About five years after its coming to DeLand was first announced, Wawa opened Feb. 10 at a busy crossing on the city’s south side.
The DeLand Wawa is on the southwest corner of the intersection of South Woodland Boulevard and State Road 15A. The store with its 16 fuel pumps outside and food offerings on the inside opened at 8 a.m., and there was a ribbon-cutting at 9:30 a.m.
Jenny Dietz, a store manager, said the DeLand Wawa has 33 people now on its payroll.
“We started hiring and training everyone in December. We were using the Deltona and Orange City [Wawa] stores for training,” Dietz added.
The DeLand Wawa is celebrating its grand opening throughout the weekend, she said, with discounts on gasoline prices, cold beverages, sandwiches and salads. The store is also offering free coffee through Sunday, Feb. 13.
The new store is one of more than 630 owned by the company, whose headquarters is in Wawa, Pennsylvania. Besides Pennsylvania and Florida, Wawa now has stores in New Jersey, Maryland, Delaware and Virginia. The company’s name, Wawa, is a Native American tribal name for the Canada goose, which, according to the company’s website, was a favorite food of the tribe.
