Wawa goes west: The convenience chain is eyeing locations in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana

Wawa is scouting new store sites in Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, with the first gas-and-sandwich convenience stores under the flying-goose signs to be announced next year and opened after 2025, the company said Wednesday.

It also plans to move into Tennessee, Alabama, North Carolina, and Georgia by 2024. The company has nearly 1,000 stores, with roughly one-quarter each in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Florida, and most of the rest in the counties around Washington, D.C.

“At Wawa, growth means strengthening our existing markets as well as expanding,” chief executive Chris Gheysens said in a statement, which referred to the new states as future “Wawalands.”

The company plans 70 new stores next year, including sites near Penn State and Pensacola, Fla., after adding more than 40 this year.

It has also closed smaller or less-profitable stores, including some in Philadelphia.

» READ MORE: A history of Wawa’s on-again, off-again relationship with Center City Philadelphia

Once a corner dairy store where customers could buy rolls and cold cuts to make their own sandwiches, Wawa has boasted that it is now the biggest seller of Philadelphia-style hoagies, which can be ordered online (in-store or remotely). The sandwiches are made from rolls and other ingredients prepared by vendors at Wawa supply centers and finished to order in stores — as are many other breakfast, lunch, dinner and snack products on Wawa menus.

Although some local economic development officials have welcomed the stores, the scale of recent “super” Wawa stores has also fed neighborhood opposition.

Wawa opponents in Holland, Bucks County, on Tuesday celebrated a state court ruling they said would have the effect of reversing a Northampton Township zoning approval for a store and gas station they contend is too big for the location.

In August, the company canceled plans for one Coral Gables, Fla., location after sustained opposition from neighbors and school parents, the Miami Herald reported.

The new state announcements follow Wawa’s steady expansion, starting in 2012, into south and central Florida. The chain expects that it will soon have more stores in the Sunshine State than anywhere else — though Gheysens has so far resisted Florida officials’ occasional attempts to persuade the company to move its offices down there.

As it spreads geographically, Wawa has tweaked its mid-Atlantic formula. In Florida, the company installed more outdoor seating and added local specialties including pastelillos (empanadas), black beans and Cubano sandwiches (lined with pork and ham).

As it enters the mid-South, there’s no shortage of Southern fried foods and sides for Wawa to test.

But what could it add that is special to the Midwest?

“It’s too soon to tell,” Wawa spokeswoman Lori Doyle said. To be sure, “we work to align our offerings with the food cultures and traditions of each new market,” but the company does best offering custom versions to its standard Italian hoagies, paninis, breakfast bowls.

Dave McCoy, a retired newspaper editor, Cincinnati native, and descendant of the feuding McCoy clan from the nearby Appalachians, notes that the Ohio Valley is full of food specialties that may fly under the national radar but would be welcomed if well-made and Wawa-available.

These include “five-way chili,” with spaghetti, cheese, onions, beef and beans, which McCoy says is tough to get just right.

Other regional favorites include bratwurst; deep-fried pork loin sandwiches; pawpaws, a native mango-like fruit, highly perishable but readily blended into baked goods; and goetta, a Midwestern scrapple made with the parts of the cow or pig you don’t see in supermarket cases, plus oats, instead of Lancaster-style cornmeal.

Goetta could be tough. Despite local customer requests, Wawa still doesn’t offer scrapple, which is trickier to grill than sausage and might not lend itself to off-site, centralized preparation.

Scrapple also isn’t on the menu at Sheetz, Wawa’s Western Pennsylvania counterpart. Both are family-run chains, started with the first generation of dairies to buy delivery trucks, in the early 1900s.

“As for strong regional competitors like Sheetz, a Pennsylvania-based company like us, we continue to have the utmost respect for them and have already been competing with them in several markets for quite a long time,” Doyle said.

By moving south and west, Wawa bypasses (and surrounds) Sheetz’s Pittsburgh-area heartland.

Why the sudden rush of new states? Wawa, still controlled by members of the founding Wood family, has been growing incrementally for decades. It slowed during the pandemic but is now ready for these larger moves.

The company says it employs more than 35,000; Forbes estimates sales at $15 billion last year and growing rapidly. Employees and outsiders hold a minority of private shares.

A growing chain covering more states would presumably command a higher price if the next generation of Woods decides it’s time to put the company up for sale or take it public in an initial stock offering — a deal it has contemplated but not taken in years past.

Or as a bigger company, Wawa might find it attractive to remain independent. “Wawa is, and remains, a privately held company, with no plans to change that,” Doyle said.