If you’ve passed through parts of New Jersey some time since June, you may have seen our advertising campaign alerting customers about credit surcharges, fees that an increasing number of retailers charge when customers purchase fuel with credit cards instead of cash. The purpose of the campaign was to draw attention to the practice of posting competitive fuel prices for cash purchases, then adding several cents per gallon to credit card purchases when the transaction is actually completed. We call this campaign “Prices You Can Trust,” and because this practice is happening more and more, this week we are expanding the campaign throughout the Philadelphia area. 

As leader in convenience we feel it is our responsibility to protect the consumer, and hopefully clear up any confusion around this issue.  Through radio spots, billboards, banners and full-page newspaper ads, we are educating our Philadelphia area customers about a price structure that can be perplexing.  More importantly, we are letting our customers know that at Wawa, we always offer one low price for both cash and credit – and never impose a credit surcharge in any of our 270 stores with gasoline. 

We don’t believe in surcharges, and we don’t believe in letting customers pay them elsewhere because they are confused or unaware that the practice is going on at all.

As I’ve said before, part of our commitment to simplifying our customers’ lives is making concepts as easy to understand as possible.  So as we disclose these important pricing messages to the public, we hope to let customers know that at Wawa we pledge to always provide prices you can trust, and pricing that is always fair and always simple to understand.  This is brand promise you can trust.

 ‘Til next time…

Congratulations David Haynie, Evan Emerle, Michael Hornfeck, Kevin Metz, Nicholas Franchi and Daniel Smith, our 2009 Hoagiefest Contest winners!   You gave us everything we could have asked for in original Hoagiefest songs and videos. From an artistic black and white throw-back video to a solo guitar playing hoagie tribute to a psychedelic 60’s inspired video to rap songs written about hoagies and even a bit of country western flare, your entries were filled with creativity and hoagie love!

As many of you know, we hosted a Hoagiefest contest for four weeks on our Hoagiefest.com microsite, during our in-store, summer campaign.  The contest challenged hoagie fanatics to create and submit an original song about Wawa and Hoagiefest or make a video to one of Wawa’s official Hoagiefest tunes.  Contestants competed for Wawa prizes, including free hoagies for a year and a chance to be featured on Wawa.com.  Wawa customers and fans then logged on to Hoagiefest.com and voted for their favorite song or video. 

All of us at Wawa were blown away by the energy and inventiveness infused in every single entry!  Six winners were selected from among 96 total entries, three in the category of original song and three in the category of best video - an achievement we simply had to celebrate! 

So Monday, August 10, we brought our six winners in for a celebration lunch at Red Roof, our corporate headquarters.  Along with Wawa’s marketing team, I got to sit down with these contest winners and talk to them about what inspired them, how much fun they had creating their entries, and why they just gotta hava Wawa.  We even inducted them into the Hoagie Hall of Fame to commemorate their place in Wawa’s hoagie history.  After all, this was our very first video and song contest and we wanted to celebrate our contest winners for exemplifying the vibrant spirit and passion that makes our customers the best customers on the hoagie planet!

Speaking with our Hoagiefest Contest winners made me stop and think about all the ways we strive to be connected and relevant to our customers, and how we create energy and excitement around our in-store campaigns.  More and more we are learning that our microsites, and our overall online presence is a great, fun way for us to do this.  At the time of this entry, we have more than 150,000 Facebook fans – become our fan if you haven’t already! And, we received more than a half million visits to Hoagiefest.com to date, more than 10 times the amount of Web traffic than we received last year to the microsite. What’s even more reassuring is that our online fans are sticking around – accessing an average of nearly four web pages per visit.

Clearly our fans are online and crave information and interaction, and to us part of being a leader in convenience is being as accessible and applicable to customers and fans as possible.  So thank you to our Hoagiefest contest winners for you incredible entries and for making Hoagiefest so much fun, and thank you to all our fans who show their dedication to Wawa both in our stores and online.

‘Til next time…   

Check Out Our Hoagiefest Contest Winners Below!

• 1st Place Video-David Haynie
• Video Name: Sub-Terranean Hoagie Blues

• 2nd Place Video- Evan Emerle
• Video Name: I Love Wawa

• 3rd Place Video-Michael Hornfeck
• Video Name: The Hoagiefest Experience

• 1st Place Song: Kevin Metz 
• Song Name: The Wawa Rap - by Killa Kev & Lil Ame

• 2nd Place Song: Nicholas Franchi
• Song Name: Gotta Have A Wawa

• 3rd Place Song: Daniel Smith 
• Song Name: Don't Call 'Em Heroes