Penske Logistics and Wawa

Delivering a consistently great customer service experience along with fresh, high-quality foods and other products daily is an enormous task for any retail consumer business to achieve, especially when you have over 590 stores spanning five states. But, that is exactly what Wawa set out to achieve when collaborating with Penske Logistics to establish its Fresh Channel approach. Wawa is one of the most recognized and successful convenience store brands in the Northeast and ranks among the largest private companies in the United States.

Wawa needed a reliable logistics and supply chain partner to help plan and implement its new Fresh Channel initiative. After evaluating several vendors, none could quite provide a solution like Penske Logistics. Since the two companies had been already working together since the 1990s, Wawa expanded its relationship with Penske to include the new Fresh Channel approach. It has been a successful part of its daily operations for many years now.

Penske Logistics and Wawa executives worked jointly with the Center for Supply Chain Research at The Smeal College of Business Administration at The Pennsylvania State University to help document elements of the Fresh Channel approach. This features the daily collection, staging and delivery of fresh-baked donuts, bagels, sandwich rolls, soft pretzels and refrigerated commissary items to every Wawa store.

The case study was written and researched by Dr. Robert A. Novack, Dr. W. L. (Skip) Grenoble and Benjamin Ng. The continued benefits of Wawa's Fresh Channel include heightened consumer appeal, streamlined store operations, 99 percent on-time delivery and reduced cost of deliveries through consolidation.

Read the Wawa case study or download the PDF.

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