Feed your day with Wawa, your all-day, everyday convenience store. Established in Folsom, Pennsylvania, the convenience store giant has since expanded to seven states across the US, including New Jersey. With nearly 9 million residents, it's quite surprising that the Garden State has only one Wawa tent for every 32,584 people. In 2002, Wawa was one of the first convenience stores to introduce touchscreen orders at the deli counter.
As a private company, Wawa ensures an independent assessment of the value of its shares at regular intervals to ensure that its Employee Stock Ownership Plan (ESOP) is fairly maintained. A Super Wawa on Route 73 and Kresson Road in Voorhees recently received zoning board approval in a 5-2 vote. Growing up in a tourist town with a dual personality nestled on a barrier island, I got to know Wawa intimately. On the outside, it's just a convenience store, but on the inside, it's much more.
The Wood family controls about 725 acres (293 ha) of land, which contain the corporate headquarters and the Wawa and J dairy farm. While Wawa has grown as a cult following, not everyone is happy to have them as their new neighbors. In 1992, Wawa formalized ownership of its associates with its ESOP and shares were awarded to associates annually based on prior year service. The company also opened up the area east of Union Lake in Millville to residential development in the 1960s.
To this day, the quality of its products has always been Wawa's greatest strength and that's why die-hard fans keep coming back. The chain's name comes from the site of the company's first dairy plant and corporate headquarters in the Wawa, Pennsylvania area. Although it's a family business, Wawa associates own approximately 50% of the company, more than 40% of which is owned by its employee stock ownership program. Wawa covers parts of Pennsylvania that don't yet have rival stores like Sheetz, which it is often compared to due to its similar business models and roots in Pennsylvania. The chain operates stores in Delaware, Florida, Maryland, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Washington D.
C. Because memory is so strongly linked to smell and taste, a Wawa functions as a kind of memory bank.
