Dive Brief:
- Wawa plans to add up to 60 new stores in Virginia over the next decade, the convenience retailer announced earlier this month.
- The new stores will expand Wawa’s presence in western Virginia, including a focus along the Interstate 81 corridor. The first of these locations, in Staunton and Lynchburg, are expected to open this fall.
- This announcement comes as Wawa continues its massive multistate expansion, with hundreds of stores in multiple states expected to open over the next few years.
Dive Insight:
The retailer says it expects to open six to eight stores in Virginia this year as part of its 60 planned locations in the state over the next 10 years. This is similar to the pace of other expansion plans Wawa has outlined in recent years.
Wawa, which reached the 1,000-store milestone in April 2023, now has around 1,100 stores and aims to operate 1,800 sites by 2030.
Further details about the expansion in Virginia, where Wawa has had stores for more than 25 years, will be announced as the c-store retailer gets sites under contract and local governments grant permits. The company’s 100-plus stores in Virginia are currently concentrated in the Richmond and Virginia Beach areas and along the coast.
“This has been a 20-year journey for Wawa,” said Greg Harvey, director of site acquisition for Wawa, in an interview with WDBJ at the Lynchburg groundbreaking. “We’ve been looking at the Roanoke/Lynchburg market for a long time.”
Since the start of its expansion boom in 2022, Wawa has either debuted in or announced plans to open in Ohio, Indiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, Alabama, Georgia, North Carolina and West Virginia. It also announced a plan for more stores in Central Pennsylvania about a year ago.
