Dive Brief:
- Wawa has no standalone drive-thru locations left in its network of roughly 1,100 convenience stores, a company spokesperson confirmed to C-Store Dive.
- The retailer shuttered its standalone drive-thru store in Largo, Florida, in September, the spokesperson said. This appears to have been the last remaining example of this style of Wawa.
- Wawa’s spokesperson did not respond by press time when asked if the company plans to launch any more of these types of sites in the future.
Dive Insight:
Wawa opened its first drive-thru nearly five years ago in Westampton, New Jersey. The setup featured two lanes, separate order points with digital menu boards and a QR code menu option, and one point-of-pay location and pickup window. In early 2021, Wawa debuted its first freestanding drive-thru with no in-store access. The company eventually debuted two more solo drive-thrus in Pennsylvania.
Since then, the New Jersey drive-thru has been converted into a pickup-only store, while the other locations have closed entirely.
Until recently, it appeared the Largo location, which opened in June 2024, was Wawa’s only drive-thru left. When asked why Wawa recently shuttered this location, the company’s spokesperson said in a statement that “Wawa is constantly testing new concepts to meet the needs of our customers including store design.”
Margaret Sotrop, vice president of design services for c-store solutions firm GSP Retail, visited Wawa’s drive-thru site in Largo around this time last year. In an interview with C-Store Dive, Sotrop said the transaction took about six minutes from order to pickup, which felt “a little long,” and that the number of menu options felt overwhelming. Her biggest critique of the drive-thru was that customers couldn’t place mobile orders ahead of time for pickup.
Although popular companies such as Sheetz and GetGo Cafe + Market continue to operate drive-thrus, the concept has generally produced more headaches than successes for convenience retailers. Industry experts have said that drive-thrus can take up valuable real estate that could be used for parking, and that the service holds limited appeal for retailers given its operational complexity and hefty investment.
Wawa’s latest closure also highlights a challenge for fuel-less convenience stores. Besides Wawa, operators such as QuikTrip, RaceTrac and Kum & Go all experimented with fuel-less c-stores in densely populated areas, with most of these sites closing their doors due to poor performance. During this year’s NACS Show in Chicago, Chris Rapanick, managing director of NACS Research, said the average c-store would lose about $700 or $800 per month if it weren’t for high fuel margins.
