Philadelphia — The Wawarians packed into the Four Seasons are hopping, bopping, shouting like true believers at a sunset revival meeting, and generally getting a hell of a lot more excited about convenience-store news than you’d expect people to, if you didn’t know about their employer — Wawa — and the cultish devotion of its customers and employees both, a cracked and inexplicable enthusiasm for the gas-’n’-snacks chain’s hoagies and coffee that sees crowds of people — and I swear I am not making this up — camping out in front of new stores the way people do for rock concerts and Apple product launches, hoping to be among the first inside to lay claim to a meatball “Shorti” or a Spicy Fiesta Turkey Wrap, checking the Wawa app (of course there’s an app) for Wawa news, and sympathizing with the great Wawa Diaspora, whose members, having been strewn across the lesser principalities of 7-Eleven and Circle K, lament their inability to satisfy their Wawa joneses. Getting pumped about a convenience store is a local peculiarity that is as Philly as scrapple sandwiches, although Wawa, for whatever reason, doesn’t sell those.
The CEO is on hand, of course, but no less a figure than the governor is on the scene, too, praising the company’s nurturing culture — you can’t buy Wawa stock, but you can earn it by becoming a store associate — and talking up the chain’s ahead-of-schedule expansion campaign and the thousands of jobs it has created.
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