3 Big Numbers is a weekly column that looks at a few key details from around the c-store industry.
Wawa announced this week that its first Tennessee store would open by mid-June. The Pennsylvania-based retailer has spent the past few years carrying out an expansion strategy that’s more than doubled the number of states in its footprint, and Tennessee is the last of those states to make its debut.
Now that the company is nearing that milestone, we decided to take a look at how the plans are coming along and what the future may hold in this week’s “3 Big Numbers.”
35
The number of days until Wawa’s Tennessee debut.
The first Tennessee Wawa is slated to open in Clarksville on June 18. That should be followed relatively quickly by an opening in Murfreesboro, with a total of six sites expected to open by the end of the year.
The Volunteer State is set to become the home of around 50 Wawas over the next decade. That’s one of the highest expected totals among the states it has entered in the past few years, underscoring the big opportunity the chain sees to compete in the Southeast state.
14
The number of states Wawa will be in once the Clarksville site opens.
Before it started on its multistate expansion plan, Wawa had operations in six states — Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Florida — in addition to the District of Columbia.
Since then, it has opened its first stores in Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina, West Virginia, Kentucky, Indiana and Ohio. Once Tennessee’s first store is added to the footprint, the company will have stores in 14 states plus Washington, D.C.
That’s a lot of growth in a short amount of time, which has the potential to spread the company thin. However, with its strong brand equity and tightly controlled store experience, Wawa seems ready for that challenge.
1,800
The number of stores Wawa aims to have by 2030.
All this growth is in service of another, larger goal. Wawa CEO Chris Gheysens told the Philadelphia Business Journal in 2022 that the company aimed to reach 1,800 stores by 2030.
Opening in eight new states in two years goes a long way toward achieving that goal, especially since the retailer is planning dozens of stores in each of these new markets over the next few years.
To put that in perspective, only three convenience retailers currently have more than 1,800 c-stores in the U.S., according to NACS data — 7-Eleven, Alimentation Couche-Tard and Casey’s General Stores.
Wawa was already seventh place in the U.S. by store count at the start of the year. With QuikTrip and Murphy USA both focused on their own growth plans and Cumberland Farms getting back into M&A, Wawa’s not guaranteed to pass them even if it does reach its target.
But reaching that 1,800 point would represent growth of over 50% from the 1,180 stores NACS listed for the retailer at the start of this year, and that’s no small feat.
