Our Hoagiefest events bring together hoagie fanatics and loyal Wawa customers from across the region to celebrate and pay tribute to Wawa Hoagies through a variety of exciting activities. Some of these activities are Wawa traditions, while others are brand new ways to show our enthusiasm for our customers and our hoagies.  Sun, fun and some special guests certainly made last week’s 2nd Annual Hoagiefest Event in Philadelphia a day to remember!
 
This is the second year we’re running our 1960’s inspired Hoagiefest campaign, and our 1960’s theme seems even more fitting this time around. This year, the iconic Woodstock festival celebrates its 40th anniversary, while all of us at Wawa are celebrating the 45th anniversary of our very first store, which opened in 1964. 

All I can say is, “what a day.”  At 5:00 am our Wawa associates began building a ¼ mile long hoagie to serve to the crowd later that afternoon.  Later that morning, before the Philadelphia event even began, we loaded and sent off a truckload of hoagies for Philabundance to deliver to various food distribution points throughout the city.  It made us proud to share the hoagie tradition in many ways that day, both to people who simply love our hoagies for their great taste, and to the people who needed them most. 

We were honored to have Philadelphia Mayor, Michael Nutter join us to help celebrate a summer of peace, savings, and Shortis, and issuing a Tribute proclaiming June 24th to be “Citywide Hoagiefest Day” and commemorating our tradition and the City’s love for the almighty hoagie. 

In addition to sharing in the Hoagiefest feast, the crowd intently watched our Hoagies for Heroes Eating Relay, a charity Hoagie eating relay race between local police officers to benefit local causes. Attendees also had the opportunity to view our Hoagie Heritage Exhibit featuring famous hoagie milestones through history. 

I’m delighted to say that we are hosting three additional Hoagiefest events this summer in Ocean City, Maryland, Virginia Beach, and Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey. They’ll give customers from all across our serving area a chance to join in the fun! It’s also important to all of us at Wawa that we are able to share our traditions and culture in all of the markets we serve. No matter where your Wawa is located, we are committed to being a part of your community.  After all, part of being a leader in convenience is providing the same level of convenience (and fun) in every area we touch.   

In last week’s blog I talked about our great hoagie tradition at Wawa, and the unique history that makes our hoagies so special to our customers.  Our Hoagiefest events are one of the ways we celebrate our traditions and keep them alive and thriving for all our customers everywhere.  Thank you for letting us share that with all of you.

‘Til next time…

In some places they’re known as subs, heroes, bombers, poor boys, grinders, torpedoes, and rockets.   But in "The City of Brotherly Love," they're only known by one name: hoagies. Today, hoagies have earned a prestigious place alongside cheesesteaks and soft pretzels as one of Philadelphia’s top culinary exports.  They have become synonymous with both Philadelphia and Wawa, so much so that in 1992 then-Mayor Rendell proclaimed the hoagie to be the official sandwich of Philadelphia.

At Wawa we have been proud to serve as chief hoagie ambassador, introducing hoagies to millions of people throughout the mid-Atlantic region over the years. We now sell more than 70 million hoagies each year. But it wasn’t always this way. Before the 1930s, in fact, no one had ever before heard of a hoagie. They simply didn’t exist. Hoagies have come a long way since then and over the years we’ve celebrated a number of noteworthy hoagies milestones. So, in honor of Hoagiefest (read below), here is an abridged hoagie history lesson for you:

According to local legend, during the Depression, out-of-work Philadelphian Al DePalma went to Hog Island near the Naval shipyards in South Philadelphia to find work. When he saw the shipyard workers on a lunch break wolfing down their giant sandwiches, his first thought was, "Those guys are a bunch of hogs!" Instead of applying for a job at the shipyard, DePalma opened a luncheonette that served big, cold cut sandwiches, listed on the menu as "hoggies" after the gentleman who served as his inspiration. Business took off and thus, the hoagie was born. (“Hoggie” later became “hoagie” at some point after World War II.)

Wawa’s built-to-order hoagies came on the scene in the late 1970s and were greeted with great fanfare.  Today our hoagies have helped us become a leader in the convenience retail space by providing our customers with the most convenient, delicious sandwich known to man. Over the years we’ve embraced our hoagie heritage and have found unique ways to celebrate the hoagie. Our associates have built record-breaking hoagies (up to one mile in length!) for community festivals and events. We’ve circled City Hall with a hoagie. We’ve temporarily renamed the street in front of City Hall “Hoagie Blvd.” We’ve served hoagies to everyone from troops on aircraft carriers to politicians at national conventions to athletes weary after a charity race. We’ve taken the hoagie beyond Philadelphia’s borders and brought it acclaim across New Jersey and Delaware, Maryland and Virginia.  We even have a virtual world devoted to the hoagie at our Hoagiefest internet microsite. 

This summer, we’re spreading our hoagie love throughout the region with Hoagiefest, a tribute to the almighty hoagie. Our Peace, Love and Shorti Tour will make four stops in four states to honor the hoagie tradition and say thank you to the wonderful people who welcome us into their communities and visit our stores every day. Each stop will feature eating and hoagie building contests, “kara-hoagie” competitions with original Hoagiefest songs, a hoagie heritage exhibit, and – of course – a quarter mile long hoagie. Click here for details

I hope to see you on the Hoagiefest Tour.  And I hope to see you in our stores, enjoying the hoagies that you have come to know and love.

‘Til next time…

Have you ever considered what it takes to serve one million customers daily?

When founder Grahame Wood opened the first Wawa store in 1964, he envisioned a new kind of convenience store that simplified customers’ daily lives with fast, friendly service, fresh products, and value prices. Today, one million customers each day have come to expect this brand promise when they frequent our stores and interact with our associates. A central theme for our associates this year is “doing it just a little bit better” – a slogan first introduced in 1981 after customers repeatedly told Wawa associates that their people, stores, and product were always a step above the competition.

To make sure we deliver on the expectations of our customers one million times per day, we have stringent quality control measures every step of the way, from selecting the right vendors, to supplying the highest quality products, to hiring the best associates. You’ve heard me say before that at Wawa we consider ourselves a tight-nit flock.  But it’s important to note that we don’t fly alone.  While our 16,000 associates are the most visible champions of our values and brand promise, we hold our network of suppliers and strategic partners to the same high standards. Whether the product is under the Wawa exclusive brand label or under our vendor partners’ name, we share the goal of delighting our customers and making their lives easier.  After all, it’s a team effort and they too play a critical role in simplifying the lives of both our customers and our associates.  

Last week we conducted our spring review of some of our direct store delivery partners and Wawa’s own internal support departments – we call this our Key Partner Review Process which we conduct twice a year. Our external vendor partners and internal support departments each received a report card evaluating their performance. Their reviewers: the General Managers responsible for daily operations at each of Wawa’s 570 stores. Through the evaluation, our General Managers provide valuable feedback to our partners and help better align our collective efforts to serve and delight our customers. It’s our way of ensuring we maintain meaningful, long-term relationships with our internal and external partners to simplify our associates' lives, strengthen our core offer and deliver on our brand promise time and time again.

Success in business today is predicated on effective relationships with numerous stakeholders – all of which are aligned and focused on our ultimate customer. Through the years, our key partners have helped us develop and improve on a multitude of new products, processes, and concepts that have given us the ability to serve our customers a little bit better through the years. So, the results are in and I’m proud to say that our partners are the best of the best, proof of which lies in the 90% or better satisfaction rating each of the participating vendors and departments received from our General Managers last week. Special kudos to our top external and internal partners at Tastykake and Wawa’s Facility Department - Fuel Equipment Repair Team respectively, who each earned 99% satisfaction ratings.  But the “keys” to the store go to our most improved vendor partner - Canada Dry.  Our valued partners at Canada Dry went the extra mile for their customers – our store teams – and they achieved an increase of 17.3 percentage points in overall satisfaction ratings since the last survey.  This level of improvement enhances our store teams’ ability to satisfy their customers, strengthens our partnership and will lead to many great achievements in the future. 

It takes a lot to serve one million customers each day, but through measures like our Key Partner Review, we can ensure that we have the best products, service, and people to consistently deliver our brand promise each and every time.  And through partnerships like the ones we’ve built over the years, we have faith that we will continue to fly higher and faster together.

‘Til next time…