ORANGE PARK – When a Wawa store opens in a community, the crowd is more reminiscent of the thousands fans that screamed at The Beatles when they first arrived on American soil in 1964.

For instance, when Wawa opened its first Orlando store, so many customers jammed themselves into the convenience store that the normal three-minute ticket times for hoagies had turned to two hours and even the Chief Executive Officer Chris Gheysens got behind the counter to assemble sandwiches for the excited customers.

In Clay County, Wawa hopes to draw that same kind of crowd when it opens its first store here as part of 25 to 35 stores the Wawa, Pennsylvania-based company plans to open in Northeast Florida in late 2017.

The announcement comes from last Thursday’s press conference held at the Thrasher-Horne Conference Center, which drew Wawa employees from all over Florida, Clay County business leaders, and Wawa’s mascot – Wally Goose.

In Clay County, the first store is set to open at the corner of Blanding Boulevard and Filmore Street near the current location of the Community Hospice Thrift Store. Construction for the first wave of stores will begin in the spring of 2017, with groundbreakings set about nine months after construction begins, said Brian Duke, real estate manager for Wawa.

While Wawa answered many questions during last Thursday’s press conference, some answers are a bit harder to articulate, namely, what is a Wawa?

For most, Wawa is a great place for a morning chat while grabbing a quick cup of coffee and a hoagie. For die-hard fans, however, Wawa is a tattoo spread across their chest, for others still, Wawa is the place they got married.

On paper, Wawa is a convenience store who specializes in fresh subs made quick, coffee, gas and all the other standard fare. Ask any Wawa zealot and they’ll say Wawa is a bit more than a sandwich and a smile.

“You can sell a good hoagie, but when you give out a hug, when you make someone’s day that unexpected moment of caring, or fun, or laughter, that personal exchange,” Gheysens said. “That’s what our business is about. That’s what really separates us.”

Wawa cares about its employees as much as its customers. Opening pay for a Wawa employee is $10 an hour. Employees hold stock in the company and have just as much input on the franchise’s forward inertia as Gheysens, who introduced himself June 9 as “the least important person at Wawa.”

“The people that, a little over a year from now, will make your coffee, will greet you in the morning, make your hoagies, the ones holding the door for you hopefully, the people that will see you late at night and early in the morning, those are the people who are most important of all.” Gheysens said.

The care carries over to the community as well, said Todd Souders, director of store operations for Wawa Florida.

“When we talk about community, when we talk about culture, we live this every day,” Souders said. “In Florida, we’ve donated over $2 million dollars to local communities.”

Customers pick up on that kind of care, Gheysens said, it’s is one of the reasons Wawa is such a welcoming place. He cites the prolonged door holding that customers know Wawa for as one of the symptoms of that care.

Wawa also cares for its community through direct and indirect methods. Each Wawa represents a minimum $5 million dollar investment in the community and, as Bill Garrison president of the Clay County Economic Development Corp. explains, Wawa’s economic waves don’t end after that initial investment.

“It’s going to generate $1 million dollars payroll per store [per year] at least, and God only knows how much sales tax it’s going to generate,” Garrison said.

The local one-cent sales tax that Clay County charges generates $16.5 million dollars annually. That figure will only rise as Wawa opens more stores, Garrison said.

Because Wawa’s minimum wage is higher than the current federal minimum wage, Wawa will put upward pressure on entry-level jobs, for which companies fight to retain competent workers.

The pressure doesn’t end there, however. Wawa is one of the nation’s largest gasoline distributors. When Wawa opened in Orlando gas prices dropped 10 cents to the delighted wallets of locals. Gheysens doesn’t promise the same effect will happen in Clay County.

In the end, it might be impossible to nail down the exact reason for Wawa’s cult following. A cult following that inevitably resulted in a Market Force study that named Wawa as America’s most beloved convenience store in a 2015.

Residents will just have to see for themselves what all the fuss about Wawa is all about when Clay County’s first Wawa opens.

Gheysens, however, has a good idea on why people just can’t seem to get enough of Wawa.

“The beauty of Wawa is, it’s your community,” he said. “It’s CEO next to soccer mom next to teenager next to purple, green, yellow, it’s casual and comfortable. It doesn’t really have a vibe that you’d find in other retailers, and that’s why people hold the door.”