From humble beginnings of “home delivered doctor certified milk” to 1,044 mini markets scattered along the east coast …
This man created a convenience store empire that generates $15.9 billion in revenues (with a rememberable 2-syllable name)
It’s one of the largest islands in the world.
You can only get there by ship and the journey would be awfully cold. That’s because it is located in the Arctic Ocean between the Chukchi Sea and East Siberian Sea.
And if you want to actually step foot on the island, you’d need an official permit from the Russian government. You see Wrangel Island just happens to be a protected sanctuary.
It’s home to the largest polar beer breeding grounds in the world. But you’ll also find seals, walrus, and grey whales here as well.
These animals share the land with a bunch of birds such as sea eagles, puffins, spoon-billed sandpipers, and yellow-billed loons.
In fact Wrangel Island is the perfect nesting ground for many of these birds, particularly snow geese.
After nesting is done, the snow geese are ready for warm weather. So they head north to places such as British Columbia, Mexico, and the U.S. The flight is roughly 5,368 miles, but they stop in staging areas along the way.
Look up in the sky and you’ll see their V formation, which is said to resemble a large snowstorm of white birds.
They’ve made this journey for hundreds of years. Even Native American tribes such as the Susquehannock, Shawnee, and Iroquois were familiar with the birds. They were part of their diet.
But the snow geese also signified the passing seasons – its white feathers a symbol of life and a reminder of the roles the birds played as messengers between heaven and earth.
They called them wawa birds. And there just happens to be a town in Pennsylvania that is named after these birds.
It’s a town also known for its breed of cows.
A Case of Bad Cow Publicity
Decades ago, Guernsey cows were considered the gold standard of milk for three reasons:
The milk they produced was a golden color
Has more omega-3 fatty acids
More vitamins and more A2 proteins
But over time the poor little milk-makers took a back seat to other varieties of cows, such as the Holsteins.
One reason why dairy farmers switched breeds was because Holsteins were bigger and could produce a higher volume of milk. But there’s also a secondary reason for making the switch … you could call it a case of bad publicity, which happened in the mid 1970s.
David Trotter, business manager for the Pennsylvania Guernsey Breeder Association explains, “When people became aware of Johne’s disease — which any dairy breed can get - the Guernsey cow was the photo used to associate with the disease, and that hurt the breed. People got scared of buying Guernsey cows at that time.”
And that also put a damper on the sale of Guernsey cow milk for quite some time.
But now the breed is making a comeback.
With careful breeding practices, farmers are using more and more Guernsey cows for the quality of the milk they produce.
For George Wood, the Guernsey cow was the only breed that mattered back in 1902. That’s when he opened a 1,000 acre dairy farm and started producing and processing milk.
But not just any kind of milk … it had to be Guernsey milk. So he imported the cows from an island located in the English Channel called Guernsey.
That milk these cows produced were rich in essential nutrients that doctors soon began recommending it to their patients. In fact his home delivered milk was considered “doctor certified.”
He even created a marketing slogan that reflected the doctor consensus of the milk’s health benefits, “Buy Health by the Bottle.”
As demand for the milk skyrocketed, Mr. Wood’s soon found that his diary delivery service was the most popular one used not only in his hometown but all around Pennsylvania.
And it remained popular for almost 60 decades.
George Wood was used to this kind of success. The milk bottling business wasn’t his first company.
Nope, the first business he opened was an iron foundry that produced metal castings. It too became a very popular business. Of course it had its share of troubles.
Sometimes companies who bought the metal castings couldn’t or wouldn’t pay their bills. So George had to hire an attorney to help collect the debt owed.
That attorney just happened to be a man by the name of Abraham Lincoln. Yes sir … the same Honest Abe that became President of the U.S. on March 4, 1861.
One Door Closes, One Door Opens
Every product has a 4-stage life cycle, which is broken down in this way:
Introduction – the first time customers know about it
Growth – then demand grows for the product
Maturity – sales volume for the product is maxed out
Decline – sales begin to drop as does demand for the product
The reason I’m telling you all of this this Dear Reader is because that cycle is exactly what happened to Mr. Wood’s milk business.
When grocery stores and supermarkets started popping up and milk could now be stored in their refrigerator shelves, home delivery wasn’t needed anymore.
But also customers could choose from a variety of milk brands. And so Mr. Wood’s doctor recommended milk found itself in the “decline” stage of the product lifecycle.
It would be time to shut the doors of his family owned and operated milk business.
But hold on!
His grandson Grahame Wood, saw the changing trends in the marketplace and realized customers actually enjoyed making trips to the grocery store.
So he had an idea … why not open a little store and sell the family milk there? And along with milk and other dairy products, why not sell some food items too?
And that’s exactly what he did. On April 16, 1964, Grahame opened the doors to the family’s first convenience store in Folsom, PA.
He named the store in honor of where the family’s dairy farm was originally built … that same small town named after the same snow geese that the Native Americans in the area cherished … WaWa.
Of course if you’re going to name a store after snow geese, then it only makes sense that the logo you develop has one on it.
Grahame’s WaWa store with its snow geese logo was an instant hit with customers.
It was so successful that by 1969, the first stores in New Jersey and Delaware were opened. These little convenience stores added more food items to their menus including hamburgers and friend chicken.
In the 1970’s, WaWa stores started adding sandwiches to its menus, including pre-made hoagies.
The menu items kept growing throughout the years. In 1982 they offered built-to-order hoagies, along with hot foods, such as meatballs.
An East Coast Thing
While Wawa, Inc. is headquartered in Wawa, Pennsylvania, it currently operates a chain of over 630 convenience stores in a six-state area, including New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and Florida.
It comes in as #9 on Convenience Stores News listing of the top 200 convenience stores by number of locations in the U.S.
When Food and Wine magazine did a survey asking customers how often they would return to a convenience store, WaWa ranked number 2. They were beat out by one other convenience store … Buc-ee’s, which are located mostly in Texas.
WaWa still produces and process milk. Today, they operate a state-of-the-art dairy processing equipment, fleet maintenance facilities and a warehouse complex that processes more than 92 million quarts annually.
Not only can you buy food at any Wawa location, but you can also buy coffee. In fact its signature branded coffee, introduced in the 1970’s, is now one of the most popular Wawa products. It is a true proprietary, private label blend, available only at Wawa stores.
Wawa customers enjoy more than 195 million cups of freshly brewed Wawa coffee each year. It’s also the single largest purveyor of freshly made and built-to-order sandwiches and hoagies in the Delaware Valley.
Customers just can’t get enough of those sandwiches either. Wawa sells over 60 million built–to-order hoagies annually. And just like all convenience stores, you can fill up your car with gas while you wait for your hoagie to be made.
Suffice it to say that Grahame’s one good idea turned into an empire. The privately family owed business has over 37,000 employees scattered among the over 1,000 stores located up and down the East Coast. Last year, it hauled in $15 billion in sales, which is slightly up from previous years.
So it’s safe to say, WaWa hasn’t reached the “decline” stage of the product life cycle.
Awesome Quotes by Awesome People
“So convenient a thing it is to be a reasonable creature, since it enables one to find or make a reason for everything one has a mind to do.” — Benjamin Franklin