa.

If we didn’t have gas, we would be a skeleton of the company we are today.

We had deli cases, and people would flock to Mary, the person behind the deli counter. Mary would take out a piece of paper and write down the order.

Somebody would literally walk up to us and say, “I want a hoagie.” And then you have to write it by hand. Every single item. Every single thing.

I remember when they first went to touchscreen ordering, people didn't like that. Back in the day, as Adam was working behind the counter, he knew exactly how to make my hoagie. I would say, “Adam, could you put some more oregano on it?”

I thought it was never going to work.

There were hardly any retailers in the country doing touchscreen at that stage of the game. We worried that it would take away the personal connection.

You thought that TV screen was going to keep the customers and the associates from that interaction. It hasn’t.

I won't give anyone their food until they tell me what they're doing throughout their day, or a fun fact, or about their children, or what's going on in their life.

Just tapping that little screen, that was a big breakthrough for speeding things up.

I was at a Wawas. I went to order a sandwich. It has a little touchtone keypad. You touch this, touch this, touch this, go pay the cashier and there’s your sandwich. It’s amazing!

I’d like to go behind the scenes in their training because they are clearly friendlier than any other convenience store employees.

I come in here and think, “I should steal a couple of people to work for me.”

I get my cup of coffee, get my breakfast and I get my conversation with Diane. She's the ray of sunshine to start my day.

It doesn’t take much just to give somebody a smile, just to give somebody a hug. And I do ask people, you know, “Can I hug you?” They’ll ask me.

She knows everyone by name and greets them by name. She asks about their families. We know about her family.

They know my schedule. On Thursday, they come in, “Have a nice weekend!”

Some other convenience stores, it's almost like you're doing them a favor by giving them business. I can't remember the last time somebody at Wawa didn’t say thank you when I bought my coffee.

Wawa was always clean, efficient and compassionate. How many people can you say that about, let alone marketplaces? Not a lot.

We went every Monday through Friday morning. We'd show up at 8 o'clock, and they knew my coffee order. I didn't even have to order it, actually.

It was only a couple of days that we noticed Dawn wasn't coming in.

I had a mild stroke. And I didn't come in. And on Facebook — I don’t have an account but my husband does — he said, “I think this is a girl from Wawa. She’s trying to see if you’re OK.”

We were like, “Where’s Dawn? Oh my gosh, what can we do?”

I showed up, and they’re like, “WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?” My face is really bad, and I said, “I can't close my eyes. I'm paralyzed on this side.” And they’re like “NO WAY, YOU’RE BEAUTIFUL.” I can’t cry. I don’t have tears because I’m paralyzed.

It's like “Cheers.” You know, you go in, you know everybody's name, everybody knows you.

The “Wa” was my “Cheers.” It made me feel like someone was taking care of me. Even though I was no longer at home, somebody still cared enough to make sure I had a hot dog before going to bed.

That's the brilliance of capitalism. It forms what we call parasocial relationships with these faceless businesses. We kind of impute all of these ideas and feelings into these businesses … but they're not in the business of making me feel good. They're in the business of making money.

I opened up Parsippany. That was our first store in Northern New Jersey, and it was awesome, man. We were 45 minutes to an hour away from our closest Wawa. It was really cool seeing all those people come out that day we opened. I mean, lining up around the building, that whole first week and month, like where people were so excited that we were finally in their community.

Thank you for thinking of QuickChek, but they’ll pass on being a part of this particular story.

North Jersey requires a lot of redevelopment. There’s not a lot of greenfield properties on the corner of Main Street in North Jersey. If we had the same number of stores in Northern Jersey as we did in Southern New Jersey per capita, that market would have 800 to 1,000 Wawas.

**Did not respond to multiple requests for comment**

We’re going to open, on average, about 10 Wawas a year over the next five years. We believe that the Northern New Jersey market is primed for an offer like ours.

I think they see virgin territory for sure. I think North Jerseyans will welcome Wawa with open arms.

We live in and we're immersed in a culture that values money and individual profit. And so there's always this drive for more and more and more, and it's insatiable … We can't expect our business owners to be content with warm and fuzzy feelings about how they're pleasing their customer base.

Chain stores and chain restaurants are beginning to dominate the world.

That's the culture that we're living within, and it's really kind of a shame because it does mean that the integrity of small businesses really doesn't exist much anymore … the wholesomeness, the regional-ness, the sort of special and uniqueness of any one thing. If it's profitable, then you lose all of those qualities.

Wawa going into a town where Sheetz is isn’t going to put Sheetz out of business. Wawa going into a town where their major competitor is Steve Montgomery’s Market? Steve Montgomery is in deep trouble.

In today's world, it's grow or die. It's eat or be eaten.

It’s increasingly hard to compete when you’re not a destination.

Capitalism standardizes everything. It makes it all the same. And often the quality isn't nearly as good because it can't be.

I used to travel a ton for business, and it was so much fun. The food was interesting and different. Today, it’s all the same from every level of restaurant. Everywhere is becoming almost like everywhere else.

We like to say that a local Wawa store isn’t just another store in a chain but a community hub … We’ve heard from people across so many regions who want us to put a Wawa closer to home. They’re looking for a Wawa to call their own.

We've kind of chosen this mass-produced lowest common denominator kind of culture and products that we consume. I don't want to denigrate Wawa, but that's one of the pitfalls of unbridled expansion.

I am one of the ones who lost at least a couple million … Wawa is pretty much dead to me.

This is something that I remind my students of when I teach consumer culture. Businesses don’t exist to make us feel good.

I wouldn't suggest that a few people who have been a part of lawsuits represent the thousands that worked for Wawa and have a good sense of how we treat them … I think the litigation that you referred to, frankly, it's pretty hurtful. There's a few people here that decided that they wanted to take that litigation to a place where we just wanted to get it behind us. And that's why we settled.

I planned the night before. I was going to be an hour and a half early to be in line to wait to get in. And as soon as the doors opened, I went to the register and immediately bought M&Ms. And it took me 58 seconds to do that. So I have a photograph of the first receipt from this store.

It’s sort of like Manchester United or European soccer teams. The loyalty those people have to those teams is phenomenal. People love their Wawa.

It's to the point now where even friends and family are getting me Wawa stuff for Christmas or my birthday. I’m actually wearing a Wawa hoodie right now.

I taught in Penns Grove. My little Salem County kids, who were not real sophisticated — even though they thought they were — their one problem with our town was we didn't have a Wawa. You know, that was their guide to where sophistication was.

It's all an illusion. But that feeling of “Part of my identity is tied up with this business” helps sell more hoagies, sells more gallons of gas. It helps their bottom line.

The cult just continues. And I would say I would go out of the way for a cup of coffee. Not 100 miles. But maybe five.

How do I put into words one of the most enduring relationships I have in this world?

We could not function without the customers. We could not function without the neighborhood. They would run to the 7-Eleven. Ew. So we have to have an environment that is pleasing to the neighborhood where we are.

We can go back at least 25 years, and I’m gonna guess 90% of those 365 days per year I’ve been at Wawa.

It started as a dairy. They opened little convenience stores. They started selling coffee, selling lunch meat, making sandwiches. Then they added gas. And now in some stores they have alcohol, beer and wine. They have a couple stores that are drive-thrus. It’s been a continuous growth story to watch.

There are 150,000-plus convenience stores in the industry in the United States. So when you get somebody like a Wawa that stands out, they’ve really done something special.

It’s a staggering American success story.