" 'This would never happen at Wawa,' one associate told me, 'Because our executives are visible and spend time visiting, touring and working in stores,' " Stoeckel wrote recently on his "Bird's Eye View" blog.
"At Wawa, we have a time-honored tradition [image-nocss] of touring our stores that dates back more than 30 years," Stoeckel wrote. "In fact, our senior leadership team has logged thousands of store visits. In addition to several store visits each month, our leadership team all participates in our semi-annual Flounder's Day tradition in which they work in stores across our region, doing everything from pumping gas to making coffee. It's a way to learn firsthand about what's workingand what's notand keeps us grounded and in touch with associates, customers and the business."
Stoeckel's blog posting came just as "Flounder's Day" approached again, and "over the course of the next month, all of our senior leadership team, including directors, will take turns working shifts at our stores," he wrote. "I guess you could call it our version of 'Undercover Boss,' except we're not actually going undercover. Instead, Flounder's Day has become an important and deeply engrained traditionsomething that Grahame Wood, our founder, started over 30 years ago and continues to live on today."
He continued, "As the saying goes, retail is detail. All of our critical action takes place in our stores and that's why it's so important for our management and senior leaders to spend time in stores right alongside [our store associates]. We are a bottom-up organization, and we truly value our associates and admire what they do every day to delight our customers."
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Wawa Inc., Wawa, Pa., is a privately held company. It operates more than 560 stores in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.
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