Gheysens Guides Wawa's Growth

CEO executes expansion strategy he helped conceive during 15 years with the convenience-store chain.

CEOs of the Year 
Christopher Gheysens
Wawa

Wawa has gone on quite a journey in the last few years, and Christopher Gheysens has been right there in the driver's seat.

Gheysens became CEO of the convenience-store chain, originally based in Pennsylvania and other Northeastern states, in 2012, right when Wawa was about to execute one of its most momentous decisions: a move to Florida. But as a 15-year Wawa veteran, Gheysens was in a position to contribute to the decision to leapfrog across the United States, which was several years in the making. This is why Gheysens is one of Retail Leader's co-CEOs of the Year for 2015.

Gheysens started with Wawa in 1997, rising to the position of president and chief financial officer before he was made CEO at the end of 2012. He oversaw one of the boldest moves in Wawa's long history: The company leapfrogged down the U.S. East Coast, landing in Florida. Wawa's first Florida store opened in July 2012 in Orlando; it now has some 85 stores in central Florida, for a total of about 850.

Wawa's decision to expand to Florida came after several years of study, during which Gheysens and other Wawa executives had a mandate to recommend a move to literally any other part of the country that looked promising. They considered areas including Boston, New York, Seattle, Maine and San Diego before settling on Florida.

The reception in Florida has been outstandingly successful. Gheysens called it "frankly humbling" and said, "From the beginning, one of our mantras was that we had only one chance to make a great first impression" in an interview with Convenience Store News (CSN), a sister publication of Retail Leader.

The primary reason Wawa has done so well with its Florida launch is that, while it was new to the Sunshine State, it had a base of retirees, tourists and others who remembered it fondly from their days in the Northeast.

"The [Florida] market already has many people who knew the brand," says Steven Montgomery, president of b2b Solutions LLC, a consulting firm that specializes in convenience stores. "Whether these are snowbirds, residents who had moved to Florida or vacationers, many of these people missed ‘their' Wawa and were advocates of the brand."

But it wouldn't have worked if Wawa didn't give those consumers reasons to be advocates. Wawa has long been known for the quality of its fresh food, especially its hoagies and breakfast sandwiches. Under Gheysens' leadership, Wawa enhanced that aspect of its service with a new look and layout. Its goals were both to reassure those who might have been familiar with Wawa's rep, and to introduce Wawa's strong points to Floridians unfamiliar with the chain.

"We felt we needed a fresh design, driven by the psychology of the Florida consumer," Gheysens toldCSN. "The new store design has really informed the majority of people who didn't previously know Wawa and what the brand stands for: fresh, great-quality food and beverages, and convenience."

To get this across, the redesign incorporates a kitchen and sandwich assembly area that's easily visible to customers. "When you walk into the store, you see people making food, as well as digital signs romancing the offer," Gheysens said.

Gheysens has spent much of his career at Wawa, after an initial stint at Deloitte. He grew up in Vineland, N.J., the son of an owner of a string of car washes, and graduated from Villanova with an MBA from St. Joseph's University. He became the second Wawa CEO, after his predecessor Howard Stoeckel, to be outside the chain's founding Wood family.