Screw Wawa

But I like wawa.

Although, in the early 17th century, Wawa was a racial slur towards ehtnic Armenians in the Republic of Georgia, so I will not eat there for other reasons.

Apparently, Frankie "Wawa" Schnedardze had a major unibrow as a child, and his friends would call him "wawa".

That makes me sad.

The Wawa where I work (17th & Arch)is closing in May.

I guess they'll be replaced by:
a. Dunkin' Donuts
b. A Drug Store; or
c. A Dollar Store

That seems to be the only businesses expanding in the city.

Sad but True, Ern. And I would (sadly) throw Starbucks into the mix.

It's amazing that the Wawa at 17th and Arch is closing with the recent construction of the Comcast Center across the street. That place was always packed, even before the new construction. Seems like you could have a Wawa open there for 6 hours a day and make $10 million a year. JGT, draw up a business plan and let's lease that sucker. Isn't that your specialty? What will we sell? Coffee? Beer? Coffee-flavored beer?

Since the one at Rittenhouse closed, the one at 20th and Chestnut has been constantly packed. There is no way they are losing money. I guess land is cheaper in the burbs and they can put gas in, so they are saying the hell with the city. Really sad when a local chain leaves and a dollar store or a starbucks takes its place. It really hurts the city.

I think beer flavored coffee would be a huge hit. And donuts that taste like tequila.

You also could cross-market to the rural branches with crystal meth-infused hot dogs. Cut into Rite-Aid's market share at the same time.

More convenient than 7-11. Better sandwiches than you will find elsewhere @ 4 am.
And they just feel 'Philly'. A real shame....
Wonder if the Chestnut Hill one will be allowed to close

Not for nothing - I deeply, intensely HATE WaWa for personal reasons - but if WaWa is actually leaving Center City methinks there is more to the story.

Despite Johnny's impassioned protestations that WaWa is purposefully screwing its own customers, something only a company like Globocide actually does, they're not going to completely abandon the market without a good - and 99% likely economic - reason.

There have been rumors for years that their policy is to not make any NEW non-super WaWas, but such a policy on its own would not be supported by closing currently-open (and reliably profitable) locations.

If this strangeness is in fact happening, there is almost certainly some kind of behind-the-scenes action driving it. If I was forced to guess I'd say that given the high-volume, high-gross, low-margin world of convenience retailing, the answer probably rhymes with "schmisness schmrivilege schmax."

OK, I need more on:

"I deeply, intensely HATE WaWa for personal reasons..."

Hunter and JGT:

It's been done.

"Buzz Beer! Stay up, get drunk!"

The site of the WaWa closest to my house is one of the most poorly-designed shopping locations I have ever seen. The parking lot and the sidewalks around it are a screaming nightmare. You take your life into your hands every time you go there. I SHOULD NOT HAVE TO RISK MY LIFE FOR A GALLON OF MILK!

When you have come within inches of getting killed in that parking lot as many times as I have - literally, I'm not kidding or exaggerating, inches from death more times than I can count - you start to develop a Pavlovian response to the place.

I don't really think they are intentionally screwing their customers. I'm sure it's the money. If it is the BPT, then I wish they would have come out and said it, and a lot of this venom would have been directed at the city instead of them. But instead they decided to lie and say, "We don't know what you're talking about" when they knew very well what we were talking about. I know that BS and PR are both spelled with two letters but this just seems like a really egregious example of flat out lying to a very loyal fan base.

Ok so this is how I hear it:

Wawa is still a privately held company that, despite its size, refuses to go public. Some government agency was worried about the monopoly this created, and gave Wawa two options. 1.) Go public. 2.) Zero more locations.

So Wawa went with #2 - so for every Super Wawa they're building in the burbs, they have to shut down another Wawa somewhere. Around here in the Philadelphia area, numerous small Wawa stores have closed just to have a Super Wawa open down the street.

So if you want to put in more locations in the burbs without taking out suburban locations that already exist, where do you poach Wawa locations from? The city of course, where rent is expensive, and their margins, especially when it comes to the money they make off of Super Wawas are simply not high enough.

It's a money thing. I didn't make the rules. Someone care to fact-check me?

Well, when one considers that WaWa isn't that big - the 64th largest privately-held company in the US - that isn't close to what a monopoly means, and "some government agency" just sounds stupid, I don't think there's going to be a lot of people interested in fact-checking a poorly-told bedtime story.

"Some unknown government agency wants to geographically-redistribute WaWa's non-monopoly?" Christ.

I googled 'WAWA Government'. It told me Ontario, Canada has offices in WAWA.
So the Canadians are behind this. And who do The Flyers play next?
I think The Donspiracist should look into this.

That Wawa at 20th and Chestnut sucks anyway.

They don't even have a fountain soda machine!

When they closed the Dorchester Wawa, some of their corporate staff claimed that their intent wasn't to close all of the downtown stores. They stated the motivation was that they want to make many of the downtown stores larger and in many cases the real estate is prohibitive to doing that. I specifically griped about my local Wawa 11th and Arch, which they said they were trying to expand into neighboring retail spaces.

Maybe it's BS, maybe not. Either way I hope they stay downtown. The Aramingo Ave Super Wawa just pisses me off.

In the meantime, you all can live vicariously through the rest of the wawa's here:

http://flickr.com/photos/wawatour

I think the entire Wawa organization (maybe even the store employees) has been told to lie to the general public. A couple months ago, a woman that I work with asked a cashier at Wawa how she feels about the store closing and she said that she didn't know what she was talking about. I'm not sure if she was told not to say anything or what, but I hope they know by now or else Wawa definitely deserves to be boycotted.

The reason Wawa is closing downtown sites results from findings from a strategic branding review completed internally by corporate Wawa audit staff. The report found one of the core reasons to the success of the Wawa brand was the consistency from store to store. The report also cited most if not all downtown stores “ … do not meet the quality standards necessary to maintain this competency.” There are many reasons the stores are unable to maintain the consistency (physical space, delivery problems, parking, etc.) Thus Wawa determined it is in the corporate interest to maintain the brand quality and to do so the stores not meeting the standards (even though they are profitable) must be closed. On the upside there is also a section of the report that identifies Center City as “Principal growth area. This is one step below “Prime growth area” which included Washington DC and Virginia. The audit reports are not public but I am sure if someone wanted to press they may get a comment from Wawa.

Time for another midnight vigil?

there are lots of coffee beers out there. My favorite is a Java vanilla porter from Atwater Brewing out of Detroit. Look for it at the POPE. And I don't know about tequila donuts but the whiskey donuts at Johnny Brenda's rock.

As for Wawa. The corporate branding scenario rings kind of true. But then why not expand the Wawa Express concept they had at 16th and Walnut Street a few years back?

For the person questioning what would happen to the Chestnut Hill Wawa, it closed over a year ago. The Mt. Airy Wawa and Roxborough Wawa still are open.

Here's what I don't get about the Wawa's with gas. Now maybe I'm not remembering fact; and actually, I may well be remembering a faux docu-movie Fox put out on F/X about peak oil. Still, I thought one of the reasons gas stations are now almost universally "service stations" selling all sorts of junk was because the person selling gas to consumers filling their car up barely makes a profit on gas sold after all the accounting and largess going to the oil companies.

Hmmm, as the world contemplates switching to a new fuel economy, which may cause us to rethink transportation infrastructure, I guess Wawa will lobby up with the Dark Side....

Fuck Wawa, fuck suburbanites and fuck this economic model that suggests that urban leeches can continue to fleece the quality of life in the city. Wawa is a disgrace for having lost sight of the fact that there are no suburbs without the city. If, as a business, you ignore the core of your constituency, you are nothing more than a Jeep Liberty. Wawa is a non-entity, similar to the soul of every person who voluntarily make his or her home in a suburb.
Fuck all of you automatons.

Why is everyone so angry - I never got a birthday card from WaWa so I really don't think they care too much about me or my thoughts. Its nice to see that BMT is back and I look forward to sucking face with you later. - WORD

I just called Wawa customer service to give them a piece of my mind. The guy I talked to claimed he (and everyone else in his department, after he put me on hold to check) hadn't heard anything about the closing on 20th and Chestnut, and asked me to direct him to the article in today's Inq. Jerks. At least be straight with us.

Washington, DC and Maryland? HA!

I moved from the Philly burbs to DC and the same trend is happening - all the non-Super Wawas are being shut down. When I was in college down here, there was only one Wawa accessible by public transportation next to the University of Maryland. Much like Center City, it was always packed, probably with PA/NJ refugees. And a few months ago, they up and closed it. Because it wasn't a Super Wawa. The real estate prices probably weren't even a factor in this case. At least you people still have Wawas close by. The nearest one is now a 40 minute drive from here.

BMT -

No suburbs without a city? Really? Are you absolutely sure about that?

I mean, in a semantic sense, yes, but in a realisitic sense.. well, how about this. How about you get in your car - or take the train, if you swing that way - and drive down the AC Expressway, and get off at Exit 14, and tell me what you see. By gawrsh, it sure looks like a suburb to me! There's 4-lane roads and highways and houses and restaurants and strip malls and car dealersips everything else that suburbs have, but without a city for 50 miles! Unless we're calling 50 miles away a suburb of a city, in which case we're both pretty goddamned dumb.

And then maybe you should get on the Parkway and drive up to Toms River. Or Brick. Or Freehold. Or south to Courthouse. I dunno, if those aren't suburbs without cities I sure don't know what they are. Seems to me like that whole darn state next to ours is full of them.

And then maybe you should learn what you're talking about. And then maybe, after that, you could go fuck yourself.

I will never tire of the pissant moaning of 9% of the population of this city - because that's how much lives in Center City, look it up - that seems to love to pretend the other 91% doesn't matter or exist. As though your idiotic little life is the center of everything going on and you are somehow superior to the rest of the people here because you moved into a shitty apartment near Graduate Hospital or in Northern Liberties when you were 22 because you wanted to be cool like all the other hipster douchebags.

I've lived in this city for 28 of my 30 years and I'm really getting tired of getting lectured by twats who moved here after they graduated from Penn and think they run the place.

This attitude that Center City IS Philadelphia is part of what's destroying this city. Because, hey, guess what?

You're not even one-tenth.

That's how much you matter.

Less than one-tenth.

Dear John,
First of all, I don't live in Center City, didn't go to Penn and didn't move here when I was 22.
Secondly, your rant should have ended when you acknowledged the semantic and demographic reality of what you mentioned in the first sentence of your 2nd paragraph.
Thirdly, I don't know why anyone would want to take a drive up/down the Garden State Parkway unless they were trying to get to New York.
Lastly, when you respond to this post let me know what you're doing tonight so I can come by and break your fucking teeth.

I had always believed that, with a few isolated exceptions (i.e. Princeton) all of New Jersey was either a suburb of New York City or Philadelphia. I was also unaware that there was a mileage limit to where a suburb could lie. I mistakenly believed it had more to do with an economical and cultural reliance. Because Dark Horse John can curse and insult people, he must be right and now I know better.

I grew up here. Does that mean I get to talk back to DHJ?

Q: What do you call a suburb without a city?

A: A small town.

For what its worth, though, Brick, NJ is not a small town, but a suburb of Atlantic City and an exurb of NY. This was from the Brick Twp website, posted 1/15/08, in an article about tolls on the garden state parkway:

Brick Township has four full or partial Garden State Parkway interchanges either within its borders or adjacent to them (Exit 88, 89. 90 and 91). This has made Brick Township a popular community for commuters to call home. According to the 2000 Census, Brick Township has over 35,000 workers over the age of 16. Of those, over 27,000 work outside of the community, with over 17,000 working outside of Ocean County. Over 30,000 of those workers commute to work alone.

Fink, please stop bringing facts into a battle of opinions. Thanks

Glad that someone pointed out the store in Chestnut Hill closed, and let's not forget about the one at 15th and Locust that closed around 1998 because someone left the toaster on....

Seriously, I think we should get the Mayor's Office involved. Let's organize a MoveOn-style petition of some kind. This city without 24-hour convenience stores of the caliber of Wawa? Ridiculous!

Plus, the Wawa at 20th and Chestnut is practically a cafeteria for the high school students in the area who don't have many other reasonable-priced options (including lack of cafeterias at their schools, folks...it's true...).