Ew! Customer finds maggots in Wawa hoagie

EWING — The new Wawa on Silvia Street has barely been open for one month and one customer is already complaining about an unexpected surprise in a hoagie.

Chris Garcia said he was coming home from a late shift at his job at Six Flags Great Adventure when he decided to stop for a sandwich on his way home. It wasn't until he got home and started eating the sandwich when he realized there was a problem.

"I realized my sandwich and my sauce, it's moving up the little wrap they put it in," he said. "I'm like, 'What is this?'"

What it was supposed to be was a chicken cheesesteak with buffalo sauce, honey mustard, and ranch dressing with spinach and pickles. When Garcia saw what looked like the buffalo sauce and ranch dressing moving, he knew there was a problem.

"I started spitting out my food," he said. "I didn't eat a whole lot. I just saw two maggots dancing around my sandwich."

Garcia said he tried to make himself throw up to get any maggots he might have eaten out of his system, and was surprised by the reaction of store employees when he brought the sandwich back.

"We showed them that and they said this isn't supposed to happen," he said. "They said 'Oh, I guess we need to throw everything out.'"

The store gave him a refund for the price of the sandwich before his mother took him to a hospital to make sure he was okay.

"(The store staff) had a little chuckle about it," he said. "I said. 'This isn't really like a funny situation. You can get someone really sick if you have this stuff in your food.'"

Having only eaten a little bit of a half of the sandwich, Garcia said, he was glad it didn't turn out worse than it did.

"Everybody knows the importance of doing your job," he said. "Do your job, do it correctly, nothing bad happens. And when people don't do your job, stuff like this happens."

Garcia said he is very familiar with Wawa, even if the Ewing store is a new entity in the area. He said he hasn't been back since.

"I've been going to Wawa for like two years," he said. "I went to QuickChek a couple nights ago and I literally dissected my sandwich to make sure it was okay before I ate it."

According to a statement from the company published by the Trentonian, the company is reviewing the incident and said that it has strict protocols in place to "prevent incidents of this type from ever occurring."

On Wednesday a Wawa spokesperson said the company believes the claim is "highly unlikely and probably impossible."

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Information from the Associated Press was used in this report

Contact reporter Adam Hochron at 609-359-5326 or Adam.Hochron@townsquaremedia.com