Wag-A-Bag

Wag-A-Bag

Written by Michelle Davis Saturday, 07 October 2006

Convenience stores provide, well, convenience, for that quick soda that gets you through the day or last minute items you forget at the grocery store. These stores now are on just about every corner and are taken for granted, but they used to be hard to come by. In 1964, Virg Raab built the first convenience store in Round Rock and named it Wag-a-Bag after one of their dachshunds knocked over a bag of groceries.

Virg saw a need for convenience stores in small towns and decided Round Rock would be their first location.

“Moving to Round Rock [from Austin] was a big deal for my mom,” Cary Raab, son and president explains. “She didn’t want to leave the city and go to a place with a population of 1,800 at the time.”

Nancy Raab quickly warmed up to Round Rock and is writing a book, Out of the Bag – the Wag-a-Bag family story, due out this December.

“I wanted to write this book to capture the funny stories we as a family experienced growing up in this business,” Nancy said, “as well as the ups and downs of the business itself.”

Cary remembers working summers for the business.

“My mom would drop me, my brother and sister off at different locations and we would pick up trash and sack ice,” Raab said. “I finally got to work the register when I was 12 years old. It was one of those old registers that you had to add the tax and pull the lever down, which was pretty cool.”

Cary worked the register throughout middle and high school before managing a store while attending the University of Texas at Austin.

“I remember getting up at 4:30 in the morning to count cash and do the books before an eight o’ clock class,” Raab said. “My last year of school, I transferred to Southwest Texas State University, now Texas State so I could concentrate on school and graduate.”

When Virg passed away in 1998, Cary took on most of the responsibilities of the company. He was named president of the company at their 40th anniversary in 2004.

“When my dad died, I had to learn a lot and learn it pretty quick,” Cary said. “Since then my role hasn’t really changed all that much.”

Wag-a-Bag has conducted their own sting operations on their employees for about eight years to ensure that they are not selling alcohol and cigarettes to minors.

“We take selling to minors very seriously,” Cary said. “I know TABC appreciates us doing it, and I don’t know that anyone else does that.”

 

Wag-A-Bag, 512-255-1029 www.wagabag.com