Testify about Wegmans, please

In My Humble Opinion
1

On a list I subscribe to, someone asked today what Wegmans was. She apparently got her hands on a copy of Menu Magazine, and noticed it was from Wegmans. Not having a Wegmans in her town, she asked us if anyone knew who they were.

So far three people have come forward to testify about how wonderful Wegmans is, and how it is simply better than the other mega-markets out there.

A sample of 3 isn’t likely to convince the world at large that Wegmans is a shopping-heaven-on-earth, so this is the place to testify about what a wonderful place Wegmans is. If you really must, you can fight about whether Wegmans or Tops is better, but that’s not really what I’m looking for.

It is my contention that the chief reason Wegmans is the best supermarket in the world is intangible. It’s a feeling you get when you walk around and see not only a wonderful selection of goods (which could conceivably be matched by another major supermarket), but that the whole store is just so well taken care of, and that the employees are helpful, nice, and seem to like their jobs. Plus you get all this without the prices being inflated.

I’ll start off by relating two customer service incidents I had in the Ithaca Wegmans (previously posted in another thread):

"A couple of years ago I encountered outstanding customer service in Wegmans, in Ithaca NY.

A friend and I were in town for a visit, and stopped off to see their new building (they had recently built a new store a few hundred yards down the road from their old one, due to structural problems with the old one).

We stopped at the coffee bar to grab a cup to drink while we shopped. My friend ordered an espresso with lemon. The coffee bar attendant asked if he wanted it as juice or zest. He thought for a moment and asked for zest. The attendant said “OK, I’ll be right back.” She walked from behind the coffee bar, over to the produce department and came back with a lemon, then zested it right in front of us. Made a couple of really nice curlicues, too. And she was nice and pleasant the whole time. Great service.

In the florist department, we were looking over the bouquets and picked one out for my grandmother. It had no price on it, though, so we asked someone in a green apron what the price was. It wasn’t her department, so she didn’t have a price for us, but she called for a florist and then waited with us until the florist arrived. The florist told us the price, which we thought was reasonable, so we said we’d like to buy it. She then quickly replaced several of the flowers in the bunch because she didn’t think they looked fresh enough, and sold us the bouquet. Again, she was pleasant, courteous and very helpful.

I don’t think either event was out of the ordinary as far as the staff were concerned, but after living in Boston for a few years, where you mostly get zero eye contact from service people, and the “I can’t believe you expect me to do my job” attitude, that day in Wegmans really stuck with me."

2

Wegman’s saved my sanity.

We moved from Berkeley to a tiny town in Western PA to teach at the college there. Imagine what culture shock a foodie like me experienced when I went into the grocery store there. It was pathetic. There was a nice farmer’s market, but by around November there was nothing there but leftover pumpkins and cold-storage apples.

Then we found Wegman’s. We had to drive for 40 minutes to get there, but we went every weekend and came back with bag after bag of glorious stuff. I couldn’t believe how many things they did well. I’ve never been to another grocery that could touch their bread.

I even miss it sometimes now that we’re back in California. I can get all the stuff they carry here, of course, but not in one place. Oh well, at least I have Costco and Trader Joe’s again.

3

I moved out of Rochester New York seven years ago, and I still miss Wegmans.

There’s a Wegmans in Williamsport, I believe, that sells Chinese Food to go that is, quite simply, some of the best sesame chicken I’ve ever had.

And their donuts? Shut up and get back honky cat. They kick ass.

Great deli, great cheese section. I love Wegmans. It beats Jewel by a mile.

jarbaby

4

My friends in NJ took us to their local Wegmans when we visited because “we had to see it to believe it.” The store was spotless, the selection amazing, the service outstanding. And the prepared food area had food to DIE for. We had lunch there. God it was good.

So it’s also a cheap tourist attraction for out-of-town guests! :slight_smile:

5

Used to live in Rochester. The Super-Wegmans in Pittsford was huge and open 24 hours a day. The original has since closed and been rebuilt a short distance away. There were other Wegmans in the Rochester area, and most were not super-huge, open 24 hours. Perhaps that has changed.

The big W has since moved down into Pennsylvania and New Jersey, but I haven’t been to the newer stores. They haven’t made it out to Boston yet.

6

Ah, Wegmans! and the wonderful MegaWegs (Wegmans with a Chase-Pitkin and other stores attached).

When I go home to visit, I always stock up on the stuff I can’t get down south (salt potatoes, State Fair Spiedie sauce). Fun place to shop, too - every one I have shopped in is spotless and the staff has always gone out of its way to help. I would expect no less.

Besides, they list product recalls on their website - even for products they don’t carry. Dunno about you, but I was darned impressed on that point alone.

7

No, but I keep checking the website and praying…

I’ve also thought alot about how far I’m willing to drive to shop at a Wegmans. I think an hour, so that gives them lots of leeway about where in Mass they build their first store.

::whispering please please please. all I want for christmas is a wegmans::

8

Yeah – Spiedie Sauce and Sal’s/Country Sweet/Smitty’s/Boss sauce. Nobody seems to have that stuff outside the Rochester area. Every time I pass through Rochester I pick some up.

9

SALT
POTATOES
SALT POTATOES

SALT POTATOES

Now I feel like getting in my car and driving all the way home to Penfield. I could eat salt potatoes all day.

jarbaby

10

Buffalo is the supermarket capital of the universe.

Massive Wegmans stores in Buffalo are ubiquitous, and excepting the inner city, you can usually get to one within five or ten minutes.

But wait, there’s more.

Buffalo is also the corporate headquarters of Tops, whose local stores are on the same scale as Wegmans. Tops beats Weggies by a long shot for beer and ethnic food. The Tops across Maple Road from the Boulevard Mall in Amherst has a working tortilleria (despite the lack of a Hispanic population in that suburb), and they make the best corn chip I’ve ever tasted outside of New Mexico. However, the stores don’t feel as upscale as Wegmans. Wegmans tends to be favored over Tops by Canadian cross-border shoppers.

Because the economy in Upstate New York is quite depressed, there’s far more competiton for work, and you tend not to see as many folks on the low end of the social ladder working in low-paying service jobs as you would in other cities. Most menial jobs in the supermarkets I’ve visited in Buffalo seem to be staffed by clean cut high school and college students. Service at Wegmans is outstanding; at Tops a bit less so.

While Buffalo is a supermarket shopper’s paradise for the proletariat, that region completely lacks foo-foo yuppie supermarket chains, like Whole Foods. The selection at Wegmans and Tops may blow your typical Kroger/Publix/King Soopers/Safeway/Lucky/Jewel type market out of the water, but you still won’t find organic free range Argentine chicken in the poultry section, or Dr. Bronner’s Hemp Castile soap in the health and beauty aisle.

11

mmmmmmmmmmmmmm salt potatoes

12

You can make your own using any small new potatoes (leave the jackets on!!!) but I prefer Hinderwadel’s.

  1. Leave the jackets on.
  2. Use lots of salt in the water and DO NOT RINSE THE POTATOES AFTER COOKING!!
  3. Save some for the next morning. They’re great to eat cold right out of the refrigerator.

Damn. Now I’m hungry.

13

While I agree with you that the economy is depressed in that area and that there is more competition for jobs, I disagree somewhat that that is the reason Wegmans stores are customer-service-dreams.

My friends and I worked at various competing chain supermarkets in the Ithaca area during High School and college, (none of us worked at Wegmans or Tops) and customer service at our stores was the pits.
The employees didn’t care about the store, its products or service beyond the bare minimum they needed to do to keep their jobs and meet health codes in visible areas of the store. Management didn’t do anything about improving their current employees’ performance or hiring better people the next time (and there was never a shortage of applicants). Some of my co-workers were the dregs of the employment pool. And it frightens me to report that those stores have gotten even worse in the last few years.

Wegmans somehow manages to hire the right people, so that you can walk into Wegmans and have a positive shopping experience and then walk into a P&C or Price Chopper the next week and fear for your health.

Even their stores in NJ have been highly praised in terms of store appearance, customer service, etc, and I don’t think Princeton can be as economically depressed as Central and Western NY.
So their corporate culture has to enter into it somewhat, and I would guess in large measure.

I hope I haven’t misunderstood your argument.

I wholeheartedly agree with you that Tops beats Wegmans in the beer department.

14

Motorgirl, I knew you lived in Ithaca as soon as you mentioned Weggie’s and Tops in the same sentence. (For those of you who haven’t visited, they’re next door to each other.)

What I liked about it was that if you got hungry at 3:00 AM (and hot truck had left already), you could walk around Wegman’s and eat anything you wanted without having to pay for it because there were always, like, 2 employees to cover the whole store. (That was back when I was in college and hadn’t yet completely developed the fine moral sense I now possess, of course.)

–Cliffy

15

Yup, used to do almost all my shopping at Wegmans, then go next door to Tops for beer and bulk foods.

You should have come over to Fall Creek campus - Louis’ Lunch truck was open ‘til 4am. You could get a TBBC and a black and white milkshake. Or a big bag o’ fires for one dollar. mmmm. Hot Truck was great, but I ended up at Louis more because it was 100 feet from my dorm and open from 10:30am to 4:00am. Nothing like a bag o fries and a black and white at closing time!

P.S. They opened a Hot Truck here in Boston - officialy licensed and everything! Haven’t been over there in a while, hope it’s doing OK.

16

Sorry, but this gave me a chuckle.

17

Guess it depends on how much Tabasco I sprinkled in the bag.

18

I also miss Wegmans dammit!

19

I’ve read about Wegman’s in an industry magazine (I’m a pastry chef), and how everyone cannot say enough about it. They haven’t moved into the Boston area, but right now the supermarket competition here is so fierce that I wonder if they could actually make a dent. We have a similar chain, Roche Bros., which sounds very similar to Wegman’s. Unfortunately, they’re not a large chain (12-13 stores in all, I think), which is probably good because, as I’ve noticed, the bigger a chain grows, the more the service/inventory/etc. goes down. I know about this first-hand, as I was a baker for one of the major supermarket chains here up until a few months ago…

20

Wegmans is the best supermarket chain overall that I’ve shopped at. Their prices are generally competitive with anyone else’s and the quality and variety of the products are usually superior. Plus virtually all Wegmans (unlike Tops) are open 24/7 which is a plus for those of us who enjoy late night shopping.

Best Wegmans? Canandaigua, Corning, and the Hylan Blvd store in Henrietta.