Wawa Understands the Most Important Word in Food Marketing: NOW

 

$5. Saquon Barkley. Football season. Breakfast. Family. Convenience. Put those five things together and you have something far more powerful than a meal deal. You have NOW according to Steven Johnson, Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions®.

That is what Wawa understands.

The Pennsylvania-based convenience retailer has once again teamed with Philadelphia Eagles running back Saquon Barkley, this time launching its “Hungry for Greatness” campaign around a new $5 Sizzli Meal running September 8 through October 25. The offer pairs a Sizzli breakfast sandwich with hot or iced coffee—or, for the first time, a 16-ounce fountain beverage. There is also a limited-time Pancake Sizzli.

And Barkley isn't simply standing beside a breakfast sandwich holding a sign.

He is playing a football coach.

His daughter, Jada, appears with him.

The story is about tired young athletes getting ready for the second half of a game.

That's marketing.

Wawa is not merely selling breakfast.

It is selling the idea of being ready for what comes next.

And that is a much bigger idea.

The Price–Value–Service Equilibrium Is Alive and Well

I have been talking about the Price–Value–Service Equilibrium for years.

Here is the simple version:

Price gets you noticed.
Value gets you to buy.
Service gets you to come back.

But in 2026, I would add two more ingredients:

Timing creates urgency.
Relevance creates desire.

Wawa has all five.

Price

$5 is easy to understand.

No complicated math.

No “starting at” price that changes when you actually order.

No 17-step coupon journey.

$5.

Value

You don't get just a sandwich.

You get a breakfast sandwich plus coffee or a fountain beverage.

That is a meal solution.

Service

Wawa is built around convenience, speed, customization and foodservice availability when consumers need it.

Timing

September.

Back to school.

Fall sports.

Football.

Busy mornings.

Family schedules.

The second half of the year.

Relevance

Saquon Barkley.

Philadelphia.

The Eagles.

Football culture.

Family.

Young athletes.

Suddenly, a breakfast sandwich has a reason to exist right now.

That is the equilibrium.

Here's the Part Restaurant Operators Should Pay Attention To

The restaurant industry has spent the past several years teaching consumers to look for deals.

But consumers are becoming smarter about what they consider a deal.

Circana reported in 2025 that consumer-perceived value-menu traffic increased 1% in the quarter ending June, even as overall restaurant traffic declined 1%. Value menus were actually gaining traffic while the broader restaurant industry was losing it.

Then came 2026.

The lesson became even clearer:

Cheap isn't enough anymore.

Reuters reported in August that major chains were discovering that discounts alone weren't necessarily keeping consumers coming back. Brands that combined value with innovation, quality and better execution were performing better than brands relying primarily on discounting.

That's an enormously important distinction.

Consumers aren't necessarily asking:

“Who is cheapest?”

They are increasingly asking:

“Who gives me the most for what I am willing to spend?”

That's value.

And value is not the same thing as price.

Wawa's $5 Is the Hook. The Story Is the Net.

This is where Wawa gets interesting.

Imagine the headline without Saquon Barkley:

Wawa Offers $5 Breakfast Meal.

Fine.

Now add:

Saquon Barkley Launches Wawa $5 Sizzli Meal for Football Season.

Different story.

Now add his daughter.

Now add young athletes.

Now add the second half of the game.

Now add back-to-school.

Now add fall sports.

Now you aren't marketing a sandwich.

You're marketing momentum.

That's the difference between a promotion and a campaign.

McDonald's Already Taught Us This Lesson

McDonald's figured out years ago that celebrity partnerships could turn a familiar menu item into a cultural event.

The Travis Scott Meal in 2020 wasn't about inventing a new hamburger.

It was about taking an existing product, attaching a celebrity to it, creating a limited window and giving consumers something to talk about.

That is a fundamentally different proposition from simply putting a coupon in a newspaper.

The celebrity doesn't have to make the food better.

The celebrity makes the food more culturally relevant.

Wawa is doing something similar—but with a particularly strong seasonal fit.

Saquon Barkley isn't a random celebrity.

He's an NFL running back.

He's associated with Philadelphia.

He's associated with football.

And football is happening now.

That's the secret sauce.

Taco Bell Understands the Power of “NOW,” Too

Taco Bell has repeatedly demonstrated another part of the equation: limited availability + fan participation + cultural relevance.

Its Nacho Fries platform has repeatedly brought consumers back around a familiar product by making its return an event.

Technomic's 2026 State of the Menu research continues to identify limited-time offers and value as important tools for driving traffic and sales.

But there's a warning here.

Don't confuse an LTO with a strategy.

By 2026, consumers are seeing so many limited-time offers that the words “limited time” themselves can lose their power.

The LTO has to mean something.

It needs a reason.

It needs a story.

It needs a season.

It needs cultural relevance.

Wawa has all four.

2026 Is Teaching Foodservice a Brutal Lesson

There is simply too much competition for the consumer's food dollar.

Circana says total U.S. foodservice traffic declined slightly in 2025, while the company forecasts foodservice spending growth of 3% across the U.S. and Europe in 2026.

Meanwhile, the National Restaurant Association's 2026 industry outlook projects U.S. restaurant sales of approximately $1.55 trillion, but only 1.3% real, inflation-adjusted growth.

Translation:

There is plenty of money in foodservice.

But getting your share of it is becoming harder.

That's why marketing can't simply say:

“Come eat.”

It needs to answer:

“Why here?”

“Why this?”

“Why now?”

Wawa answers all three.

This Is Where Restaurants Get It Wrong

Too many restaurant operators think their competitive advantage is their menu.

It isn't.

Your menu can be copied.

Your burger can be copied.

Your breakfast sandwich can be copied.

Your coffee can be copied.

Your discount can definitely be copied.

But the combination of:

brand + timing + cultural relevance + convenience + experience + value

is much harder to copy.

That's the real competitive advantage.

Wawa Is Selling Time, Too

Here's another reason I like this campaign.

The customer isn't only buying breakfast.

They're buying time.

They don't have to grocery shop.

They don't have to prepare breakfast.

They don't have to cook eggs.

They don't have to make coffee.

They don't have to clean the kitchen.

They can stop, purchase and continue with the day.

I've long argued that the modern consumer increasingly values food that eliminates the opportunity cost of preparing it themselves.

That is one reason the grocerant marketplace continues to blur traditional restaurant, grocery and convenience-store boundaries.

The consumer doesn't care about your industry classification.

They care about:

“I'm hungry. I'm busy. What's good? What's fast? What's affordable?”

No silos in the consumer's mind.

Football Is the Perfect Food Marketing Season

Football is particularly powerful because it isn't merely a sport.

It is a food occasion.

Breakfast before the game.

Lunch before the game.

Snacks during the game.

Pizza during the game.

Wings during the game.

Burgers during the game.

Convenience-store food on the way to the game.

Takeout after the game.

Delivery during the game.

And now breakfast can become part of the football narrative.

That's smart.

Wawa is effectively saying:

The game has a second half.
Your day does, too.
Start prepared.

That's emotional marketing wrapped around a $5 meal.

The Daughter Makes the Campaign Better

There is another small detail that I think marketers should notice.

Jada Barkley makes her commercial debut.

That changes the emotional equation.

Dad.

Daughter.

Young athletes.

Food.

Football.

Morning.

Preparation.

Community.

Now Wawa has moved beyond an athlete endorsement and into family storytelling.

And Wawa is reinforcing that story with a $25,000 contribution to the Boys & Girls Clubs of Philadelphia.

That's important because modern consumers increasingly evaluate brands as more than transactional entities.

The food still has to be good.

The price still matters.

The service still matters.

But the brand can also have a role in the community.

That is value beyond the receipt.

The Grocerant Guru® Prediction

I believe we're entering an era where the strongest foodservice promotions will have five dimensions:

1. A clear price.

2. A compelling value equation.

3. Fast, frictionless service.

4. A reason the offer matters now.

5. A cultural or emotional reason to care.

Wawa's $5 Sizzli Meal hits all five.

And that is why this isn't really a story about a breakfast sandwich.

It is a story about food marketing timing.

Because here's what I know after decades of watching the foodservice industry evolve:

A great product at the wrong time is an opportunity lost.

A good product at exactly the right time can become an opportunity found.

Wawa has found the moment.

Football season is here.

School is back.

Families are busy.

Consumers are value conscious.

And Saquon Barkley is telling them:

Get ready for the second half.

That's a pretty good place for a breakfast sandwich to be.

Three Insights from the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop Selling Food. Start Selling the Moment.

Breakfast isn't the story.

The morning is the story.

Football isn't the product.

The football occasion is the product.

The best marketers identify what consumers are doing, feeling and anticipating—and then put their food directly into that moment.

2. $5 Isn't the Strategy. $5 + Everything Else Is.

A low price without value is cheap.

Value without service is frustrating.

Service without relevance is forgettable.

Celebrity without authenticity is noise.

But put Price + Value + Service + Timing + Relevance together and you have something powerful.

That's the Price–Value–Service Equilibrium with a 2026 twist:

Timing and relevance turn value into action.

3. The Future Belongs to “NOW” Marketing.

Consumers have more food choices than ever.

They have more channels.

More delivery.

More convenience stores.

More grocery prepared foods.

More restaurants.

More virtual brands.

More meal solutions.

The winner won't necessarily be the company with the biggest menu.

It will be the company that answers the consumer's question fastest:

“What's right for me, right now?”

Wawa's answer this football season is simple:

$5. Saquon. Sizzli. Coffee. Football. Family.

That's not just a meal deal.

That's NOW.

And in foodservice, NOW is a very powerful ingredient.

Drive Sales. Boost Profits. Stay a Step Ahead. The Foodservice Solutions® team is dedicated to helping you grow your top-line sales and bottom-line profits. Are you looking a customer ahead? We have the strategies to get you there.

Visit GrocerantGuru.com   Contact us: Steve@FoodserviceSolutions.us

Walmart, This Is What Happens When You’re Stuck in the Middle

 

The Grocerant Guru® on why Walmart, Kroger and Publix are discovering that the middle of grocery retail is becoming the most dangerous place to be.

Walmart has a customer problem hiding inside what otherwise looks like a very large success story.

It is not that Walmart is losing shoppers. It is that the shoppers Walmart needs most are increasingly deciding that they can get a better deal, a better experience, better products—or all three—somewhere else.

That is what happens when you get stuck in the middle.

New Numerator data makes the point dramatically. Gen Z shoppers added 77 million trips and $3.4 billion in spending at Walmart over the past year, including nearly $1.2 billion more in beverages, snacks, candy and frozen foods. Higher-income households added another 115 million trips and $8.9 billion in spending, much of it online.

But here is the problem: Walmart's historic customer base is moving in the opposite direction.

Boomers made 160 million fewer Walmart trips for CPG purchases, taking $6.2 billion in spending with them. Walmart recovered only $3.5 billion of that through Boomer online shopping. Amazon, meanwhile, captured another $5 billion in Boomer CPG spending.

Lower-income households moved $7.8 billion of spending away from Walmart stores, while Walmart recovered $7.3 billion online.

The numbers tell a much more interesting story than simply saying Walmart is winning Gen Z.

Walmart is replacing customers rather than simply growing customers.

And replacement is not the same thing as loyalty.

The Middle Is Getting Squeezed

For decades, Walmart owned an extraordinarily powerful position: good enough products, very broad assortment, enormous scale and low prices.

But grocery retail has changed.

Consumers now have more choices, more information, more digital tools and more reasons to shop multiple stores.

FMI's 2026 U.S. Grocery Shopper Trends research found that consumers visit more than five grocery banners per month on average.

That is the new competitive reality.

Consumers don't necessarily choose one grocery store anymore.

They choose the best retailer for the mission.

ALDI can be the value mission.

Costco can be the stock-up mission.

Whole Foods can be the quality mission.

Trader Joe's can be the discovery mission.

WinCo can be the low-price bulk-and-basket mission.

Lidl can be the value-plus-quality mission.

A traditional supermarket can win the fresh-food mission.

And Walmart can become the retailer consumers visit when it happens to be convenient.

That is a very different competitive position.

Look at ALDI

ALDI isn't trying to be everything to everybody.

It is aggressively defining what it stands for.

In January 2026, ALDI announced plans to open more than 180 stores during 2026, bringing its U.S. store count close to 2,800, with a goal of reaching 3,200 stores by the end of 2028.

Even more telling: ALDI said 17 million new customers visited its stores in 2025, and approximately one in three U.S. households shopped at ALDI during the year.

That is not merely a price story.

It is a positioning story.

ALDI has made the shopping experience itself part of the brand.

WinCo Understands the Value Mission

WinCo takes another route.

Its proposition is remarkably simple: low prices without making customers jump through loyalty-program hoops.

The employee-owned retailer describes itself as the “Supermarket Low Price Leader,” and its sales specials are available to everyone—no rewards card and no minimum purchase required.

That simplicity matters.

When a consumer walks into a WinCo, the retailer doesn't need a complicated explanation for why it exists.

Price is the message.

And when inflation has changed the psychological relationship consumers have with food prices, that clarity becomes powerful.

Lidl Is Selling Value Without Apologizing for Quality

Lidl is attacking the same middle from a different angle.

Its U.S. stores are built around a curated assortment, private brands, fresh food and imported products—while maintaining a value proposition.

Lidl says approximately 80% of its products are private label, and its U.S. footprint now exceeds 190 stores.

More importantly, Placer.ai data cited by Grocery Dive showed Lidl visits increased 4.9% year over year during the first half of 2025, compared with a 1.5% increase for the overall grocery segment.

That is what a differentiated proposition looks like.

Lidl isn't merely saying, "We're another supermarket."

It is saying:

You can get quality here without paying supermarket prices.

That is a much sharper message.

And Yes, Winn-Dixie Belongs in This Conversation

Winn-Dixie is an especially interesting example because it is attempting to reclaim relevance through neighborhood service, value and fresh food.

In January 2026, Southeastern Grocers officially became The Winn-Dixie Company and described the strategy as strengthening neighborhoods while delivering value and service.

Meanwhile, seven former Harveys locations were converted to Winn-Dixie stores in 2026 as the company consolidated its banners around the Winn-Dixie identity.

The lesson isn't that Winn-Dix has solved grocery retail.

The lesson is that a legacy retailer has to stand for something.

Walmart, Kroger and Publix: Three Different Versions of the Middle

This is where the grocery industry's current story gets particularly interesting.

Walmart isn't alone.

Kroger and Publix are also facing an increasingly complicated consumer landscape, although their situations are different.

Kroger's first quarter 2026 identical sales, excluding fuel, increased only 1.0%, while e-commerce sales grew 19%.

Publix provides an even more revealing data point.

Its 2025 sales increased 5% to $62.7 billion, but comparable-store sales rose 3.5%, with the company explicitly noting that inflation contributed to comparable-sales growth.

Then the environment changed.

In the second quarter of 2026, Publix sales increased only 1%, while comparable-store sales declined 0.5%. For the first six months, sales increased 1.5%, while comparable-store sales declined 0.3%. Publix said economic conditions affecting consumer spending contributed to the decline.

So I would not say Walmart, Kroger and Publix are all "failing."

That would be lazy analysis.

I would say something more important:

The traditional supermarket model is finding it increasingly difficult to command the center of the consumer's wallet.

The Data From 2024 to 2026 Tells the Story

In 2024, food-at-home prices increased just 1.2%, dramatically below the 5.0% increase in 2023 and 11.4% increase in 2022. Yet consumers were still feeling the accumulated effect of several years of food inflation.

And the consumer's response was not simply "buy less."

Consumers became better shoppers.

They traded between brands.

They increased private-label purchases.

They changed stores.

They changed channels.

They changed basket composition.

By 2025, USDA data showed food-at-home prices increased 2.3%, while food-away-from-home prices increased 3.8%.

And the channel itself continued to fragment.

FMI and NIQ reported in 2025 that more than 90% of grocery shoppers were shopping both online and in stores, with online grocery sales projected to reach $388 billion, or nearly 25% of the market, by 2027.

By 2026, the omnichannel shift had become even more important: FMI and NIQ reported that online sales generated nearly three-quarters of total grocery dollar growth in 2025, with the U.S. online grocery market projected to reach $452 billion by 2028.

And the price pressure isn't gone.

The July 2026 CPI showed food-at-home prices were still 2.7% higher year over year, with fruits and vegetables up 5.1% and nonalcoholic beverages up 4.1%.

USDA's July 2026 forecast calls for food-at-home prices to increase 2.7% for the full year, with beef and veal among the categories expected to rise faster than their historical averages.

In other words, consumers are still shopping in an inflationary environment—but they have become much more sophisticated about where, what and how they buy.

Private Label Is No Longer a Backup Plan

This may be the biggest warning sign for traditional supermarkets.

Circana reported that U.S. private-brand sales had already surpassed $217 billion and continued gaining momentum.

Then NIQ reported in 2025 that 69% of global respondents viewed private label as good value for money and 68% considered it a good alternative to national brands.

In 2026, FMI found that 92% of U.S. grocery shoppers had store-brand products in their homes, private-brand dollar sales were growing 2.8% year over year, and 94% said they would continue buying private brands even if grocery prices declined.

And here's the kicker:

59% of Gen Z shoppers said they had purchased more private-brand products during the past year.

That means private label isn't simply an economic response anymore.

It is becoming brand preference.

That changes the game for Walmart.

It also changes the game for Kroger.

It changes the game for Publix.

And it changes the game for every traditional grocer that still thinks the consumer's decision begins with a national brand.

The Grocerant Guru® View: Walmart Has a Positioning Problem

Walmart is still enormous.

The company generated $713.2 billion in fiscal 2026 revenue, serves approximately 280 million customers and members each week and operates more than 10,900 stores across 19 countries.

Those numbers are extraordinary.

But scale is not a strategy.

And here's where the Grocerant Guru® sees the problem.

Walmart is simultaneously trying to become:

cheaper than everybody, better than expected, more premium than before, more digital, more convenient, more fashionable and more appealing to higher-income consumers—while retaining its historic value shopper.

That is a very difficult brand architecture.

The latest results make the issue harder to ignore.

Walmart's second-quarter U.S. comparable sales increased just 2.6%, its weakest comparable-sales performance in six years, even as e-commerce grew 24%.

That tells me Walmart is not facing a simple traffic problem.

It is facing a relevance and mix problem.

The retailer is gaining younger and wealthier consumers while losing significant spending from some of its historic customers.

That is not necessarily bad.

But if Walmart simply keeps replacing yesterday's customers with tomorrow's customers, it must continually reinvent the reason both groups should choose Walmart.

And that is where being stuck in the middle becomes dangerous.

 

Three Insights From the Grocerant Guru®

1. Stop Managing the Middle—Own a Mission

The future isn't about being everything to everybody.

ALDI owns value simplicity.

WinCo owns low-price shopping.

Lidl owns curated value plus discovery.

Winn-Dixie is attempting to own neighborhood value and service.

Walmart needs to determine what it uniquely owns in the consumer's mind beyond "low prices."

Because if low price is the entire proposition, ALDI, Lidl, WinCo and increasingly sophisticated private brands will keep attacking it from below.

The answer isn't more SKUs. It's more relevance.

2. Food Is Moving From Basket Size to Meal Solutions

The old grocery metric was the basket.

The new opportunity is the meal mission.

Consumers don't wake up thinking, "I need to increase my grocery basket."

They think:

"What's for dinner?"

"What can I eat right now?"

"What can I take to work?"

"What can I feed the kids?"

"What can I make in 10 minutes?"

That is precisely where the Grocerant intersects grocery retail.

Ready-2-Eat and Heat-N-Eat fresh food can transform a commodity grocery trip into a food experience.

Walmart should not merely sell ingredients.

It should own more solutions for eating.

3. Don't Chase Customers—Create Reasons for Consumers to Choose You

This is the biggest lesson.

Walmart's Gen Z gains are encouraging.

Its higher-income gains are encouraging.

But the loss of $6.2 billion in Boomer CPG spending is not something a retailer should simply explain away because another segment grew.

The same principle applies to Kroger and Publix.

Consumers are becoming portfolio shoppers.

They will visit five or more grocery banners in a month.

The winner will not necessarily be the retailer that captures every trip.

The winner will be the retailer that captures the most important missions.

That is the difference between a store that consumers occasionally visit and a brand consumers intentionally choose.

The Grocerant Guru® bottom line:

Walmart doesn't have a traffic problem.

Kroger doesn't simply have a price problem.

Publix doesn't simply have an inflation problem.

The industry has a relevance problem.

The consumer has moved.

The question is whether the supermarket has moved with them—or is still standing in the middle, waiting for yesterday's customer to come back.

For international corporate presentations, educational forums, or keynotes contact: Steven Johnson Grocerant Guru® at Tacoma, WA based Foodservice Solutions.  His extensive experience as a multi-unit restaurant operator, consultant, brand / product positioning expert and public speaking will leave success clues for all. For more information visit www.GrocerantGuru.com , www.FoodserviceSolutions.us or call    1-253-759-7869