Wawa’s been experimenting with efficiency in its food prep and delivery, offering apps, online ordering, curbside pickup, and now, an all-digital Wawa in University City, writes Jason Sheehan for Philadelphia Magazine. 

The Wawa digital store has no shelves, no shopping. Transactions go through kiosks and Wawa’s app.

The efficiency helps Wawa run its ever-expanding company, and it provides some convenience to its customers.

But the new store seems a “slick, sterile and soulless place,” Sheehan writes, “a Wawa for robots, run by robots.”

A digitized in-store experience takes away the joy of talking to the staff, surveying your options, “seeing those Peanut Chews you forgot about but now want—and of customizing some items by chatting up employees,” writes Nadira Goffe for Slate.

Sheehan notes that for those who grew up in Pennsylvania, Wawa was like a disaggregated town square, “a place where everyone goes and rubs shoulders with everyone else …” a traditional Third Place that is neither home nor work.

But at the new Wawa digital store? “Being there feels like being nowhere,” he wrote.

Wawas are supposed to have personality, he wrote.

“In other words, let Wawa be Wawa.”

Read more of Jason Sheehan’s thoughts about a new digital Wawa in Philadelphia Magazine.