Wawa in Lake Buena Vista would clean up...there's lots of food around but there's a real dearth of good options as far as convenience stores unless you count a few mobbed 7-Eleven's and Hess Express'. Wawa with the deli...people would be lined up out the door 24x7! So, Wawa Corporate: buy some land along Apopka-Vineland Rd and get busy!

Since there's no Wawa, one of the best Disney World eateries of the bread-and-meat persuasion is The Earl of Sandwich at Downtown Disney. They have enough variety that you could eat there every day and never get bored (kinda like Wawa). For around $5-6 per person, it's hard to beat as a warm, freshly-made meal, especially in that area. They do breakfast too. :)

We wanted you to be one of the first to know - Hoagiefest is being extended! And this isn't just a "one-song" Encore! Starting June 27th through August 9th, enjoy any one of the four featured Shorti Hoagie varieties - Italian, Cheesesteak, Turkey, or Meatball - for only $2.99

And what's a great Wawa Shorti Hoagie without an ice-cold drink? Also extended though August 9th, grab any 32 oz. Wawa Fountain Drink for only 99 cents!

We got subs/hoagies for dinner over the weekend. They sucked. OK, maybe that's too strong a word, but nobody knows how to make a decent sub here in Florida. The rolls are all wrong, they don't put them together correctly, and it always seems like the contents are skimpy. There's nothing worse than paying $6-7 for a sub-par hoagie. Wawa would kick ass down here!

In the Wawa-ish news today:

From Convenience Store News:

Through the end of August, Wawa Inc. is hosting more than 25 blood drive sites in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia, with hopes to secure 2,000 pints of blood to help The American Red Cross maintain a stable blood supply during the critical summer season.

Very nice! The one thing I'd like to read in Convenience Store News is that Wawa is coming to Florida. When is that story going to run?

This is depressing for me since I'm in Tampa, but from Press of Atlantic City, if you're lucky enough to be around Egg Harbor Township (NJ) today:

Today at lunchtime, an Egg Harbor Township Wawa will construct a quarter-mile of hoagie for customers to share, for free.

As one stop on the company's regional Hoagiefest tour, the shop at 5100 English Creek Ave. will also host sandwich-building contests between local police and fire staff, an exhibit charting the history of the sandwich, and the open-call singing sensation dubbed "kara-hoagie."

In not-so-happy news, some idiot robbed a Wawa in Delaware. I used to live near this shopping center. Robbing a Wawa is like robbing a church!

Finally, a shout-out to Mortimer who had this funny list of things you know if you live in South Jersey, and especially:

11. You know what a Wawa is and know the location of at least 15 of them.

12. You go to Wawa almost every day.

13. You've been out of the area and missed Wawa.

I actually knew most of the stuff on that list...I went to college near there. I had a crush on this girl from Australia who worked at Wawa. Well, I knew her before she worked there, but the Wawa thing didn't hurt. :-) She was awesome & bring us hoagies after her shift was over. I think my dorm RA also worked there for a while, but he was a big jackass.

That reminds me of visiting friends in college and drinkin' beer and watching movies on Saturday nights. I'd always get some Wawa coffee on the way home on Sunday morning.

Let's see: Google Maps says the nearest Wawa is 819 miles away, and 13 hours and 33 minutes if I take I-95. This situation is really not acceptable! I've driven 99 miles to get lunch at Earl of Sandwich at Downtown Disney (they're awesome!) but that's only about 2 hours.

Wawa needs to open up shop in Tampa Bay...soon! Preferrably before lunch time!

Last year as we were driving around Virginia I told my wife I thought it would be fun to take a few weeks' vacation and visit every Wawa. I think it would be fun. :-)

Wawa locations

According to his analysis, Virgina has 53 Wawa's and the southernmost one is at 101 Hillcrest Parkway Chesapeake, VA 23328. I think I've been there. :-)

Hopefully soon we'll be reading that the southernmost one is in Tampa or Clearwater Florida. How great would that be?!

It was a cold, cold, day. We stopped at the last Wawa southbound along I-95 before we reached The Land With No Wawa's.

For those of you not familiar with this concoction, imagine a soft roll with a slight crust (whole wheat in my case), thick-sliced oven-roasted turkey, stuffing, cranberries, and a liberal dose of hot turkey gravy. Good lord, it's freaking amazing!!!!! It's like an entire Thanksgiving meal that you can hold in your hands. If you combine it with the Pumpkin Pie Tastykake that's out that time of year, you have all the bases covered.

Once apon a time I used to get a similar hoagie from a deli near where I worked in Delaware. (Wawa was not nearby back in those days). The place was called Charlie's and Charlie made a fresh turkey sub with stuffing and cranberries. No gravy, and it was cold, not warm like the Wawa version. Still pretty tasty! One day I went into get one of these and Charlie was not around. Neither was the regular counter girl who made sandwiches. His wife, who we called Mrs. Charlie, was there and she said she was running the place now. Charlie had been involved in some extra-curricular activities with the sandwich girl, it seemed like. So now we took to calling her Ex-Mrs. Charlie. :-)

That would never happen at Wawa, since it's named after a Canadian goose.

Of course, he didn't grow up in the Philly metro area like I did, so his taste of soft pretzels is limited to the ones at Wawa. They're pretty darn good, mind you, but to me there's something strange about buying them from a nice, bright, clean convenience store.

I always remember driving into odd parts of Philly when I was in college to work on computers for various industrial/business clients I had. You know how you see guys selling newspapers or flowers on highway medians? Well, in this case they had guys selling pretzels. They'd have huge squares of pretzels and I think they were ridiculously cheap, like 3 for $1. They guy would break off however many you wanted and wrap 'em in a piece of paper. If you were lucky they were still warm and hadn't absorbed too much exhaust from the traffic. Yeah, but when they were good, they were damn good. As a poor college student I'd get $5 worth and warm them up in the microwave for a cheap meal over several days. They'd sit in your stomach like a salty, doughy brick, but it was better than being hungry.

I don't know what the Tampa Bay equivalent would be...they got rid of the hot dog vendors in thong bikinis. Nobody sells Cuban sandwiches on the highway medians.

It'd be nice if Wawa came to Tampa Bay, then my son could get his soft pretzels. :-)

Cracking the list at #99 was our favorite Wawa with revenues of $3.4 billion, up 2.9% from last year. The top convenience store on the list was (ugh) 7-Eleven who had revenues of $16.68 billion, up 14.9% from last year. Bigger isn't better, that's for sure...7-Eleven is like the Wal-mart of convenience stores. They're all over but the quality of the establishment can't come close to Wawa.

Next up, according to Philadelphia Business, Wawa is one of the reasons that Acme markets are losing market share:

Competitors such as Giant, ShopRite, Wawa, and Wal-Mart continued to outmaneuver Acme and cut into its lead in the eight-county Philadelphia area, according to the survey, published in late June.

...

Genuardi's, Super Fresh, and Pathmark joined Acme in losing sales, the survey showed, while Wal-Mart and Wawa's sales grew.

And finally, I came across this LiveJournal site for Wawa Lovers: http://community.livejournal.com/wawa_lovers/