Wawa expands South Jersey presence with Gloucester Township store
GLOUCESTER TWP. - Wawa has opened a new store here with T-shirts for its first customers and free coffee for later arrivals.
The store on the 1300 block of Blackwood-Clementon Road is the 40th addition this year for Wawa. The firm has said it plans up to 76 new locations in 2023.
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The Pennsylvania-based firm opened its 1,000th store in Oaklyn in April, when a Wawa executive predicted the firm could double in size through expansion in the South and Midwest.
Wawa packed other eye-popping statistics into the announcement of the Gloucester Township store’s opening.
It noted the convenience-store chain, which recently introduced store-baked pizzas, each year sells about 195 million cups of coffee and 80 million hoagies.
Forbes.com lists Wawa as the nation’s 24th largest private company, with annual revenue of almost $15 billion and 40,000 employees, the announcement said.
Freebies at Gloucester Township Wawa
The new store and fueling station, with about 60 workers, offered “Wawa Coffee, Hoagies & Kindness” T-shirts to its first patrons on Thursday, Aug. 31. It also served up free coffee throughout the day.
Members of Gloucester Township’s police department and Blackwood Fire Co. competed in a hoagie-building contest, a staple of Wawa openings. The company gave $1,000 each to charities chosen by the departments.
Wawa opened its first store in suburban Philadelphia in 1964 and entered the South Jersey market four years later.
It currently operates in Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Florida.
The company is building its first store in North Carolina, with more expected in the neighboring states of Georgia and Tennessee.
Wawa also plans to operate in Alabama, Indiana, Kentucky and Ohio.
The business started under very different circumstances, operating an iron foundry in South Jersey in 1803.
An owner later shifted operations to a dairy-processing plant outside Philadelphia. It launched the convenience store chain as home delivery of dairy products declined in the early 1960s.
Jim Walsh is a senior reporter for the Courier-Post, Burlington County Times and The Daily Journal. Email: jwalsh@cpsj.com.
This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: New Wawa in Gloucester Township is chain's 40th to open this year
