Wawa pushes the envelope with largest convenience store to date
For residents of Philadelphia, all their Christmases came at once on 14 December 2018 when Wawa opened its largest convenience store to date in the heart of the city’s historic district.
Occupying a 11,500 sq ft site in Independence Mall, at the corner of 6th and Chestnut Streets, the store melds the new with the old and to stunning effect.
The new Philadelphia store supersedes a store Wawa opened in Washington DC exactly one year previously in terms of size. Indeed, it was partly prompted by its predecessor, as Wawa’s CEO Chris Gheysens recalls.
“When we opened in Washington DC in December 2017 there was an outcry from our home town,” he says. “That was the largest store for Wawa at the time, so news stories questioned why would Wawa, our home town favourite, open their biggest store in Washington? We wanted to show them that our roots will always run deep in Philadelphia.”
Urban re-commitment
Wawa first embarked on a recommitment to urban centre stores, in 2015, when Pope Francis visited Philadelphia during the World Meeting of Families, a time when the world’s focus was on Wawa’s hometown city. “We opened our new “flagship” store in the heart of Center City Philadelphia (located at the intersection of Broad and Walnut Streets), in September 2015, and it performed extremely well,” reports Gheysens. “We’ve opened a handful since then but each time there has been a growing desire to be a little bit bolder and to understand the design experience and offer that the urban consumer wanted.”
For many years prior to that, the business had focused on suburban locations, on high traffic corners with large parking lots. Wawa’s urban transition continued in earnest in Philadelphia two years ago with a strategy to target the central business districts, characterized by high rises, retail food and residential accommodation.
The opportunity to take space in Independence Mall was just too good to miss. Positive feedback on the Washington store and Wawa’s overall success in the marketplace spurred the business forward to develop not just the largest Wawa, but a store with a one-of-a-kind, unique design.
Innovate at pace
Gheysens also had a separate vision. “Underlying that, in my role as CEO, I am on a mission to get Wawa to move more quickly and to innovate more quickly, across a broad spectrum,” he says.
The new site provided the business with an opportunity to sit down with the design and marketing teams and to use the store as a testing ground. It enabled Wawa to elevate the innovation in terms of store design and customer experience, but within a framework, says Gheysens.
That meant demonstrating to Philadelphia that Wawa was proud to be a “Philly-based organisation”, says Gheysens. Careful thought was also given to the conceptual design so that the store could integrate within the historic building but also serve its purpose to fulfill the lives of customers every day in typical three to five minute convenience store interactions.
“It’s not just about a great cup of coffee and friendly smile, it’s about being surrounded by things that confirm how great Philadelphia is,” says Gheysens. “We are showing our pride in Philadelphia through cues that include an historical view of the city and honoring many of the firsts that were invented in Philadelphia or happened in Philadelphia,” he says.
That’s key, given the volume of people visiting the city – both everyday shoppers who know Philadelphia and Wawa, and also the 5 million visitors from around the world who don’t know the city or convenience operator.
Striking store design
The new store was officially opened with a ‘red carpet’ evening preview event, heralding the spectacular new design.
“I could not have been prouder of the team that put together the design,” says Gheysens. “The space is amazing with 22ft high ceilings, incredible detail and a living “green” wall of plants behind the checkout register..”
The design combines industrial and art deco features with copper inlays and includes Wawa’s goose logo with copper inlay on a feature wall, which has become a favourite ‘selfie spot’ for social media, Gheysens reports.
The main hall is dedicated to foodservice with an adjacent space for convenience including Wawa’s fountain offer and an LED glass display of Coke bottles – a new design treatment.
Most striking and meaningful for Gheysens, however, is a 20×30 ft mural at the back of the main hall, featuring a combination of illustrations along with bold and colourful geometric shapes. It was created in partnership with the Mural Arts Philadelphia and is titled “Philly Firsts” depicting many of important Philadelphia “firsts” including hospitals, museums, iconic buildings, inventions and events. A second mural is positioned in the convenience side of the store, and smaller, individual framed art pulling out individual illustrations are featured throughout the store in providing warmth to the large space but also imparting aspects of Philadelphia’s unique history to Wawa customers.
Innovative offer
The store introduces a number of product “firsts” for everyday customers too. According to Gheysens, these new innovations are typically higher end products in terms of quality such as an expanded line of Wawa Reserve coffee, small batches of top quality coffees from around the world. There is also a tap system for full-serve beverages, kombucha, teas and nitro cold brews plus a large bakery offering French baguettes, pastries, rolls and bread.
Gheysens emphasizes the importance of demonstrating innovation in terms of products as well as store design. “The genesis for the store was to fill the historic space appropriately but stretch and upscale the Wawa experience from a food and design perspective,” he says.
“Whether these are ideas that we can take to other urban stores or beyond to other parts of the chain is still work in progress,” he adds. However, Wawa Reserve coffee is now being served in every Wawa location.
Urban customer
While the needs and standards expected by urban customers are prevalent in suburbia, they are more elevated in central business district locations, Gheysens maintains.
That necessitates a different response and one that is manifested in the new seating areas introduced to the new Philadelphia flagship – a mix of cafe-style seating but also stylish lounge areas.
“Not many of our stores have seating other than in Florida (where we have exterior seating in all stores) but we needed to provide a touch down space for the urban customers,” Gheysens says. Spectacular seating areas combined with the great space the store provides are already attracting groups to gather inside the store, taking meals or just for social connections.
The store layout has also been engineered to accommodate the super high foot traffic and peaks, given its location, to enable efficient throughput across the foodservice stations and registers. Line extensions, meanwhile, appeal to the higher socio economic demographic the store attracts. These include full serve tap, nitro infused beverages and premium coffee. “On the coffee side, one area where we have really high credentials is brewed coffee in terms of quality. We wanted to stretch that because we have higher and wider scale income levels that buy our coffee. It better positions us to be competitive with Starbucks but also the third wave coffee shops that really are unique,” Gheysens says.
Technology and new ideas
The new store purposefully features Wawa’s currently technology package. It is, however, positioned a little differently with a bank of touch screens grouped together on a table in front of the foodservice area for a more cohesive, social environment. The PoS and tech for mobile ordering are identikit too.
New Wawa initiatives include catering from a dedicated kitchen unit a few blocks away. According to Gheysens, this could be used for offices or events, or even to provide boxed lunches for schools or tourist groups that regularly visit the nearby Liberty Bell or Independence Hall.
Another innovative input from the wider Wawa organisation has been to sell Wawa apparel and mementos at the store including t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, lanyards, bottle openers etc.
The range has sold surprisingly well, Gheysens reports. The best selling long sleeved t-shirt combines a design of the historic area with Wawa. “When the numbers were shared, I was shocked that we were selling so many,” he smiles.
Gheysens reports Wawa considered seasonality and volume to determine the store’s opening date. It showed there was a similar amount of traffic at the location in December as April, so while it may have seemed intuitive to wait until spring, Wawa opened in December instead.
And, due to the high density of the local workforce, the reception since then has been overwhelming, he says. More so considering the store is not selling cigarettes or tobacco, due to a Philadelphia law specific to that location and its proximity to a school.
“We were a bit nervous about that as a retailer and a convenience retailer but it’s quickly risen to become one of our highest performing stores,” Gheysens reveals.
Labour of love
One likely reason for the fabulous store reception, but not to undermine the design elements and product offer, is the sheer amount of labour in one store: 4,000 hours per week with over 100 people on the payroll.
But it serves good purpose or rather what Wawa considers to be “good old fashioned customer service”, which must be better than ever these days.
Gheysens references a Newsweek article, which showed Costco and Publix to be the number one and two grocery chains for customer satisfaction and finds it telling that both have been slow to move on technology.
Back at Wawa, ambassadors have been introduced in some new stores to help introduce the Wawa experience, which is different to a typical food or convenience store experience. In Wawa stores, customers order on touch screens and it’s not always initially clear where they pick up their food or that they can shop, pay, then collect their food order and leave. Wawa is working to change that.
“The ambassadors in store provide a menu to people as they walk in and help guide them through the process. They share a smile and friendly greeting and show customers how the ordering process works. “It doesn’t take long for customers to understand how it works” Gheysens says; adding that there will be a digital piece of work introduced in the next 12 months to dramatically elevate that experience but still coupled with an old fashioned human connection.
And is there more innovation in the pipeline at Wawa?
“Always,” Gheysens replies.
