I LOVE Wawa ….if you guys haven’t heard of it - look it up right now and get yourself to the nearest gas station to get yourself a stellar hoagie…..wait, what?
Did I just mention gas and stellar hoagie in the same sentence? Yes I did. Wawa has super reasonable gas, amazing service, and solid meatball subs, hoagies and my personal all time favorite - the Turkey Bowl (only in season). It’s fantastic. Not to mention the coffee, I could go on and on.
There’s a method behind the madness…the Wawa team has used the Blue Ocean Strategy since 2009 to discover it’s own blue ocean: mastering the quick service restaurant game on a site that also sells gas and other convenience store items.
What Blue Ocean Strategy did for Wawa:
1. Empowered their team to rise to the occasion and create a blue ocean together, a critical mindset shift from striving to “beat” the competitors to creating an entirely different strategy that doesn’t compete, but creates new markets.
2. Wawa realized their “identity” was food service, but their current weakest link. They were able to identify the core of what made them who they are, and put it to work to create the strategy that now completely sets them apart from every other gas station in America.
3. Leveraged third party logistics to maintain a low cost offering, rather than trying to do it all themselves.
4. Considered new offerings and methods like leveraging technology and offering food delivery services to better serve current customers and capture current non customers.
Wawa now has a total of 840 stores across the US and growing, not to mention the most raving fans a convenience store and gas station has ever had.
Read more about this game changing strategy here.