Wawa's new store at 8570 Dixie Highway in Florence opens at 8 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 12, marking the convenience store chain's second Northern Kentucky location and arriving just as its seasonal Gobbler menu rolls out for the holidays. The first 100 customers through the door will walk away with a free Wawa T-shirt, and everyone can grab a free hot coffee of any size.
The opening will come with the kind of fanfare Wawa has made its signature in other markets, according to WLWT: a ribbon cutting, a hoagie-building contest, introductions of the new store team, and an appearance from Wawa's mascot, Wally Goose. A second Wawa in Lawrenceburg, Indiana, at 434 W. Eads Parkway, is set to open the following morning, Friday, Nov. 13, also at 8 a.m., with its own free coffee and T-shirt giveaways for the first 100 customers.
The Florence opening lands right in step with Wawa's annual Hot Turkey Gobbler menu, which the Cincinnati Enquirer reports includes Thanksgiving-style hoagies, bowls and wraps built around hot or cold roasted turkey, stuffing, gravy, sweet cranberry sauce, and mashed or sweet potatoes. The first 500 people ordering a Gobbler at each store will also get a hot turkey bib, which a Wawa news release says is meant to let customers celebrate the season by enjoying a Gobbler together without getting gravy on their holiday sweaters, per the Enquirer's reporting.
Boone County's Wawa Footprint Keeps Growing
This is not Florence's first brush with Wawa planning. Back in 2023, the chain withdrew an application for a store at Burlington Pike and Cardinal Drive and instead pursued the Dixie Highway and Mt. Zion Road site, according to a report from LINK nky. Separately, a development team has also sought to build a Wawa with 10 fuel pump islands at 8450 US-42 in Florence, and a different proposed Wawa at US 42 and Hopeful Church Road cleared a Florence City Council planning hurdle in October 2025, with a company representative saying it could open in 2027 — a project distinct from the Dixie Highway store opening this week.
That Hopeful Church Road proposal, outlined in Florence Ordinance O-22-2025, calls for demolishing an existing gas station, convenience store and restaurant to build a 6,372-square-foot convenience store with gasoline pumps, according to the City of Florence, Kentucky. With the Dixie Highway store's opening, Wawa will have 11 stores in Kentucky, per the Enquirer, joining the roughly dozen Wawa locations already operating across the Ohio River in Greater Cincinnati.
A Pennsylvania Chain Still Chasing Kentucky Growth
Wawa, based in Pennsylvania, has described sweeping ambitions for the state since it first announced its Kentucky push. A 2023 Wawa press release said the company planned to open approximately 40 stores across the region over the next eight to 10 years, while CSP Daily News reported the company's plans as building and opening five to eight stores per year toward a goal of more than 40 Kentucky stores. The Enquirer's own account of the expansion puts the figure at more than 40 stores over the next five to eight years — accounts that vary in the pace and timeline even as they converge on the same rough store count.
The same 2023 Wawa release said the Kentucky expansion was expected to create more than 1,400 new jobs, with each store employing an average of 35 associates, and described more than 15 sites under contract across Boone, Bullitt, Fayette, Hardin, Jefferson, Jessamine, Oldham, Scott, Shelby and Warren counties. Wawa's very first Kentucky store opened in Louisville, at 9650 Preston Crossing Blvd. in Jefferson County, according to CSP Daily News, before the chain made its way into Northern Kentucky.
Hebron's Store Set the Template Earlier This Year
Northern Kentucky's first Wawa opened in Hebron, at 2335 Water Tower Drive, with its grand opening reported in February. LINK nky described a hoagie-making contest as the highlight of that celebration, a format the Florence store appears set to echo Thursday with its own hoagie-building contest and ribbon cutting.
