Wawa Keeps on Growing With Plans to Expand Into 3 New States

The ‘Sheetz vs. Wawa’ debate will be raging in new states over the next couple of years.

Delaware County-based Wawa, has announced plans to expand into Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky by 2025. Earlier this year, Wawa announced expansion plans for North Carolina, Alabama, Georgia, the Florida panhandle and Tennessee, also by 2025. 

Three states currently have both Wawa and Sheetz locations: Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia. Sheetz already has stores in Ohio and North Carolina. 

These new states are part of a long-term expansion plan that Wawa’s President and CEO Chris Gheysens told the Philadelphia Business Journal about earlier this year. Gheysens said Wawa plans to nearly double its store count to about 1,800 locations by 2030. 

Gheysens also said in April that this expansion will include “traditional” neighborhood stores and “non-traditional” rest-stop style formats in both existing and new markets. Some of these new locations will include drive-thrus, something the chain only started testing during the COVID-19 pandemic. Wawa opened its first stand-alone drive-thru in Morrisville, Bucks County early last year. 

The chain also announced in June that as many as 40 stores in Central Pennsylvania will open by 2024. That’s squarely in the jurisdiction of the Altoona-based Sheetz. Some of these locations include Penn Township, York County and East Pennsboro Township, Cumberland County. 

Wawa also announced that it’s currently accepting site suggestions from real estate agents, and is open to expanding even further.