CCR - Wawa Cover story

50(+) years strong...

Why Wawa is built for the future

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By Michael J. Pallerino

All day, every day. That’s the Wawa Way. In truth, the mantra means different things to different people these days. Founded in 1902 by George Wood, Wawa started out as a dairy, servicing the people in and around Philadelphia’s suburbs. In 1964 Grahame Wood opened the first Wawa store. Now, as the place for gas, cigarettes and those beloved made-to-order hoagies and sandwiches, Wawa carved out its niche as an integral part of people’s daily routine.

While you can still find traditional staples in every location, Wawa now features new convenience and food service innovations like Tesla charging stations, touchscreens for easy ordering, kale salads and new offers like the Wawa Reserve Coffee line. Wawa’s latest round of expansion is focusing on, what one news story reported, as the newest place for “health-conscious, gourmet-inflected, casual-lunch options.”

And so that’s Wawa today. The company’s logo that features the Native American word for the Canada Goose found in the Delaware Valley continues to usher in a new way of doing business for a loyal customer base located in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Florida and Washington, D.C.

Commercial Construction & Renovation sat down with Terri Micklin, Director of Construction, for an inside look at where the Wawa brand is heading.

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50(+) YEARS STRONG...

Give us a snapshot of the Wawa brand?

Wawa is a brand that grows with you through your life, and along that journey builds deep and meaningful connections. This makes us much more than a convenience store or restaurant to go; it makes us a part of your community that you grow to depend upon. Wawa tries to have a positive impact on your day. This and many more reasons supports our purpose which we define as: “Fulfilling Lives Every Day, for our Customers, Communities and Each Other.”

What are the biggest trends (and challenges) driving your market segment?

The American public is redefining how and when they eat and their definition of convenience. In many markets, you can get food from any type of restaurant brought to you within 30-minutes, groceries within hours, and any other whim fulfilled within a day or two. Wawa wants to be the brand that meets you where you need us whether that’s along your commute to work, close to home, or bringing our great food and beverages straight to your door.

We bring a store to market inside of six months from the date we break ground to when we open. Within 10 to 15 years, you can expect a full remodel to make sure the store is as beautiful today as it is the day we opened.

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What are today’s consumers looking for in your market segment?

I think that consumers across all segments want to really know a brand and have seamless and clear experience however and whenever they engage. That may be an in-store experience, a mobile app, a friendly interaction with an associate, or somewhere out in the local community.

How does your location cater to these needs?

We have built our brand around trust that dates back more than 100 years to our “doctor certified” dairy products and

While design and construction is still run through very traditional methods, we are seeing AI changing how buildings are designed and technologies such as printed buildings actually becoming part of the vernacular.

home delivery of milk, and we continue to build upon that today. Wawa is always there when and where you need us. That also informs our growth strategy around locating our stores across our geographies to expand our presence.

Take us through your construction and design strategy.

Our stores are designed to bring concepts of friendliness and cleanliness to life. From a welcoming entrance where you almost always will have someone hold the door for you, to the easy to use ordering screens that Wawa pioneered long before iPads were commonplace, to the abundant coffee bar where you can fix your coffee exactly how you like it, the store enables the experience.

And our construction and maintenance are meant to create the stage with high grade materials such as terrazzo floors, and quartz countertops. We bring a store to market inside of six months from the date we break ground to when we open. Within 10 to 15 years, you can expect a full remodel to make sure the store is as beautiful today as it is the day we opened.

What’s the biggest issue today related to the construction side of the business?

We are always focused on how the economy and international markets impact the construction industry. In economic growth periods we tend to see a big construction boom which puts a lot of demand on the skilled labor trades. When you couple that with changes in trade regulations and tariffs, it can put a lot of pressures on the cost of construction, availability of materials and quality of the labor force.

We work tirelessly to insulate our program from those external influences by putting skilled Project Managers on every job and sourcing a lot of the construction materials directly to guarantee supply and maintain quality. Our build plan of over 160 projects per year are staffed by a Wawa team of 28 construction professionals partnering with great contractors across our market areas.

Talk about sustainability.

Sustainability and corporate stewardship have been part of our program since inception and

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50(+) YEARS STRONG...

we focus on it because it is part of our value structure of “Doing the Right Thing.” Where we can we recycle our construction debris, we use recycled materials, install high efficiency systems, and use 100 percent LED lighting.

We also work almost exclusively with local and regional companies so that the men and women building our stores are also members of the local community. That keeps jobs, revenues, and taxes in the community. What we build locally, benefits locally.

What do you see as some of your biggest opportunities moving ahead?

Innovation is at an all-time high across all retail markets. While design and construction is still run through very traditional methods, we are seeing AI changing how buildings are designed and technologies such as printed buildings actually becoming part of the vernacular.

While these are still not market standard, the opportunity to leverage new technology to speed construction is definitely coming at us very quickly. We have been using building automation systems for years now but are now beginning to see stores become fully connected. As we invoke some of this newer technology, our stores will literally be able to tell us what they need.

Are you optimistic about what you see in the construction sector?

I am absolutely optimistic because we are seeing growth across the industry. While that is putting pressure on the labor force right now it is also creating new opportunities and demanding that the industry

adapt and change. We are also seeing a lot more innovation in materials, making them lighter and easier to install than ever before.

Why did you pick the locations you did for your stores?

We have a very experienced team of real estate managers that live and work in the local communities where we place our stores. We combine that local knowledge with robust analytics to select the locations for each one of our stores.

What is your growth plan?

We are very focused in growing in our six state region of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia and Florida. Our growth rate is very consistent year over year and we are looking to add 50 or more new stores per year for the foreseeable future. In the next year, we will open both the Ocala and Miami-Dade markets in Florida. In the past few years, we’ve also begun to grow more in the urban markets, opening stores in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

What is the secret to creating a “must visit” location in today’s competitive landscape?

Great people serving greater products. Earlier I mentioned that the store is a stage. The associates are your performers, creating the great experience that makes your customers want to come back again and again.

The recipe is easy to state, but hard to create. You need a great environment that supports and reflects the products you are serving and provides the venue for your associates to make a positive

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memorable impression on each customer. It doesn’t hurt to have really craveable food too—you can’t resist a Gobbler hoagie on a cold Autumn day.

What’s the biggest item on your to-do list right now?

Every day it is making sure that my team is setup for success and that runs through cycles each year. Right now, we are making sure we have our budgets and plans set for 2019 and have the support we need to execute with excellence. We have a few new team members this year (thanks to quite a few promotions that happened) and we are really putting energy behind getting them the training they need to be fulfilled in their jobs. We are also working on enhancements to our analytics programs that will help us find process improvements so that we focus on areas of biggest impact.

Describe a typical day.

My day starts at home with my husband and two amazing daughters, getting them ready for their day. When she lets me, I walk my fourth grader to school before heading into the office. During the day, I

Our growth rate is very consistent year over year and we are looking to add 50 or more new stores per year for the foreseeable future.

One-on-one with...

Terri Micklin

Director of Construction, Wawa Inc.

move from meeting to meeting: contract reviews, design or innovation topic meetings, mentoring sessions, and working as a board member for The Wawa Foundation, our charitable 501c3 organization.

I try to get out into the field to visit job sites at least one week out of the month across all of the geographies we cover. My day usually ends with a dinner with the family followed by coaching a soccer practice or getting my kids off to their music lessons before some final homework and bedtime. There might be some late night email catch up thrown in for good measure as well.

Tell us what makes the Wawa brand so unique?

There are a lot of elements of the Wawa brand that make it stand out, but it is all powered by our ESOP (Employee Stock Ownership Program). Our company is over 40 percent owned by the associates who work for Wawa—both in stores and in our corporate offices. Every associate thinks and acts like an owner because we truly are owners. That dedication is what drives us every day to deliver the best possible experience to anyone and everyone that visits our stores or interacts with the Wawa brand. CCR

What’s the most rewarding part of your job? Watching members of my team grow and succeed. Construction can be unpredictable and we face a lot of challenges, but seeing the team work together to overcome those challenges, support their peers and succeed in their professional lives provides the greatest rewards. In the past year, I had three team members get promoted. A small group of my team was acknowledged with a “Values Award” for rebuilding a store associate’s home, on their personal time, that was damaged in a recent storm. Those small moments make the difference.

What was the best advice you ever received? My father provided me with two of the best pieces of advice I ever received. He worked his way up from a sales person to a vice president and told me the key was to surround yourself with people smarter than you that you trust and then

listen to them. It is the simplest guideline to how to build a great team. He also told me never to live where you had to cross a bridge to get to work every day. Great advice if you want to be balanced in spending time at work and at home and not just behind the windshield.

What is the true key to success for any manager? Don’t manage – listen and lead. If you build a strong and capable team, you should simply need to provide them with the vision and strategy and let them selfmanage. You may need to redirect once in a while but more than likely, the team will trust you and rise to any challenge.

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