WAWA, Pa. — While convenience retailer Wawa Inc. celebrated its 57th anniversary with a promotion featuring ABC’s ‘80s-themed sitcom “The Goldbergs,” another TV show is also causing a stir among coffee and hoagie lovers in Pennsylvania and beyond. Fans and the media are buzzing over HBO’s crime drama “Mare of Easttown,” which features characters prominently displaying Wawa coffee and referencing Wawa’s hoagies, among other local fare.
Wawa held its annual Wawa Week in mid-April. During the promotion, Wawa stores chainwide featured ‘80s music, themed signage and in-store audio clips presenting catchphrases and Wawa references from TV’s “The Goldbergs.” Wawa’s fuel pump screens showed Wawa scenes from the series. The company retrofitted the Wawa in Jenkintown, Pa., home of “The Goldbergs,” with logos, signage and other interior and exterior elements to take it back to the ’80s.
The promotion also featured giveaways of Wawa and Goldbergs swag and the opportunity to donate to the Children’s Miracle Network through the purchase of coffee and Garlic Cheesy Chicken Parm Hoagies.
But it is “Mare of Easttown,” which takes place in Philadelphia's western suburbs, that has earned Wawa substantial attention from fans of the show and the store as an iconic part of the Pennsylvania landscape and culture.
In a featurette on the HBO website, director Craig Zobel stressed the importance of place in creating the mood of the drama, including the regional accent and the costumes. The show’s creators and wardrobe department admittedly took inspiration directly from the convenience-store chain. “Our costume designer would constantly be texting me pictures from the Wawa convenience store, just of people in the line,” Zobel said.
Wawa provided a crucial character-building resource for lead actress Kate Winslet, who portrays police detective Mare Sheehan, she revealed in the Los Angeles Times podcast The Envelope.
“It almost felt like a mythical place … Wawa,” Winslet said. “By the time I got there, I was like, ‘It’s real!’ Walking into a Wawa ultimately felt like … kind of an honor, in a funny way, because to me that was the heart of Delco [Delaware County, Pa.]. So to finally walk through the door of a Wawa … I don’t know why I felt like, ‘Oh, yes, I’m here, I belong. This is where it’s at. Wawa’.”
She said Evan Peters, who plays Winslet’s partner, even more fully embraced the store’s culinary treasures. “He would say, ‘You gotta try the Gobbler’,” a large turkey sandwich, she said of her costar.
“We are so proud and humbled to be included in such an authentic and heart-felt show that honors our Delco region,” Wawa said in a statement provided to CSP Daily News. “And even prouder to call Kate a true Wawa customer.”
To top it all off, Wawa even earned a spot in a Saturday Night Live parody of the show.
- Wawa is No. 10 on CSP’s 2021 Top 40 Update to the 2020 Top 202 ranking of c-store chains by size.
The Wawa, Pa.-based company operates more than 680 stores in the Mid-Atlantic region—including Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Virginia and Washington, D.C.—and 210 stores in Florida.