Wawa Pizza Continues to Endure

The fact that Wawa has not discontinued the Pizza yet I think speaks to a level of commitment we have not yet seen from a chain that is not defined as a pizza chain doing pizza.

The strategy most fast food places use is to churn through menu changes frequently to try and get you to go "oh, maybe I should get that." Wawa sort of does this, but honestly every time I'm near a Wawa, I stop in and get something, usually a pretzel, occasionally a sandwich depending on how hungry I am. If there were one on my work commute route I'd absolutely be leaving 10 minues earlier & getting a coffee & breakfast sandwich every morning.

They don't need to get me in the door, because as of right now Wawa is in a sweet spot, they're on the verge of national expansion and are well-respected by customers. Eventually, they will get too big for their britches and erode that respect, the way many have done before them. But for now I look forward to the sausage egg and cheese on a croissant with a mediocre coffee.

The average Panera menu churn was about two and a half months. Celebrations, they called them, because the way Panera thinks of itself in 2015 is really embarrassing, and I wouldn't be surprised to learn that it's still like that. But don't worry, the e-learning narrator knows that feel and wants you to know the Straberry Poppyseed Chicken Salad is coming back next summer, and with it, about twenty 1/6-pans of quartered strawberries per day. My hands are cramping up just thinking about it.

Taco Bell and Wendy's often changed so quickly that I got to eat some things once in my entire life and then never saw again. There was a buffalo chicken sandwich at Wendys they had for like maybe three weeks, and don't get me started on the Taco Bell "naked chicken chips" which were simply triangular chicken nuggets.

Dunkin Donuts did a flatbread pizza in 2007 and I think it was off the menu in 4 months. When I used to work graveyard at CVS, the strip mall we were in had a 24-hour Dunkin, and food options at 3 AM were pretty limited. I had it quite a few times during those four months. 

The McPizza is widely considered to be the stuff of legend these days, even when I was growing up in the early 2000's it sounded like a distant memory.

Quick Chek, Wawa's North Jersey equivalent, who have been sort of getting muscled out of the market by Wawa (I saw two former Quick Cheks that are not Quick Cheks anymore just a few weeks ago), used to employ this strategy as well. The 2009 hamburgers were really good, very handy for an overnight shift where your options for something to eat at 3 AM are Dunkin or Quick Chek. They did hot dogs at some point I think while I was living out in central california. They had some pretty bad mac and cheese at one point. When I used to attend county college after moving back to jersey, I used to get a sub for lunch a couple of days a week, and they were always trying something new.

Wawa has already surpassed a full year of pizza, a food I never see anyone order while I'm waiting for a breakfast panini. I ordered it once, the day me and my husband got our Covid boosters in 2023. It was fine.

The whole thing is just sort of strange. It's not how these normally go.