Pennsylvania’s Wawa Lost the Best Convenience Store Title to a Chain Most of the State Has Never Visited
Two points on a 100-point scale separate Wawa from the chain that took its best-convenience-store title in the American Customer Satisfaction Index’s most recently published study.
Wawa didn’t lose a single point.
But the chain that passed it picked up six, and it did that without a single store in Pennsylvania.
That’s how Pennsylvania’s Wawa lost the best convenience store title to a chain most of the state has never visited.
Who Ran the Ranking and How
Wawa’s ranking comes from the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI), a research group that asks shoppers to grade the companies they use.
For its 2025 convenience-store study, ACSI collected 8,601 surveys by email between October 2024 and September 2025.
Each shopper graded the chain they use on everything from the staff to the app.
ACSI turns those answers into a score from 0 to 100.
Higher means happier.
Here’s how Wawa lost the title, starting with the year it won.
The First-Edition Title
Wawa took the top spot the first time ACSI ran this study, in a release from October 2024, with a score of 82.
That edition ran on 5,710 surveys gathered from March through September of 2024.
QuikTrip finished a point back at 81.
Buc-ee’s and Murphy USA followed at 80.
Sheetz sat at 79.
ACSI also split the country into regions.
Wawa won the Northeast outright while taking second in the South behind Buc-ee’s.
The whole industry averaged 76 that year, so Wawa’s 82 put it six points clear of the typical gas-station stop.
It lasted one year.
An Eight Percent Surge
Wawa’s replacement is Kwik Trip, a family-owned chain based in La Crosse, Wisconsin, that rose 8% to a score of 84 in ACSI’s 2025 study.
A year earlier, Kwik Trip scored a 78 in the same study, four points behind Wawa.
Six points in twelve months is a big move on a scale where the whole industry didn’t budge.
The convenience-store average sat at 76 both years.
Wawa stood still.
ACSI credits Kwik Trip’s jump to the culture the company builds around its workers and the store experience that culture produces.
In ACSI’s regional tables, Kwik Trip also led the Midwest with an 85, a point above its national score.
Two Points Behind
Wawa scored an 82 again in 2025, the same number that won the year before.
The score held.
Yet the same score turned first place into a tie for second, two points behind Kwik Trip.
A two-point gap sounds like nothing until you see how tightly the field packs together.
Every chain ACSI scored in 2025 landed between 73 and 84, so eleven points cover the entire industry from bottom to top.
ACSI also asked shoppers to grade the parts of a visit.
Across the industry, staff courtesy and store cleanliness each scored 83, while checkout speed came in at 79 and hot food at 80.
Wawa’s regulars grade the hoagie line on every visit, and this survey is where those grades add up.
What Wawa’s 82 Measures
Wawa’s 82 isn’t the share of shoppers who like the store.
ACSI asks each shopper three things: How the chain measured up to what they expected, how they judge its quality, and whether the price felt worth it.
Those three answers become one number on a 0-to-100 scale.
Because the 2025 field ran from 73 to 84, a two-point gap covers close to a fifth of the distance between the lowest-rated chain and the highest.
The Altoona Tie
Wawa shares second place with Sheetz, its in-state rival, which by its account started in Altoona in 1952.
Sheetz rose 4% in ACSI’s 2025 study, from 79 to 82.
The tie is all Pennsylvania.
So the two Pennsylvania-born chains now split second place, with a Wisconsin company sitting above both.
In ACSI’s Northeast tables, Wawa and Sheetz tied at 82 there too.
A year earlier, Wawa held that region alone with Sheetz in second.
Seven States, None of Them Pennsylvania
Wawa’s conqueror runs its stores in Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Michigan under the Kwik Trip name.
It runs Iowa, Illinois, South Dakota, and now North Dakota as Kwik Star, according to the company’s site.
Kwik Trip opened its first North Dakota store in Fargo on November 20, 2025.
CSP Daily News called it the chain’s seventh state, with at least five North Dakota locations planned through the end of 2026.
Kwik Trip’s careers page puts the total at more than 850 stores and over 38,000 coworkers.
None of them are Pennsylvania.
A Pennsylvanian who wants to see what beat Wawa has to cross all of Ohio before reaching the first state on that list.
The two companies are close in age, though.
Wawa says it opened its first food market in 1964 as an outlet for milk from its dairy in Wawa, Pennsylvania.
Kwik Trip dates its founding to 1965.
Sixty years on, Kwik Trip still sells only in the states around where it started.
Forty Percent of the Profits
The chain that beat Wawa hands 40% of its pre-tax profits back to its coworkers every year, by Kwik Trip’s account.
That bonus runs 8% to 12% of a worker’s yearly wages, depending on how the company did.
Kwik Trip also runs its bakery, kitchens, and dairy.
Its site says the bakery bakes fresh bread in 10 varieties every day, plus muffins, cookies, Glazers, and cinnamon rolls 365 days a year.
Kwik Trip’s site says its milk gets from farm to store within 24 hours.
ACSI noticed.
Wawa describes itself as family and associate owned, so both chains put workers on the ownership side of the counter.
Kwik Trip’s shoppers in six Midwestern states rated the result two points higher.
The Rest of the Field
Wawa and Sheetz’s 82 sat two points ahead of QuikTrip at 80, with Buc-ee’s and Love’s next at 79.
Casey’s fell 5% to 75, the BP gas station brand landed at 74, and ampm closed out the list at 73.
Eleven points separated ampm from Kwik Trip.
That’s the whole field.
QuikTrip’s 80 is a one-point slide from the 81 it posted in 2024, when it finished directly behind Wawa.
Buc-ee’s dropped the same single point over that year, from 80 to 79, even after winning the South outright in the study’s first edition.
Psst! How much do you know about America’s gas station chains? Take our quiz and see if you can ace it.
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Nearly 100 New Stores
Wawa hasn't slowed down since the ranking came out.
In a June 2026 store announcement, Wawa said it expects to open nearly 100 stores across 14 states this year.
It put its total at more than 1,190 locations.
That map runs from Pennsylvania down through Florida and west into Ohio, Indiana, and Kentucky.
Closer to home, Wawa announced in April 2024 that it would build 40 stores across central Pennsylvania over five years, in places like York, Williamsport, Hanover, and Enola.
Each of those stores costs about $7 million to build and staffs roughly 35 people, according to that announcement.
Growth cuts both ways.
Every new Wawa in Indiana or Kentucky adds shoppers who've never eaten a Wawa hoagie and will grade the chain against whatever gas station they grew up with.
Kwik Trip, by its careers page, adds roughly 30 stores a year, all of them inside the same seven states it already knows.
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