Sheetz Proposes New Location On Rival Wawa’s Core Suburban Philly Turf

The convenience store wars in Pennsylvania could be entering a new era.

Sheetz is floating plans to build a store across the street from a Wawa in Montgomery County, a core part of the latter chain’s suburban Philadelphia turf.

Sheetz’s proposal for 454 W. Ridge Pike in Limerick Township came up during a town board of supervisors meeting on Tuesday.

At a public hearing on the plan, discussion centered around changes that would need to be made to the site and additional traffic the proposed convenience store-gas station hybrid could bring to an already hectic intersection, Patch reported. The proposal is set for further consideration at the supervisors' March 4 meeting.

The site is just across the road from a “super Wawa” at 451 W. Ridge Pike, which anchors a small shopping center with a bank, a medical cannabis dispensary and a handful of restaurants.

The two chains have become symbols of a friendly cross-state rivalry between eastern and western Pennsylvania. Sheetz is headquartered in Altoona, while Wawa is based in Delaware County.

At the moment, the closest Sheetz outpost to Philadelphia is located at 3830 Main St. in Morgantown, about 15 miles south of Reading.

Sheetz's reach extends as far east as 100 Trolley Drive in Easton. The Lehigh Valley town is right across the Delaware River from North Jersey, where Wawa has expanded rapidly in recent years.

The chain also has a location at 622 E. Pulaski Highway in Elkton, Maryland, just a five-minute drive from the border with Delaware. But the chain hasn’t yet made its mark in the First State, where Wawa is neck and neck with a similar chain called Royal Farms. 

Wawa is inescapable in the Philly suburbs, but its presence in the city itself has been shrinking in recent years.

Eight of the chain’s 12 stores in Center City have shuttered since 2020, The Philadelphia Inquirer reported late last year. The most recent closure was the location at 16th and Ranstead streets across from Liberty Place.

But Wawa is also targeting new territories, with an ongoing push into southern states like North Carolina, Georgia and Alabama as well as Midwestern locales like Ohio and Indiana.