Wawa
Company Stats
- Industry:
- Other
- Headquarters:
- Wawa, PA
- Employee Count:
- 10000+
- Annual Revenue:
- Greater than $1 billion
- Tax Status:
- For-profit
- Founded:
- April 16, 1964
Address
260 W Baltimore Pike Media, PA 19063Company Overview
Company Stats
- Industry:
- Other
- Headquarters:
- Wawa, PA
- Employee Count:
- 10000+
- Annual Revenue:
- Greater than $1 billion
- Tax Status:
- For-profit
- Founded:
- April 16, 1964
Address
260 W Baltimore Pike Media, PA 19063As a family- and associate-owned, privately held company, Wawa is one of the largest in the convenience retail industry, serving millions of people a day. The company has a unique company culture and is known for a wide variety of freshly prepared food and beverages available around the clock.
Wawa associates create strong connections with their customers and communities, resulting in a unique family-like bond that feels more like family than a transaction. That has resulted in Wawa becoming deeply embedded in the hearts and daily lives of a diehard customer base (aka Eagles fans, among others). Always open, even in shore towns that otherwise shutter for winter, Wawa delivers comfort, consistency, and arguably one of the best meatball hoagies in the world (Not that we’re biased. Okay, we’re biased).
The family owned-company was originally established as a dairy farm and processing plant in 1902, owned and operated by George Wood in Wawa, Pennsylvania. By 1964, Wood’s grandson Grahame opened the first official Wawa store to sell the family’s dairy products. To date, Wawa has opened almost 1,000 stores and employs over 45,000 associates across portions of New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, Florida, and Washington, D.C.
Today, the company is focused on preserving its people-first culture while growing not just in locations, but in services to provide customers with more personal choices, more touchpoints and more options than ever before.
Beyond its bright, warm and welcoming stores exists an equally vibrant, fast-paced Wawa headquarters serving up fresh, innovative ideas for the brand’s digital transformation. Through a new, cutting-edge, fully-automated digital platform, Wawa technologists are busy creating a customer experience defined as “boundless convenience.”
With the platform already up and running in its early stages, the next ingredient for its success is to build out a bang-up team of talented technologists. The company seeks passionate people of all levels who crave hands-on, back-end coding experiences and the coveted opportunity to build something meaningful from scratch using the latest technologies.
You can find Wawa’s Corporate Campus in the very same place it all began: Wawa, PA (near Media). Corporate’s 800 employees even attend work events at the Wood family’s original brick mansion, mere steps away from the office. And for those wondering, the answer is yes: You will have unlimited access to Wawa coffee. It’s as close to living in a Wawa as it gets. Which, in addition to working here, is a completely respectable life goal.
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For more on Wawa’s approach to digital innovation, check out the video below. This video was first published on fastcompany.com and in partnership with EY and Fast Company. Learn more here.
Technical.ly Coverage
Featured Employees
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“The people here support you. We are invested in your success. It’s nothing formal, we just make sure you know what you need to know; we get you where you need to go. We got you.”
Jenette Bryant Product Owner -
“When I was looking for my next opportunity, I knew I wanted to build great things with great people. At Wawa, everybody's been here for like 15-25 years. I’ve asked them ‘Why,’ and it’s always the same: ‘The culture, the people, the opportunity.’ People here do the right thing, with positive intent and with passion.”
Mike Pitone Sr. Manager of Brand Experience & Growth
Culture Q&A
What types of technologists are you looking to hire?
As we continue our digital transformation, we’re looking to hire an incredible team of technologists to build the back-end features and functionality of our platform, including:
● Senior software engineers
● Lead software engineers
● Platform engineers
● Platform architects
● Security engineers
● Risk and compliance
● Forensic analysts
● SCRUM masters
What is your tech stack?
We are always exploring new technology and languages to see how they can benefit our platform. Right now we’re working with AWS, Java, Kubernetes and Golang on the back-end and ReactJS on the front-end.
It can surprise people who only think of Wawa as a convenience store, but we’re very passionate and proactive about using the latest technology to build our digital experiences. There’s a lot of room for our tech team to try new things and bring them to the table.
Tell us about what it's like to work at Wawa HQ.
Wawa is a people-first organization, which means we care about our people over everything else and treat them fairly. The culture is very supportive and collaborative — everyone works together. And, we really give you the opportunity to spread your wings.
We have many people who have worked here for 15 to 40 years, which says a lot. You can go to the cafeteria and eat lunch next to the CEO. It’s the kind of place where everyone is happy to come to work on a Monday morning. And there’s coffee everywhere.
How does Wawa give back?
Wawa proudly gives back through The Wawa Foundation, a 501 (c)(3) non-profit corporation focused on building stronger communities in three areas of health, hunger and everyday heroes. Since its inception in 2014, The Wawa Foundation has contributed more than $100 million to non-profit community organizations. Wawa and The Wawa Foundation are proud to support seven National Partners with in-store customer fundraising campaigns and provides its associates with year round volunteer and participation opportunities with waived registration and fundraising at community events such as JDRF One Walks, LLS Light the Night, Special Olympics Polar Plunges, among others.
At Red Roof, our corporate campus, our associates support some mentoring programs directly including a Big Brother, Big Sister program called Beyond School Walls that brings kids into HQ to get on-the-job mentorship in a real world environment, as well as a partnership through Cristo Rey High School that also pairs high school students with job opportunities. Our Product Development team hosts Future Food Scientist workshops giving middle schoolers from throughout our communities a closer look at careers in the food sciences.
