Friday, August 4, 2023

Wawa Wants Dinner Daypart to Drive Incremental Sales

 


Wawa has been driving top-line sales and bottom-line profits with grocerant niche Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh prepared food the AM Daypart with coffee, lunch with its famous Hoagie, and now they want to leverage the power of pizza to drive dinner Daypart sales according to Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

Why pizza?  Let’s look at a few of the pizza industry numbers:

1.       The market size of just pizza restaurants alone in the U.S. in 2022 was $65.2 Billion

2.       The growth rate of the restaurant sector of pizza was 6.2 percent in 2022

3.       Since 2017 the pizza restaurant sector has grown 2.8 percent per year.

 


Regular readers of this blog know that Wawa, started rolling out pizza to select stores in early June and, as of last week, had completed the launch in more than 900 locations across the Mid-Atlantic and Florida. 

Mary-Rose Hannum, vice president of fresh food & beverages for Wawa, stated, "We are absolutely thrilled to launch Wawa Pizza and give our customers another delicious dinner meal option," … "Pizza is one of the most beloved foods in America, so we couldn't be more excited to make it a part of Wawa's fast-casual-to-go offering and create a restaurant-like experience with our high-quality ingredients, great value, and the convenience we're known for."

About Wawa’s pizza it comes in two size options — 14 inches or 16 inches — and can be ordered in store via touchscreens or in advance through the Wawa app. While the vast majority of Wawa stores are offering full-size pizzas, a select number of stores are only offering a smaller, personal-size pizza.

All Wawa Pizza is built to order in store using freshly made dough, a proprietary pizza sauce, whole milk mozzarella and a selection of toppings. The pizzas are then baked in dedicated pizza ovens that have been added to most store locations.


To get started, Wawa is offering several pizza varieties, including plain, pepperoni, sausage, mushroom and veggie, with expanded options to come in the future. Prices for Wawa Pizza start at $12.99 per pie. Pizza will be available from 4 p.m. to 3 a.m. in stores that are open 24 hours. 

In case you did not know, 2021, Wawa launched its chainwide dinner platform, which included a specialty menu and the introduction of burgers and fries. Since then, Wawa has continued to expand menu options with dinner salads and sides, crispy chicken and more. 

Don’t over reach. Are you ready for some fresh ideations? Do your food marketing ideations look more like yesterday than tomorrow? Interested in learning how Foodservice Solutions® can edify your retail food brand while creating a platform for consumer convenient meal participationdifferentiation and individualization?  Email us at: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us or visit us on our social media sites by clicking the following links: Facebook,  LinkedIn, or Twitter



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