MAGGOTFEST
Wawa customer in Ewing claims to find maggots in his hoagie
EWING » A Wawa customer apparently received an extra topping on his hoagie that he never ordered.
Chris Garcia said he bought a buffalo chicken cheesesteak hoagie early Saturday morning from the new Ewing Wawa at 1300 Silvia St. after he got out of work.
When he got home, he took two bites and realized something was out of the norm.
“My sauce started going up on my paper wrapper,” a grossed-out Garcia said Monday. “Sauce isn’t supposed to do that. So I flipped my light back on and I saw two maggots just moving around my sandwich.”
The 22-year-old then said he showed his mom the sandwich to make sure he was “not tripping.”
“She got out her camera and started recording while I went to the bathroom and starting throwing up,” Garcia said. “This is something you don’t expect to happen in real life. You see this in movies all the time. But you don’t actually expect to come home, sit down and eat your meal and find something like this.”
Garcia, a Ewing resident, shared the video of the gruesome encounter with The Trentonian .In the footage, two maggots, which are the larva of a fly, are seen slithering on the wrapper near the hoagie cut in half.
In a statement, a Wawa spokeswoman said the company inspects its stores “on a daily basis and have rigorous processes in place to prevent
incidents of this type from ever occurring.”
“While we never speculate on an unverified video, we do have an extremely detailed process to authenticate and assess complaints surrounding anything that would take away from the best and most positive Wawa experience possible,” Wawa spokeswoman Lori Bruce said in an email. “We hold ourselves to the highest standard of quality in the food that we serve and the conditions in which we serve it.”
After consuming a couple bites of the foul hoagie, Garcia, a security guard at Six Flags, took the sandwich back to the store with his mother.
“The guy at Wawa tried to make a little joke out of it,” Garcia said, noting the employee told him everything would have to be thrown out. “They continued serving sandwiches after we left the restaurant.”
Garcia said he was offered another sandwich or a refund, and he took the refund.
“I didn’t think it was handled appropriately,” Garcia said. “I don’t think they really cared.”
Garcia was then driven to the hospital, where he was given fluids and medicine to kill parasites.
Garcia, who had been going to Wawa for two years before the repulsive episode, said he would order the same thing every time: a buffalo chicken cheesesteak hoagie with buffalo sauce, ranch dressing, honey mustard, spinach and pickles.
“I’ve been going to Wawa for like two years and haven’t had an issue,” Garcia said, noting he didn’t smell anything different with his hoagie because the buffalo sauce masked anything suspicious. “Good things taste funny with hot sauce.”
He’s unsure if he actually ate any maggots.
Garcia said he didn’t open the sandwich to see if there were any hidden vermin lying in wait.
“There could’ve been more underneath the meat,” he said. “I did not feel like digging through the meat to see if I could find more.”
One thing is for certain, there will be no more Wawa Hoagiefest for Garcia.
“I have not even gone to Wawa since,” Garcia said,
Garcia is considering legal action against Wawa for the rancid hoagie.
“It’s not really about the money,” he said. “They can’t be serving food like that. People could really get sick from this.”
Wawa opened the Ewing store on Aug. 25. The super Wawa at the intersection of Parkway Avenue and Sylvia Street, just across the street from Scotch Road is the company’s only store in Ewing.
Wawa currently operates 244 stores in the Garden State and has a total of 750 stores nationwide. Stores can also be found in Maryland, Delaware, Virginia and Florida.