Wawa scouting sites in Kentucky and Indiana
Wawa is scouting new store sites in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, with the first gas-and-sandwich convenience stores under the flying-goose signs to be announced next year and opened after 2025.
It also plans to move into Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina and Georgia by 2024. The company has nearly 1,000 stores, with roughly one-quarter each in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida, and in the counties around Washington, D.C.
“At Wawa, growth means strengthening our existing markets as well as expanding,” chief executive Chris Gheysens said last week in a statement, which referred to the new states as future “Wawalands.”
The company plans 70 new stores next year, including sites near Pensacola, after adding more than 40 outlets this year.
It has also closed smaller or less-profitable stores, including some in Philadelphia.
Once a corner dairy store where customers could buy rolls and cold cuts to make their own sandwiches, Wawa has boasted that it is now the biggest seller of Philadelphia-style hoagies, which can be ordered online, in-store or remotely. The sandwiches are made from rolls and other ingredients prepared by vendors at Wawa supply centers and finished-to-order in stores — as are many other breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack products on Wawa menus.
While some local economic development officials have welcomed the stores, the scale of recent “Super Wawa” stores has also fed neighborhood opposition.
Last week, Wawa opponents in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, celebrated a state court ruling they said would have the effect of reversing a local zoning approval for a store and gas station they contend is too big for the location.
In August, the company canceled plans for one Coral Gables location, after sustained opposition from neighbors and school parents, the Miami Herald reported.
The new state announcements follow Wawa’s steady expansion, starting in 2012, into South and Central Florida. The chain expects it will soon have more stores in the Sunshine State than anywhere else — though CEO Chris Gheysens has so far resisted Florida officials’ occasional attempts to persuade the company to move its offices to Florida.
As it spreads geographically, Wawa has tweaked its mid-Atlantic formula. In Florida, the company installed more outdoor seating and added local specialties including empanadas, black beans and Cubano sandwiches lined with pork and ham.
As it enters the midSouth, there’s no shortage of Southern fried foods and sides for Wawa to test.
But what could it add
Kidder Sanchez: I don’t have the cash to spend. Activities with my daughter are limited. I have to pay so much money in rent that I can’t get up and go. I have to be much more calculated. Instead of going to the that is special to the Midwest?
“It’s too soon to tell,” said Wawa spokeswoman Lori Doyle. To be sure,
“we work to align our offerings with the food cultures and traditions of each new market,” but the company does best offering custom versions to its standard Italian hoagies, paninis, breakfast bowls.
Dave McCoy, a retired newspaper editor, Cincinnati native, and descendant of the feuding McCoy clan from the nearby Appalachians, notes the Ohio Valley is full of food specialties that may fly under the national radar but would be welcome if wellmade and Wawa-available. movies and buying any snack that she wants, then you have to think of things that are free or cheap, or see if someone invites me to something. I don’t have the same abilities to do whatever I want with my daughter. She loves to go
These include “five-way chili,” with spaghetti, cheese, onions, beef and beans, which McCoy says is tough to get just right.
Other regional favorites include bratwurst; deepfried pork loin sandwiches; pawpaws, a native mangolike fruit, highly perishable but readily blended into baked goods and milkshakes; and goetta, a Midwestern scrapple made with the parts of the cow or pig you don’t see in supermarket cases, plus oats, instead of Lancaster-style cornmeal.
Goetta could be tough. Despite local customer requests, Wawa still doesn’t offer scrapple, which is trickier to grill than sausage and might out and eat. Every week we used to do a date night. Now date nights have dwindled from once a week to once a month.
Hossain: A quality daycare is $1,500 to $2,000 a month. We’ve relied on family to watch Ambrose, in order to build up our savings. It would make sense for us to move and not bother with another house in Miami-Dade. We moved here because Miami is Miami. It’s the Magic City. We love it here, but we can’t make it work if it’s not sustainable.
Q: Why is this such a critical problem?
Kidder Sanchez: Natives are being priced out. If I didn’t have my family here, I would move out. Two or three years ago, we lived normally. Now everyone is stretched so thin that it’s difficult doing the things that you’re accustomed to. It doesn’t matter if you went to school and studied.
Morganelli: I know of friends and colleagues whose rents have doubled in Miami Beach and Brickell. These are professionals
Anot lend itself to off-site, centralized preparation.
Scrapple also isn’t on the menu at Sheetz, Wawa’s western Pennsylvania counterpart. Both are family-run chains, started with the first generation of dairies to buy delivery trucks, in the early 1900s.
“As for strong regional competitors like Sheetz, a Pennsylvania-based company like us, we continue to have the utmost respect for them and have already been competing with them in several markets for quite a long time,” Doyle said.
By moving south and west, Wawa bypasses — and surrounds — Sheetz’s Pittsburgh-area heartland.
Why the sudden rush of new states? Wawa, still controlled by members of the founding Wood family, has been growing incrementally for decades. It slowed during the pandemic but is now ready for these larger moves.
The company says it employs more than 35,000; Forbes estimates sales at $15 billion last year and growing rapidly. Employees and outsiders hold a minority of private shares.
A growing chain covering more states would presumably command a higher price if the next generation of Woods decides it’s time to put the company up for sale or take it public in an initial stock offering — a deal it has contemplated but not taken in years past.
Or as a bigger company, Wawa might find it attractive to remain independent. “Wawa is, and remains a privately held company, with no plans to change that,” Doyle said.
Distributed by Tribune Content Agency.