Wegmans Fan Mail
My post below on Wegmans elicited fan mail--for the stores, that is--from all over. How many people do you know who get excited about their supermarket? Reader Greg Tetrault writes from Tennesee:
As a former Rochestarian who returns there annually, I can attest to the appeal of the Wegman's experience. The local nickname for Wegman's biggest store in the Rochester area is "Mega-Weg." The quality and variety of foods and goods are amazing. The stores are clean, have wide aisles, and have more sensible floor plans than most other big grocery stores. (Wegman's does not mimic its competitors that put simple, common staples at opposite ends of their stores hoping that you'll buy something extra from the 20 aisles you walk past.) As you noted, Wegman's prices are higher than the big bargain groceries, but Wegman's value is unsurpassed.
We now live near Memphis, and the large groceries here (Schnucks, Kroger, and Wal-Mart Super Stores) can't hold a candle to Wegman's. The former two deliberately understock popular brand-name items hoping that customers will buy their lower quality, higher margin, in-house goods. My wife and I both are annoyed by this inconsiderate policy.
Doug Rubin '81 writes that there's now a Wegmans in Princeton, which has come a long way since the two of us were in college there:
Whole Foods just opened as well (but I hear it's very expensive)
Meanwhile the local (relatively small) Wal-Mart is being transformed. Their stationery and housewares sections are being taken over by its grocery offerings which offer Cheerios, Pace Picante Sauce and Coca-Cola at "low prices every day". It's a pit and a pain the check out, but it's cheap. We've probably saved $400 or more on diapers there during the last 3 years!
Three things about Wegman's that my wife and I are thrilled by:
1) their store brands are of the highest quality/value I've ever seen.
2) they go out of their way to buy local produce, which must be a hassle, but engenders relationships and "stickiness"
3) their in-store cafeteria(s, yes I've been to others) offer quality that exceeds the specialty ethnic restaurants (Indian, Chinese) in the area.And, yes, they are always training and recognizing their employees.
And Reason's Jeff Taylor, who visited a Buffalo Wegmans in the summer, adds:
The produce was amazing, a result of what must be some serious attention to detail and a great quality-control system. It was there I encountered the Platonic form of peaches, the uber-peach, the one peach to rule them all. Almost as big as a grapefruit and positively erupting with that peachy smell of peachiness. We took pounds from the store and ate them raw with the abandon of zombies eating brains, grilled them for insane salads, pureed them for drinks. Then they were gone and, I think, we cried.
I find it hard to believe you can buy a decent peach, let alone a great one, outside the peach orchards and farmers markets of the South. But Jeff lives in North Carolina (not as good as South Carolina or Georgia for peach expertise but close), so I'll trust him.
Thanks to designer James Wondrack, president of the Upstate New York AIGA chapter, who took me to Wegmans when I was in Rochester last year speaking to the AIGA and a conference at RIT. One of the great things about all the traveling I do is that I don't have to wait for national press coverage to find out what's going on in the country.