Tie-dyes and sandwiches attract crowd to Lewes Wawa for Hoagiefest
What do you get when you combine 400 pounds of sliced tomatoes, 540 pounds of deli meats, 200 pounds of cheese, 180 pounds of shredded lettuce, 160 pounds of sliced onions and 297 pounds of rolls?
For 24 Wawa employees it added up to a quarter-mile hoagie of Wawa Shorties constructed over a four-hour period to kick off Hoagiefest Friday, July 16, at the Lewes Wawa on Route 1.
More than 2,600 hoagies were stored in a refrigerated truck and dispersed to those attending the free event; half the hoagies were donated to the Food Bank of Delaware.
Lewes was the last stop for the Hoagiefest Tour, which also had stops in New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Virginia. More than 500 customers stopped by to take part in the event.
In one of the highlights, a Delaware State Police team bested a team from the Lewes Fire Department in the ultimate hoagie-building contest. The police built 37 hoagies in three minutes followed by the firefighters with 25 sandwiches.
Two teams from the Delaware National Guard finished third and fourth. Wawa donated $3,000 to support the fire department, Camp Barnes and disabled veterans as charities chosen by the participants.
“Wawa is thrilled to host our third annual Hoagiefest campaign,” said Wawa President and CEO Howard Stoeckel. “We can’t think of a better way to thank our associates and customers for their devotion to Wawa hoagies.”
Wawa Inc. began in 1803 as an iron foundry in New Jersey. In 1902, owner George Wood took an interest in dairy farming and opened a small processing plant in Wawa, Pa., about 20 miles west of Philadelphia.
Although the dairy was highly successful, as home delivery of milk declined in the early 1960s, Grahame Wood, George’s grandson, changed the direction of the company and opened the first Wawa food market in 1964. Hoagies became a staple on the menu in 1972.
Today, Wawa operates more than 560 stores in Delaware, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland and Virginia.
As an oddity in Wawa’s long history, a former executive vice president played a major role in the popularity of tie-dye shirts, worn by Wawa employees during Hoagiefest.
In the 1960s, Don Price, who was working for Best Foods, volunteered to rescue one the company’s failing products, Rit Dye.
Using a 2,000-year-old craft from Africa and India, Price made a blotch on a shirt – and tie-dye in the United States was born.
It was soon picked up by the hip crowd in Greenwich Village in New York City who passed the art onto some of the top rock-and-roll stars of the era including Janis Joplin, Joe Cocker and Jerry Garcia.
