Good story here from Ryan Mulligan at The Philadelphia Business Journal:

Wawa officials are considering dropping Philadelphia from their expansion plans following the ransacking of a store in Mayfair, according to City Councilmember Mike Driscoll.

Driscoll, a Democrat representing the 6th District in Northeast Philadelphia, which encompasses Mayfair, made the comments at a town hall-style forum hosted by the Philadelphia Real Estate Alliance on Tuesday to address issues currently facing the city. 

…

“They’ve already closed two Center City locations that they spent millions and millions of dollars on because of the lawlessness that was going on in their stores.”

“They’ve had to invest in security, and those of you that have these office buildings [know that] security doesn’t add anything to your bottom line, it takes away from your bottom line. But without it, then you’re in deep trouble. So they are spending money, they’re losing money. The scariest part to me is one of the senior officials said, ‘We’re seriously considering moving out of the city of Philadelphia in our strategic planning, at least not to expand.'”

Wawa has been having issues in Philly for some time now. The most recent incident was up in Mayfair, when a bunch of teens ransacked the store and the one girl was standing there asking the worker if he was gonna keep filming the brouhaha or finish making her sandwich.

They had a stabbing at the South Broad Wawa back in the summer of 2018 and then eventually closed the store, citing “COVID and operational uncertainties.” Then last year they shut down 9th and South and 13th and Chestnut.

We’re not a crime blog, so we can’t speak with any sort of credibility to what’s going on in Philly, but we do write about Wawa all the time. Losing Wawa would be a massive loss for Philly. An incredible fuck up and terrible blow in the optics department. It’s more or less the flagship store of this region. We should be doing everything we can to keep Wawa in Philly, except for the Aramingo Avenue location. Fuck that Wawa. You go there any time of the day, there’s 75 people milling about, panhandlers flanking the doors, and the poor cashier can’t find the right cigarettes for the guy in front of you. That Wawa should be strapped to Jeff Bezos’ space rocket and fired into the sun. I’ll subscribe to Amazon Prime if they do that.

(The other Aramingo Wawa is good though, the one way up there near the Lowe’s before you get to Bridesburg)