A now-closed digital Wawa at 3300 Market Street that had no shelves and no products was a bad idea, writes Jason Sheehan for Philadelphia Magazine.
The idea was to improve efficiency in serving Wawa customers by streamlining the whole process.
“The problem was, words like smooth, seamless, and efficient are words that precisely no one who has ever been to a Wawa would use to describe the experience of going to a Wawa,” writes Sheehan.
The Wawa experience was never broken and never meant to be fixed.
“Its brand is built on the inefficiency of walking in the door looking for a meatball Shorti and walking out with two jugs of wiper fluid, some Peanut Chews, a fistful of scratchers, a tin of dip, and an Entenmann’s coffee cake,” Sheehan wrote.
“It’s the kind of place where a sweet little old lady will hold the door for a Cowboys fan, then hit them with her car in the parking lot. Where everyone will cheer, but no one saw it happen,” Sheehan wrote.
The automated futuristic Wawa on Market Street was soulless, a place that tried to scrub “all the grit and weirdness out of Wawa…”
Read more of Jason Sheehan’s observations about Wawa stores in Philadelphia Magazine.
