A little background on Wawa Stores:
Now this is from a consumer's standpoint: when I was a kid here in PA, all we had were 7/11's and Cumberland Farms stores where the prices of everything except milk (because it is price-controlled here) were through the frigging roof. for example, if the price of a conventional tray of Oreos at the supermarket were, say, 59 cents, the price at the 7/11 was $1.80; tuna instead of being say 29 cents a can was a buck...you get the point. Wawa came into town and had fresh-sliced deli counter people (yes, real live people) and the prices were competitive with the supermarkets and the rolls were delivered fresh everyday from a pretty high-quality baker like Amoroso - not as good as NYC stuff, but not bad. Point is: you could buy something for a reasonable price for lunch or breakfast, and maybe a Tastykake (also price-fixed by the company) and a soda for maybe a dime more than from a machine somewhere. They opened in areas where there were lots of commuters and near hospitals and the like. They made a fortune. What they're doing now is trying to open only large Wawa markets which sell gasoline as well as food and drink and they closed many of the city-based markets due in part to theft of food and employee theft/turnover. The coffee business was a boon to them: it is unbelievable how much coffee they sell all day...there's one 100 yards from my house on the eastern Main Line, open all the time and there's always multiple cars in the lot no matter what time of day or night. I know someone who works in their corporate department: they are brilliant and ruthless when it comes to placement of the stores in neighborhoods and zoning laws and will fight to the death to open a store even if no one else in the business community wants one at that location for whatever reason. They are like the Terminator: the WILL NOT STOP until the store is open and functioning.
It's quite an enterprise here and expanding fast. R-money's response to it was stupid as per usual, but it didn't surprise me in the least that he went there: they are right out of the Rethug playbook when it comes to business: be reasonable, do it THEIR way.
