A Great First Impression
Retailer Innovator of the Year Wawa recreates and enhances its brand in a new market
To say that Floridian consumers were desperately in need of a Wawa fix might be an overstatement. But then again, maybe not, according to posts on the Pennsylvania-based chainâs heavily trafficked Facebook page.
âDesperately waiting for Sarasota FL Wawaâs! Since moving from NJ having serious withdrawal!!!â wrote one Florida convenience store customer.
âCanât wait until the one opens on 301 and MLK and the one on Hillsborough across from the Hard Rock â that will be TWO Wawas within a mile of me â doinâ the happy Wawa dance,â another giddy Floridian recently posted on Wawaâs Facebook page, which has accumulated more than 1 million âlikes.â The only convenience store retailer with more Facebook likes is 7-Eleven. The international retailer has more than 3 million likes, but 10 times as many stores as Wawa.
Wawa opened its first Florida store â and first store outside its traditional Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Delaware-Maryland-Virginia market area â on July 18, 2012, in Orlando. The chain opened its 25th Sunshine State store just last month, also in the central Florida area, and now operates more than 630 convenience stores.
The fact that Wawaâs leap of almost 1,000 miles south of its traditional markets has met or exceeded all expectations is âfrankly humbling,â Wawa President and CEO Chris Gheysens said in an exclusive interview with Convenience Store News.
âFrom the beginning, one of our mantras was that we had only one chance to make a great first impression,â said Gheysens, who noted that the expansion has not been without its âlearning experiencesâ for the company.
To make this great first impression, Wawa needed to do more than just transplant its Mid-Atlantic store model to the South. âWe felt we needed a fresh design, driven by the psychology of the Florida customer. The new store design has really informed the majority of people who didnât previously know Wawa and what the brand stands for: fresh, great-quality food and beverages, and convenience.â
Always one of the leading innovators in the c-store industry, Wawa in the past year seems to be taking convenience retailing to a new level. With its successful entry into Florida, innovative use of social media, a mobile app initiative and continued focus on the consumer, Wawa has been selected by the editors of CSNews as the 2013 Retailer Innovator of the Year.
To introduce itself to customers in central Florida, Wawa worked with store design firm CBX to unveil the retailerâs first major new store concept since the late 1990s. The new design uses âfreshâ decorating cues such as natural materials, floor to ceiling glass windows, warm colors, an outdoor seating area and a redesigned, highly visible kitchen/sandwich-making area.
âWhen you walk into the store, you see people making food, as well as digital signs romancing the offer,â said Gheysens. âThereâs no mistaking that we are in the fresh food and fresh beverage business.â (Editorâs note: Wawaâs new store concept won an Honorable Mention award in September in the 2013 CSNews Store Design Contest.)
Another new innovation at its Florida stores is the institution of âambassadorsâ at the front door to introduce people to the Wawa experience as they walk in. These associates are armed with an iPad-type, touchscreen ordering device. âThey have been very successful at walking customers through our offer, our culture and helping show them how to shop at a Wawa. They help to demystify the Wawa experience,â the chief executive explained.
As mentioned earlier, Wawaâs expansion into Florida didnât happen without resulting in âlearning experiencesâ for the c-store retailer. But itâs a testament to the companyâs innovative thinking that it has turned potential pitfalls into opportunities.
âWeâve learned quite a bit,â Gheysens noted. âWe hold ourselves to high standards for customer service and we found we did not build the associate side of the store sufficiently to handle the high volume of business we did right out of the gate in Florida.â
The retailer found itself scrambling from the grand opening on July 18, 2012. To get customers in and out of the store within five minutes, Wawa quickly put in a speaker system for announcing to customers by order number when their food was ready for pickup at the counter.
The chain also needed to redesign the kitchen layout to make room for more sandwich-making equipment in order to handle orders more quickly. Subsequent Florida stores were built with more kitchen space to handle the high-velocity sandwich operation. Unexpectedly high initial sales also spurred the company to expand in other areas, such as its specialty espresso drinks and new milkshakes. Backroom storage space was also expanded at some stores.
The brand ambassador idea spurred more creative thinking as the retailer introduced expediters to work alongside the customer lines and take orders before they get to the counter.
Even the outdoor seating concept has proven to be a happy âlearning experienceâ for the retailer. Originally installed in the Florida stores to reinforce the food and beverage message, the seating areas are becoming very popular and heavily used by customers. So now, âwe are asking ourselves, how can we make it more functional?â Gheysens told CSNews.
After opening 25 stores in its first 13 months in Florida, Wawa expects to have 30 to 45 stores in the central Florida region by the end of this year. The company is currently pursuing more sites for ground-up units and its goal is to open between 20 and 25 stores per year in the area.
GETTING SOCIAL & GOING MOBILE
âPeople love to engage with our brand,â Gheysens said.
The company sees the benefits of using social media from both a community and brand perspective. Wawaâs 1 million-plus likes puts it among the top 1 percent of pages on Facebook. It also has more than 23,000 Twitter âfollowers.â
The secret to its success? âWe try to let our authentic voice come through and you can see that customers really love to have a personal engagement with us,â the CEO said.
Wawaâs call center monitors all its social media sites on a 24/7 basis and attempts to respond to all customer feedback in a voice consistent with the companyâs brand message.
Unlike many other c-store retailers who struggle with measuring their return on investment from social and digital media, Wawa feels it has a good handle on its social media investments. âWe measure all our advertising media and we feel the return we get on social media is one of the highest of any media we utilize,â said Gheysens.
In the future, he said Wawa will be more focused on doing product promotions online and through social media, but the ultimate aim of its social and digital media initiatives is to help the retailer âsimplify our customersâ daily life.â
Toward that end, Wawa is currently in the process of developing its first mobile app, which is expected to debut next year. âWeâre taking our time with this,â cautioned Gheysens. âWe want to integrate our app completely with the experience at the store level.â
Without getting into specifics, he ticked off some of the possible app components that would fulfill its mission:
- Provide the ability to order and pay via the customerâs mobile device. This could even be triggered automatically within a geographic perimeter of the store to which the customer is headed, or by a touch of the thumb.
- Provide nutritional information for food offerings.
- Find the lowest gas prices within a geographic range of the customerâs mobile device.
âWe know that 70 percent of our customers have a smartphone,â noted Gheysens. âAnd we know that a significant number of people at 4 p.m. donât know what they are having for dinner that evening. What Amazon.com has done to online retailing [in terms of speed of delivery and customizing offerings to customers] is going to happen to brick-and-mortar retailing. Mobile offers us the opportunity to do tailored marketing to customer-specific needs and to target offers to them that resonate better than anyone elseâs.â
Gheysens described Wawa as more of a âfast followerâ than a leader in innovation. Nevertheless, the c-store retailerâs decentralized innovation process has made it âvery successful.â
Most of the focus of the past few years has been on product innovation, according to Gheysens. âBut now, we are thinking more about the process of innovation with the aim of getting ideas through the pipeline faster,â he said. So, in addition to the product innovation being explored in the food area, the company is also looking at innovation in customer technology.
Gheysens expects product innovation will always be important, but customer technology and innovations in customer experience will be new areas that will extend and enhance the Wawa brand going forward.
The leap into Florida was certainly the high point of the past year for Wawa. Gheysens believes Wawa has not only made a great first impression, but it is continuing to build brand awareness and satisfaction with customers for the long term.