PHILADELPHIA -- In what will serve as a model for Wawa Inc.'s expansion into Florida, the retailer is returning to the City Center district of Philadelphia, reported The Philadelphia Inquirer. The nearly 5,000-square-foot convenience store "is tricked out with high-tech touches and laid out in a way that emphasizes Wawa's increasing focus on hoagies, sandwiches, espresso and other prepared foods," said the report.
It is returning to City Center after years of retreating "as it fixated on bodacious locations on more land than could be found in a dense downtown."
"As the popular purveyor of hoagies, cigarettes and coffee vacated old haunts across walkable Philadelphia to reinvent itself as a glorified sandwich spot, its departures were greeted with dismay, even anger, among residents who felt abandoned by a beloved hometown chain," the Inquirer said.
City Center redevelopment has lured the retailer back. The Arch Street store, one of Wawa's six remaining Center City sites, is nearly double the size of what it had been for 35 years.
"Believe me, I wish we could find more sites to do what we did at Arch Street," Wawa CEO Howard Stoeckel told the newspaper. "I wish we could expand more of our stores in Philadelphia."
The location's landlord asked Wawa to stay, and the owner bought out a neighboring tenant to allow for Wawa's desired doubling of its footprint.
"The landlord was doing wonderful things with that building," Stoeckel said.
The store was shut down for about three months as crews spent $500,000 to merge the old Wawa with a vacated deli next door, creating a space consistent with the company's modern-day brand identity.
Wawa was courted and granted its wish for more space (and a 10-year lease) after developers canceled plans for an upscale hotel and decided instead to turn the building into apartments, landlord Leo Addimando said.
"In Philadelphia, Wawa's considered an amenity," he told the paper. "People like to live near a Wawa."
Center City retail-leasing professional Larry Steinberg told the Inquirer: "It really is a shock to hear that they're reinvesting."
Designed to draw nearby residents as well as office workers from nearby Comcast Center, the new Wawa has digital TV screens for advertising, in-store bread-baking, a vastly expanded prepared-foods wing, and other space devoted to catering to the grab-and-go lunch crowd the company increasingly seeks to make its core customer.
"When you walk in this store, you feel like you're in a restaurant, that you're in a fast, casual establishment to go," Stoeckel said. "It puts us in the league of Corner Bakery, Cosi, Au Bon Pain."
Wawa is also back for its third year as sponsor of Welcome America!, Philadelphia's 10-day-long Independence Day celebration, which began June 25 and runs through July 4. Events include Wawa Hoagie Day, Taste of Philadelphia, educational events, concerts, movies and a parade on July 4 (watch embedded video).
The retailer is also holding its annual Hoagiefest promotion, featuring its entire Classic Hoagie lineup for $4.79 each.
Click here to view a Philadelphia Inquirer photo gallery of the new Wawa store.
And click here for another photo gallery on the foobooz blog.
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