We’ve been covering the closing of Center City’s Wawas for a while. Some interesting speculation on the reason for the closing of the 20th and Chestnut, Rittenhouse and other locations just showed up in the comments of a previous post:
I have been involved with wawa corporate for a project lately. I used to work in the city and loved the one at 17th an walnut, i was absolutely pissed off when it closed. But heres whats appearently going on. The rent is nasty and they’re losing profit margins on shortie hoagies at the moment because of rising costs. The city of philadelphia is giving price breaks to, “boutique” stores inside of center city. It’s essentially driving out the wawa’s, funny thing is they don’t want to leave. The guy i sat next to was as pissed off as me that they were leaving. But to them they are losing money because the city is screwing them over tax wise in a 20 block radius, they’re building outside of that radius in the city, but inside of it taxes are killing them.
Is there any truth to this? Does anyone have any extra info to contribute? Let us know.
Wawa [Official Site]
