Wawa Food Markets

Wawa is a chain of convenience store/gas stations located in the Mid-Atlantic region of the United States. It operates in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, and Virginia.

History
In the early 1800s Richard D. Wood ran a store in Greenwich, New Jersey selling items from his farming. It was 1803 when David Wood became a part owner of a furnace that sold stove plates through the firm of Smith and Wood. About a century later George Wood moved to Delaware County, Pennsylvania. It is here that he started to operate the Wawa Dairy Farm. In the 1920s, when the demand for dairy products grew rapidly, so did the company. Wawa Dairy Farms later used the slogan "Buy Health by the Bottle" and with that the farm was reaching customers in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey. However, in the 1960s demand for home delivery of milk products had dropped leading to the development of the Wawa Food Market.

Company
On April 16, 1964, Wawa Food Markets opened their first store in Folsom, Pennsylvania under the guidance of Grahame Wood. This location is still open, and many Wood family members are still active within the company as of July 2009. Although Wawa is a family-run business, the employees of Wawa also hold a relatively large percentage of stock. Most Wawas are open 24 hours per day, 7 days per week. The chain's name comes from the site of the company's first milk plant and corporate headquarters in Wawa, Pennsylvania. The name of the town is in turn derived from the Ojibwe word for the Canada Goose (taken from "The Song of Hiawatha"). An image of a goose in flight serves as the Wawa corporate logo.

Wawa sells over 195 million cups of coffee a year. The Wawa deli counter was among the first convenience stores to implement self-serve computer touch-screen menus for food orders, in an attempt to improve accuracy. It can potentially be used as gateways to up-selling, as well.

The current CEO of Wawa is Chris Gheysens, who succeeded Howard Stoeckel in January 2013. Eleuthère (Thère) du Pont has served as both the CFO and president, but is no longer associated with the company. Richard D. (Dick) Wood, Jr. is chairman of the board of directors.

In 2006, Wawa ranked 63rd on the Forbes Magazine list of the largest private companies but dropped to 64th on the 2007 list. As of July 2009, Wawa employs 16,000 in 570 stores (210 offering gasoline) and had total revenues of $4.67 billion in 2007. In recent years, many Wawa Markets have been expanded to "Super Wawas," with 12-20 gas pumps, and all new Wawas constructed are of the "Super Wawa" variety (though not all feature gas stations). Wawa, for the most part, covers the parts of Pennsylvania not already covered by fast-growing in-state rivals Sheetz and Turkey Hill Mini Marts.

In the late 1980s and through the 1990s, Wawa engaged in a scholarship sponsorship program that involved Irish students (mainly from UCC in Cork, Ireland) running a considerable number of stores on the Pennsylvania Main Line. This was a successful program that allowed the students to study for their MBA's from Saint Joseph's University in Philadelphia. Wawa is headquartered in Wawa, Pennsylvania, a neighborhood that includes parts of Middletown Township and Chester Heights Borough in Delaware County. The corporate headquarters, known as Red Roof, is on Baltimore Pike in Chester Heights. The nearby dairy farm, across from the former Franklin Mint is in Middletown.

In 2005, Wawa partnered with JPMorgan Chase to offer a Visa credit card branded with the Wawa name. It ceased issuing new cards in December 2007.

In the spring of 2007, Wawa began offering its own line of soda in its stores.