The Columbia Heights Wawa takes a space formerly occupied by Five Guys, Potbelly, and Pete’s Apizza.

Wawa

Starting Thursday, the District’s Wawa enthusiasts (and we know they’re out there) will have three locations to choose from when they whine about hoagie cravings. A new store will open just outside the Columbia Heights Metro station this week, and is offering free coffee throughout the weekend in celebration.

Wawa is promising “exciting fanfare” at the grand opening ceremony on Thursday morning for the store—which takes over a space formerly occupied by Five Guys, Potbelly, and Pete’s Apizza. Per a release, that includes free T-shirts for the first 100 Wawa fanatics customers in line when the store opens at 8 a.m., and a ribbon cutting with the company’s mascot Wally Goose. There will also be a hoagie-building competition, in which teams will compete to assemble the largest quantity of Wawa sandwiches in three minutes. The teams—the Capital Area Food Bank on one side, a family raising funds for the Leukemia and Lymphoma Society on the other—will compete for a donation to their charities.

In addition, the store is giving away coffee of any size for free from Thursday through Sunday (As any Wawa stan worth her salt knows, the store offers a wide variety of self-serve coffees).

Wawa mania will likely continue throughout the rest of the year as two more locations open in the District: A Tenleytown location is set to open its doors in June, and an Adams Morgan spot will follow in the early fall. These locations follow a downtown location—the chain’s largest ever—that opened in 2017, and a Georgetown spot with an “upscale” and “urban” feel, according to the company.  It’s part of Wawa’s longstanding plan to eventually have 30-50 outposts in the city.