Wawa Inc. - History

History

In the early 19th century Richard D. Wood ran a store in Greenwich, New Jersey selling items grown on his farm. It was 1803 when David Wood became a part owner of a furnace that sold stove plates through the firm of Smith and Wood. About a century later, George Wood, a businessperson from New Jersey, moved to Delaware County, Pennsylvania. It was here that he started to operate the Wawa Dairy Farm. The Wawa business began in 1890. Wood imported cows from Guernsey and bought 1,000 acres (400 ha) of land in the community of Wawa in Pennsylvania. Wood arranged for some doctors to certify that his milk was sanitary and safe for consumption; this convinced many consumers to buy his milk, since at the time many children faced sickness from raw milk as pasteurization was not yet available. Cynthia Mayer of the Philadelphia Inquirer said that the "marvelous marketing strategy" "apparently worked, and the Wawa dairy grew and grew and grew" in the age when milk was delivered to the consumers' houses.

During the 1920s, when the demand for dairy products grew rapidly, so did the company. Wawa Dairy Farms later used the slogan "Buy Health by the Bottle" and with that the farm was reaching customers in both Pennsylvania and New Jersey. However, in the 1960s demand for home delivery of milk products declined, leading to the development of the Wawa Food Market.

In the 1960s, consumers began buying milk in stores instead of using home delivery. To adjust to the market changes, Wawa began opening its own convenience stores in order to sell its milk. On April 16, 1964, Wawa Food Markets opened its first store under the guidance of Grahame Wood, in Folsom, Ridley Township, Delaware County, Pennsylvania.